Leadership Must Govern the Conditions Before the Rupture

A crisis becomes visible when armed people approach a seat of government, a governing body collapses into public conflict, a digital system fails on launch day, a safeguarding allegation reaches the media or an institution can no longer conceal that its services have stopped working.

The visible event demands urgent action. People must be protected, lawful authority preserved, essential services continued and reliable information released. Yet the breaking point is rarely the beginning. Long before the rupture, warnings may have accumulated in complaints, unresolved grievances, concentrated decisions, declining capability, weak oversight, financial strain, staff silence, security pressure and a widening distance between institutional claims and lived experience.

Leadership must govern the conditions before the rupture. This does not make every crisis predictable or every violent act preventable. It means that responsible institutions do not wait for an emergency to discover who may decide, which values remain binding, what information matters, how people can speak, which services must continue and who will examine whether the institution helped create the danger it later had to manage.

On 1 September, the Chairperson of the African Union Commission issued a statement on serious events in Niamey during the night of 28 to 29 August. The statement reports armed clashes and attacks on sensitive sites, casualties and material damage. It condemns violence and any attempt to seize power by force,…