Last week, at a public lecture organized by Blueprint Newspapers in Abuja, former spokesman of the Nigerian Army, Brig.-Gen. Kukasheka Usman (retd.) disclosed that former army chief Lt.-Gen. Abdulrahman Danbazau was pressured to organise a coup against the Goodluck Jonathan presidency at its infancy in 2010. To the former army chief’s credit, explained Gen. Usman, he resisted the pressure, helped in no small measure by the intervention of the international community, perhaps Western powers. Gen. Danbazau was also at the same Blueprint Newspapers annual lecture series. He did not debunk the former army spokesman’s statements. Indeed, it is unlikely he didn’t have a hint of what the former army spokesman would say. There is, therefore, no reason to doubt the veracity of Gen. Usman’s weighty revelation. As a matter of fact, the former army spokesman had added, Gen. Danbazau would do well to include in his memoir details, including names, of those who pressured him to do a coup. It is uncertain whether he would yield, or even acknowledge the pressures. But there seems no doubt that in those days of flux, when opposition mounted against Dr Jonathan’s assumption of office, quite a number of backroom manoeuvres were in play.
Except Gen. Danbazau, who was Chief of Army Staff between 2008 and September 2010, divulges the details referenced by the former army spokesman, Nigerians are unlikely to know what informed the pressures: ethnic, religious or political/power considerations. It would be helpful should the public be availed the opportunity of knowing what went down in those days. Perhaps it will guide the future. It is possible those who applied pressures on the former army chief did so because they felt that former president Umaru Yar’Adua’s death would rob the North of its slot on the presidential queue. Losing that slot, when it was yet to be fully consummated, was anathema. It is also possible that they reasoned more nobly and were thus unsure of the competence of the generally untested Dr. Jonathan, a South-South politician who in those early days neither inspired confidence in his leadership ability, including even striking the pose, nor gave any indication he would not be overwhelmed with the affairs of state once the crown settled around his ears. In retrospect, the fears, assuming those were the reasons for the animosity towards his infant presidency at the time, proved somewhat prescient.
When Gen. Danbazau is through with his memoir, he should be kind enough to let Nigerians know the real reasons he turned down the coup request. He is of course expected to burnish his image, especially considering that as a one-time Internal Affairs minister he was also not exemplary; but hopefully he will resist the pressure to colour the truth and tell the country why he really declined the offer to seize the reins of power. Gen. Usman recollects that for failing to do the coup the former army chief and his close associates who could have joined hands with him in insurrection against the constitution were described in uncomplimentary terms as effeminate. It is a label the former army spokesman thinks is unjustified. In his view, the former army chief was indeed a patriot and democrat at heart. Having given his word to the international community, he kept it, a behaviour, Gen. Usman sneered, contrasted the execrable request of treasonous politicians still strutting their stuff all over the place around the nation. Gen. Danbazau will be enormously courageous to name names in his memoir, should he get to it. Given the fact that the putative coup promoters are still around, it would be his word against theirs. Gen. Usman alludes to some sort of record keeping. It is not clear how infallible those records are, or whether they are as explicit as he imagines. There will always be a lot of grey areas.
What is even more striking in the whole sordid affair of the muted coup affair is the continuing fascination of Nigerians with that abominable weapon of changing governments. Clearly, not much has been learnt from Nigeria’s tormented years under the military, particularly regarding how coups solved nothing, complicated everything, fouled trust in the military, begat more coups, and generally underdeveloped the country. More than thrice in recent years under the Muhammadu Buhari administration, military chiefs had warned soldiers of the consequences of mutiny and disloyalty, probably in response to speculations that some soldiers might be contemplating that horrendous option. But every time military chiefs warned against coup, this columnist had been stupefied. Why would any rational person consider that option, let alone embrace it? What would it solve? Would it give as much free speech as civil rule has permitted? Or would it enable the rule of law, even in its leprous form as experienced under the current administration?
