The paper is an enquiry into civil military relations and leadership crisis in 21st century Africa with
emphasis on Mauritania, Guinea, Niger and Mali .Results from data collected over a forty-seven year
period revealed that the countries under review witnessed fifty-five coups. These alarming numbers of
coups have continued unabated in the light of notable theorizations by scholars, that military
organizations are primarily servants of the state. Contrarily, other researchers have argued that
governments in developing nations lacked the administrative skills to govern their geopolitical entities
thereby resulting in militarism. While adopting the critical and reconstructive methods of analysis in
philosophy, the paper identified the quest for self-determination, weak socio-political culture resulting
from leadership failure, statelessness among others as major consequences of poor CMR in Africa. The
study submitted that good governance is the antidote to acts of militarism and recommended that African
leaders should begin to reconsider their approaches to governance.