Former South Sudanese Deputy Defence Minister has slammed calls for the resignation of President Salva Kiir made by his adviser, stressing that the latter must leave first.

“When I often hear of these declarations by Gen Kuol Manyang that it’s time to go home, I wonder what is he still waiting for?” Majak D’Agoôt said in a tweet posted in response to the former Defence Minister and Senior Presidential Adviser.

D’Agoôt added that leaders leave when they are unfit to discharge public authority.

“Abel Alier and Elijah Malok retired quietly without this much fuss”, he pinpointed.

Manyang former adviser on military affairs Daniel Awet Akot stressed that their call for President Kiir to form active politics aims to preserve the legacy of the liberation struggle.

They added that it is time for their generation to give way to young people to build the country.

D’Agoôt was one of the senior members of the ruling SPLM who were arrested in 2013 when they raised voices calling for political reforms in the young country. In addition, they called for the democratization of the ruling guerrilla movement to a conventional political party.

The debate caused tensions that descended into violence and morphed into an ethnic and regional conflict in 2013 and 2016.

While his group (SPLM Leaders) has been represented in the cabinet by at least two ministers and a vice-president, he opted to engage in research and academic works, teaching mostly in western universities in the United Kingdom and America where he has been offered part-time assignments in some, full time in others.

He is now a Visiting Senior Research Fellow at the African Leadership Centre, King’s College London since 2019.

He previously served as the former Deputy Chief of the Sudanese Intelligence and South Sudan’s Defence Minister and has formerly held the role of Senior analyst at the Changing Horizon Institute for Strategic Policy Analysis (CHI-SPA).

He has published articles in peer-review journals and think pieces in media outlets in Africa, the Middle East, and the West, covering various policy spheres.

Majak D’Agoôt holds an MSc in Quantitative Finance and a PhD in Financial Economics from SOAS, University of London.

He also holds an MSc in Security Sector Management from Cranfield University and an MA in War Studies from King’s College London.