Had the Jonathan government been overthrown, it would have been impossible to predict the consequences of such a rash move or how it would have ended. Had a coup been done, it would have been clear it was not as a result of disaffection with the Jonathan administration, which just got underway, but a hubristic attempt to retain power in the North. In the end, after more than six years of Dr. Jonathan, power returned to the North, and is being sustained, for good or bad, for eight years. Surely, those six years took little away from the North. Instead, other than the side attraction of self-abnegating massage of the Southeast and South-South, as many watchers of the Jonathan presidency have alleged, the rest was wholesale capitulation to the North, virtually to the total exclusion of the Southwest. Imagine if former military head of state Ibrahim Babangida had defended the electoral victory of Moshood Abiola in 1993, would that presidency not have expired in 2001, with the office returning to the North and democracy strengthened? Much more, with a Muslim-Muslim ticket in 1993, sectarian colouration noisily politicised today would have gradually and quietly ebbed into irrelevance nearly three decades ago. And with religion and ethnicity diminished in national politics, Nigeria would probably have become a better place to live and play politics. It is surprising that these opportunities and advantages escaped the supposedly clever general in 1993; or perhaps he lacked the courage to defend the electoral outcome, assuming he did not himself harbour closet and insular ethnical ties.
Nigerians may not have heard it directly from the mouth of Gen. Danbazau, but by bringing the coup story to the public, particularly the pressures brought upon the former army chief, Gen. Usman has done the country a world of good. Whatever the motivations of the former army chief, it is important that in the end he resisted the pressures, and has become a better man for it. Had he succumbed, there is no telling what would have become of him or the country. There are suggestions he should name the treacherous politicians who urged him to inspire the derailment of democracy in 2010, so that they could be brought to trial. It is not clear what that would achieve, assuming the coup allegation is provable. Exhuming political and military corpses in an election year may end up complicating the ongoing transition. Let sleeping dogs lie. It is sufficient that Gen. Danbazau did the right thing at the time, and it is to his eternal credit. However, it is a warning to the political class and all other political journeymen who still retain residual interest in coup d’etat simply because the country’s political dynamics run counter to their interests.
Economic unease and unexplored alternatives
Any cursory examination of the Nigerian economy will reveal clearly that the country is in a state of suspended animation. The federal government borrows frantically from the Central Bank of Nigeria at an obscene and indefensible rate: some N2.5trn already this year, and over N19trn since the Muhammadu Buhari administration was inaugurated in 2015, 25 times higher than its predecessor. Worsening inflation and currency depreciation have stoked fears of imminent economic disaster. If foreign borrowing had not declined on its own, as Chinese lenders exemplified by their sudden parsimoniousness, partly because of global economic challenges, the federal government had become obsessed with borrowing from anywhere it could find funds at a rate that is unquestionably ghoulish. With oil earnings about 61 percent below estimates in four months up to April, debt service cost in the same period shot up to N1.94trn as against retained earnings of about N1.63trn. It is not surprising that virtually all Nigeria’s economic indicators are showing red, with Global Hunger Index (GHI) particularly disturbing, if not apocalyptic.
Hopes of significant amelioration between now and the end of the year are slim. The reason is not simply because the country’s economic indicators are woeful, or that oil production has been undermined by excessive and uncontrolled bleeding and stealing, or that the nation is beset by money guzzling and morale sapping insurgency and banditry, but because the administration seems strangely paralysed and unable to proffer and execute daring policy initiatives to mitigate the looming economic chaos. Fiscal and monetary tools have been applied in desultory, uncalculated manner with little impact on the crisis. And with relentless trade disputes declared by various angry and aggrieved unions, the government has come under tremendous pressure to which it has been inexplicably lethargic and irresponsive. The industrial actions appear poised to spill over into politics, threatening the hold of the ruling party on the country as well as threatening general stability.
