The Wike-Yerima face-off, over some Abuja plot of land, has again brought to the fore the vexed issue of military hauteur — that complex that spews and acts as though the civil majority are no more than contemptible “bloody civilians”!
Any democracy worth its name must discount with such a temper without much ado. The military caste is honourable. Officers and soldiers should be loved and admired for their sacrifice to the state. But that’s only when they too revere the civil authority.
On that, there can be no quibbling — especially for Nigeria, that has had more than its fair share of ruinous military rule.
Growing up on Lagos Island, if you drove against the traffic, the neighbourhood kids would flood in from nowhere and bawl: “one way!” “one way!” Shame-faced you’d turn back — an adult being heckled by children before doing what was right!
But then came soldiers — and they would drive against the traffic as they well damn liked! With foreboding looks and guns at the ready, which child would shout them down with “one way!”?
It was the beginning of the best-forgotten era of military rule. Riding roughshod over such basic traffic mores began a comprehensive assault on basic urban decency — and they went on to shred the societal moral fabric — just because they wore a uniform, and could cork a gun!
It was, Lady Macbeth-speak, the “eye of childhood that fears the painted devil”! But unlike those child eyes in Shakespeare’s historical fiction of old Scotland, reasonable Nigerians have developed adult glares, very scornful of military hubris, with or without the threat of cocked guns!
Indeed, arrogant military rule, at its tragic zenith, bred a band that figured it could cancel Basorun MKO Abiola’s June 12, 1993, presidential mandate, and live happily ever after! It also bred another that pushed his martial sole right to sleaze, at the risk of hot death to fellow thieves! Both grand delusions ended in grief!
So, those military top brass, active or retired, serenading the martial hauteur of the young Navy Lt. A. M. Yerima, against Nyesom Wike, the FCT minister, miss the point.
Such conceit, laced with sinister threat and force, led their command ancestors astray, brought the military into disrepute and brought our dear country, Nigeria, to a sorry pass. Such should never be repeated — or, if they are, instantly slammed.
But back to the Wike-Yerima confrontation — a parallel of two riveting paradoxes: Yerima looked decent for a bad cause. Wike appeared gross for a good cause!
Beyond those contrasting optics — for which not a few have boisterously nailed Wike — hardly any other thing can justify Lt. Yerima! Now, let’s break it down.
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Navy Lt. Yerima looked every inch the golden soldier boy: cool, calm, polished and unruffled in the eye of a ministerial storm — this one, the ever brash Hurricane Wike, which violent bursts and fiery puffs know no end, until it has uprooted all in its sight!
Yerima was supposedly the younger one. Yet, he showed admirable composure, even as the far older Wike blew his tops to assert his ministerial authority. Aside moving a sinister inch closer to the fuming minister, as things got to a head, hardly anyone can fault Yerima’s self-control. Wike was the diametric opposite on all counts.
Still, why would a fine, young military officer exercise such martial refinement, in a civil space, standing guard over a disputed piece of land? That’s the critical question.
A lawyer friend, more anti-Wike than he’s pro-Yerima, swore that were he on the same spot, as the retired Navy chief alleged to own the land, he would do “anything” to safeguard his land. He even dived into legal “proofs” to buttress his point. Fair enough!
But what if, as emerging information seems to show, the Navy chief’s claim to the land could be tenuous? There are claims that the original owners acquired the land on the proviso that it would be developed into a park — the purpose for which the area was designated — not residential houses.
This claim puts forth two points. One: that the ex-Navy chief is a third-party claimant. And two: that he might have deviated from the FCT original plan for the area. These points, if true, point at the age-old abuse of power and privilege, which often brings the otherwise cherished military caste into civil scorn.
In any case, if the naval top gun has licit claim to the property, why cordon it off — a civil space — with a military truck, post a Navy lieutenant (an equivalent of an Army captain) there on guard duty, leading other lower ranks, guns a-popping?
To intimidate and scare off civil authority? Are martial laws then superior to civil laws, in the civil space? If so, can martial laws overwhelm general civil laws in a democracy?
Except all these questions are answered in the affirmative, Navy Lt. Yerima, his guards and whoever posted them there, stand on slippery grounds. Indeed, for the honour and dignity of the military, it would have been better for whoever that sent them there to have engaged thugs, on what appears a clearly illegal guard duty!
That you can’t deploy licit guards, to an illicit space, trumps whatever might have been the ugly optics of Minister Wike’s rather brash intervention.
Yes, not a few have weighed in with an emotive appeal to fear. What if the young naval officer had flipped in the passion of the moment, and Wike had become history?
Yes, that would have been a catastrophe. But it still would have showed the brazen illegality of trigger-happy fingers, which would still have attracted the direst lawful consequences.
That further reinforces the point: that the state gives you lawful arms doesn’t canonize you as gloried outlaws in uniform, free to kill fellow citizens, without question! So long for that ad baculum appeal to fear!
But that’s even at one level. The other level, on citizen-to-citizen direct comparison, makes the military conceit clearer — and starker (read uglier).
Citizen Wike, after his basic education (like the rest of the civil population) paid his way through university and Law School, even if the Nigerian state also subsidizes tertiary education. Whatever he had after, he sweated hard to acquire.
Citizen Yerima, on the other hand (as the rest of his military class), got his training absolutely free. Any post-Defence Academy training, home or abroad, the state also fully bears. His smart uniform, the fierce arms and ammo he carries, come courtesy of the state, preparing him for the grim duty of defending the state.
So, how can such a pampered and beloved son of the state come challenging and obstructing (with state arms!) the Minister from doing the FCT work, which the President — that soldier’s commander-in-chief — has entrusted to the minister, as his FCT personal representative? Arrant indiscipline!
Isn’t that rash power — wherever Lt. Yerima’s “orders” had come from — challenging a higher authority, especially in a civil space? If the chips are down, can this act of martial bravado stand up to legal scrutiny? This is a country of law. That’s the young officer’s cross right now.
Still, beyond who is wrong or who is right, a civil state thrives on cherishing its military: the state is incomplete without its “teeth”. But the military too have no choice: it must subject itself to civil order. An unhinged military is a recipe for chaos.
From Nigeria’s painful experience, any other way is anarchy.
