If the continent had made progress in moving away from the military coup, which had been such a feature of African politics since the 1960s, analysts identified this as the “constitutional coup”. And hence the importance of the descriptor “constitutional coup” and why it is more than a rhetorically balanced turn of phrase. The constitutional coup denotes not only the abuse of political power by a particular executive but also the corrosion of constitutionalism itself. And precisely for this reason, the constitutional coup is arguably more damaging than the military coup. At a moment when the continent faces a resurgent wave of military coups, the constitutional coup might seem esoteric and a secondary concern.