It is not clear whether the Buhari administration recognises it, but these times call for drastic, relevant and urgent initiatives embracing politics, economy and society, all in a structured and systematic manner. However, it is this structured approach to crisis solving that is precisely lacking. Worse, whatever fiscal and monetary measures are being applied appear shortsighted. This is worrisome, especially the repudiation of bold, radical measures capable of tackling the chaotic situation and giving hope to Nigeria’s beleaguered populace. Healthy, effective alternatives exist, but the administration sees them as revolutionary, centrifugal, dangerous and inappropriate. However, and gradually, the government is being boxed into a corner, taking along with it into that cul de sac a distressed and angry people pauperised by inflation and a faltering currency set to go into freefall. What is even more frightening is the obvious inurement of the administration to the implications of the looming meltdown.
Unfortunately, given the incendiary conditions enveloping the country, neither democracy nor stability is guaranteed to be enhanced in an environment of economic distress and poverty. And if democracy survives regardless of the inept management of the economy and general political asphyxiation, nothing suggests it would not become distorted or disfigured. There is in fact the sneaky suspicion that the administration lacks the understanding, not to talk of urgency, to respond to the existential crisis threatening to the country. But if that suspicion can be overcome, and if indeed the government can still bestir itself, the people must cajole their leaders into focusing on certain areas public officers had long and carelessly dismissed as no-go areas. One of those areas is restructuring, the bogeyman of the leaders’ natural antipathy.
Nigeria’s economic crisis is not just one of global economic pressures, of microeconomic and macroeconomic instability consequent upon misplaced fiscal and monetary measures as well as poor policy formulations; it is indeed much more one of warped political and economic structures, in short, an unbalanced structure. The economy has to be rethought in substantial and ramified ways, and eventually rebuilt on new foundations that take cognisance of radical economic theories. And this must be accompanied by equally profound changes in the political structure of the country involving sound and novel social and cultural engineering. Nigeria has experimented with both parliamentary and presidential systems of government, with military interregnums that bastardised and polluted both constitutions. What is indubitable is that the country’s unrestrained population growth and inept leadership style are complicating the current economic crisis. Nigeria’s developing economy can simply not sustain the costly and humongous presidential system it operates.
Whether they find the description harsh or not, the fact is that Nigeria is going broke as a result of a combination of many factors, including misshapen structure, grandiose and unsustainable approach to governance, environmental factors, inept economic management, and huge population growth that will sooner or later spell catastrophe for the country regardless of marginal economic growth. A bicameral legislature is superfluous to the country’s need; so, too, is a 36-state structure that replicates unwieldy, burdensome and inept bureaucracies. Added to this lethal brew is a poorly conceived and dangerously impaired unitary system wrapped in federal constitutional garb that hamstrings democracy. To redress these failings and repair structural imbalances, a homegrown system needs to be urgently conceived by Nigerian political philosophers to avoid a crash. In addition to the new ethos, it is crucial to also imbue national leadership with the overarching ambition of imagining a continental political and economic powerhouse that can withstand, if not better, global competition. Currently, because of a deficit of theoretical depth, the country’s ambition decibel has hardly sounded beyond a whisper.
President Buhari has been unable to summon the wherewithal to respond to this complex and interwoven crisis, and has spoken and acted with troubling tentativeness, buck-passing, and sometimes disinterest. He can’t wait to leave office; but the problems, if care is not taken, can’t wait for the next government. Politically and economically, the country is spiraling out of control despite marginal improvements in the security situation, while the society, as viewed from its distressed, underfunded and famished constituent parts, such as health and education, has become badly if not irreparably fractured. And if the president is not what he is cracked up to be, might his administration as a whole reveal elements with the sagacity and acumen to help galvanise and reorder the country? So far, none has been found. So, the problem is pretty dire. With nearly all unions up in arms, and fuel subsidy growing by leaps and bounds inexplicably at a time of extreme thievery in both the upstream and downstream sectors, and excessive and indefensible printing of money to support the government’s unimaginative approach to governance, it would be a miracle for the administration to berth the ship of state next year without substantial internal or external help.