By Ray Ekpu
Nigeria is a country where many people, educated and not educated, suffer from amnesia. They forget very easily what the country had gone through in its six decades of independence. Now some people are asking for a coup. It doesn’t matter whether they are children or adults. It springs largely from mischief and ignorance. They do not remember that Nigeria has had a bitter taste of coup making several times. And that blood had been spilled ceaselessly on our soil. They forget that this country had been run and run aground by military officers for 28 years. That is what has brought us to where we are now. That foundation in looting our treasury by top military officers dug a huge hole and put Nigeria into it.
When General Murtala Mohammed overthrew General Yakubu Gowon’s government in 1975 he decided to probe the 12 governors that ran the affairs of Nigeria’s 12 states. Ten of them out of 12 were guilty of corruption. It was only Brigadiers Oluwole Rotimi and Mobolaji Johnson who did not soil their fingers in the corruption pot. No military government has been investigated since then. If anyone did it, he would have found that a lot of camels had passed through the tiny eyes of the needle. Someone who was familiar with the modus operandi of the military decision makers in those days said that for most contract awards, there was a formula: multiply by 1000. That may be true or false but the view is that the formula was used to take care of the boys who executed the coups. Their stomach had to be full for their leaders to sleep with their two eyes closed. If the boys were not happy the men would not be happy.
If anyone needs any evidence that there was massive corruption under our military governments General Sani Abacha’s regime has offered an excellent example. There is something in our political lexicon called “Abacha’s loot.” Since Abacha died Nigerian governments have been combing various banks in various countries and continents searching for Nigeria’s money that Abacha stashed away in places known and unknown. A part of it, perhaps a small part of it, has been recovered but the search for more continues. We may never be able to get all of it back because we may never know in which undiscovered island some of the money may have been dumped. No civilian leader has had the temerity or audacity to do something of that magnitude in the last 25 years of our democracy. If that happened opposition leaders would have divulged it and the press and civil society groups would have taken up the gauntlet. That is a little part of democracy’s beauty: transparency.
Why should any adult forget that it is the military that brought our civil war? That 30-month war cost many Nigerians to lose their lives, limbs, property and years of school or service. That war has left an indelible mark on the former Eastern Region, and made many Easterners to believe, rightly or wrongly, that they are not wanted in Nigeria. That is at the heart of the establishment of IPOB, a matter that is still hanging fire today and threatening the stability of Nigeria. So, those who want a military government should go and read the various books that have been written on the Biafran war.
Those who are young may not know how grave a military situation often is. When a military government is in place there is no human rights, no free press, no independence of the judiciary, no legislative assembly, no seminars or press conferences on the activities of the government of the day.
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Most laws enacted by military governments are back dated. There was no death penalty for drug smuggling, when Muhammadu Buhari took over the country on December 31, 1983. He enacted a law on drug smuggling, backdated it and killed three young Nigerians namely Bartholomew Azubike Owoh, 26, Lawal Akanni Ojuolape, 30 and Bernard Ogedengbe, 29. They were all tied to the stakes and shot even though the offence they committed did not attract a death penalty at the time the offence was committed. That is the unbridled arbitrariness that is the hallmark of military rule.
When Newswatch was proscribed in 1987 on account of the Cookey Report, there was no law forbidding its publication. The Babangida government just quickly enacted a law overnight and backdated it. When Newswatch executives were tried for mutiny in 1994 because of an interview done in the magazine with David Mark, there was no law, only Abacha’s anger. For military governments arbitrariness is the name of the game.
Military rule produces only temporary stability. In the long run it brings a long period of instability. That is what it did in Nigeria. It produced a long string of military leaders who had different views of the direction that Nigeria must go, leaders who suspected each other of plotting a coup against them. So their interest was in staying firm in office and chopping nonstop.
Most military coups are executed violently. And violence brings more violence. It happened in Nigeria: coup in January 1966 and a counter coup in July 1966. That brought Nigeria to the edge of the precipice. It happened too in Ghana. Flight Lieutenant Jerry Rawlings and his coup men killed three former Ghanaian heads of state namely: Acheampong, Akuffo and Akwasi Afrifa. Rawlings was hailed as the messiah at the beginning of that regime. Ghanaians even named him Junior Jesus. As time went on, as more people were executed Rawlings became a hated man. They started calling him Senior Judas. He died unsung.
In Nigeria several newspapers and magazines were shut down; many journalists detained without trial; attempts were also made to burn down some media houses; some journalists such as Tunde Thompson and Nduka Irabor were jailed unfairly. Some journalists, including Dele Giwa, were assassinated for no just cause. Many more atrocities were committed in those days. Anyone who wants to know can read of these atrocities in books but it is not the same as experiencing them. Experiencing them was pure horror.
Our elections are not perfect. They can be improved upon but they will never be perfect because they are organised by imperfect persons who yield to temptations offered to them by desperate politicians. Our governments are going through difficult times occasioned by the instability in the global economy. This has been compounded over the years by the incompetence of our governments in the last two decades. These twin problems have affected the state of affairs in Nigeria which the various governments in the states and centre are struggling to deal with. The mistakes made by these governments in their hasty and all considered decisions especially on security and the economy have brought more hardship than happiness to our people. These twin problems have damaged Nigeria considerably.
The answer is not regime change. It is for us to throw more ideas into the basket of governance. It is for us to put pressure on our governments to do what is right so that our country may be on the path to recovery. Calling for a coup is stupid, very stupid. That is the way to lose whatever we have gained in the last 25 years of our imperfect democracy.
