Life, the poets say, is a tragic comedy. And contemporary
Nigeria certainly provides all the evidence; doesn’t it? Such evidence has of
late become all too palpable. Else how is it, if one is permitted the liberty,
that two of the elder statesmen who take most of the flake for Nigeria’s present
excruciating trajectory, could find the moral authority to assume themselves
the “weightiest critics” of federal government? One of these men, as a young
officer, had led the detachment of Nigerian army which butchered (thanks to the
late Chuhwuemeka Ojukwu) its supreme commander, Major General Johnson T. Aguiyi-Ironsi,
Nigeria’s first military head of state. The supreme commander was killed with
his host, Colonel Adekunle Fajuyi, the first military governor of the Western region,
on the unsubstantiated allegation that the head of state was complicit in the
January 1966 coup d’etat, which terminated the First Republic. That act
eventually culminated in a civil war (1967-70).
About a decade and half following the butchering in Ibadan,
self-same elder statesman exited the Nigerian army in 1979 as a four-star
general, with juicy oil and gas concessions to boot. He has since lived in
evident opulence in virtual silence. But in the previous twelve or so months,
the fear-invoking general has been lamenting the alleged butchering of his kith
and kin by herdsmen, amply aided by the same Nigerian army which he once
headed. The twists and turns of life, should we say?
After the civil war the other elderly statesman, as deputy to
the savagely slain head of state, Major General Murtala Mohammed in 1976, had played
a leading role in destroying the before-then well structured Nigerian civil
service. Be it remembered that that military junta it was which stopped the
technical heads (permanent secretaries) of the ministries and departments from
attending cabinet meetings to make their crucial inputs. (I will never stop
making the observation that Nigeria’s civil service has never stop
harmorrhaging since) Years after, that portly elderly statesman would also exit
the Nigerian army as a four-star general in 1979, with juicy oil and gas
concessions to boot. Upon the duo exit, the class of super-rich generals
(Nigeria’s first crop) graciously handed leadership of the country to civilians
in 1979. Although the generals’ choice didn’t convincingly align with the
Nigerian electorate’s, but the overwhelming need to rid the polity of military
dictatorship provided a basis for compromise. The generals had their way amidst
suppressed moaning.
History shows that corruptible habits proliferate with
potency, more so in a poorly regulated setting. That proved to be the case in
the immediate post-civil war years in Nigeria. The destruction of the country’s
civil service structure in 1976, and the generals’ less-than-satisfactory
choice of civilian leadership in 1979 violently combined to create a very toxic
Second Republic. Unbridled corruption quickly became the new normal as elected
and appointed officials alike jostled to upstage one another in illegal
acquisition of material wealth. The new military leadership watched the
unfolding scenario with a knowing
countenance; and, thanks to the super-rich generals’ bad influence, some of their
former subordinates, now generals themselves, could barely bide one four-year
term of civilian administration before shooting their way back to the headship
of the country in late 1983. Although Major General Ibrahim Babangida was said
to be the mastermind of the 1983 coup d’etat, however, Major General Muhammadu
Buhari somehow emerged head of state.
It is as likely that Buhari’s overtly acetic disposition
earned him the high office. He cut the picture of a cast-iron disciplinarian
soldier of yore. Little wonder, therefore, a Major General Tunde Idiagbon, a
no-nonsense disciplinarian, became Buhari’s deputy. Almost in one fell swoop
the dour duo threw virtually all those they had ousted in detention on
corruption charges. They then embarked on a vigorously fought war against
indiscipline, WAI. Buhari and Idiagbon seemed passionate in their pursuit, and
for a brief period they appeared to be getting the better of the fetid air of
corruption smothering the country. But they seemed not to have put great store by
corruption’s formidable capacity to fight back. Mostly tellingly, it was no
other than Buhari’s Chief of Army, Major General Babangida who provided the fatal
blow to WAI in August of 1985. Buhari yielded power with unprecedented ease.
Babangida’s disposition to power and wealth proved to be the
diametric opposite of Buhari’s; his reflexes to the material world seemed to have
been forged in the crucible of the super-rich generals. He consequently clung
to power with all of his creative imaginations and state resources. He gave the
impression that his very existence depended on the office of the military
president of Nigeria. Soon, random talks of his stupendous wealth became rife;
much if it traced to the oil and gas sector of the economy. He soon became
overtly drunk with power and wealth to the extent that he presumed the Nigerian
state was not different from his personal estate. He alone decided who could,
or could not vie for public office. He inaugurated and disbanded political
parties as dictated by his whims and caprices. That dreadful downward spiral
persisted until the last straw of 1993. In that year the self-styled
evil-genius dared to set aside the overwhelming choice of Nigerians in a
presidential election.
Global outrage forced Babangida from office. And following a
3-month charade in the name of a civilian transition government, General Sani
Abacha thrust himself in the saddle. Facts and figures of the Kano-born
general’s thirsts for oil and gas money are now in public space, even as more
shocking discoveries are being made. Evidently power and wealth affected Abacha
much in the way they had Babangida; albeit the latter had demonstrated superior
restraint in his use of power. Abacha unscrupulously clamped all those with
dissenting views in jail, just as numerous others disappeared into thin air, as
it were. He even arrested, tried, and condemned to death, Obasanjo and Yar’adua
along with other generals, including his own deputy, General Oladipo Diya. Yar’adua
later died in detention under mysterious circumstances. Abacha himself was to
succumb to death in similar circumstances.
A seemingly publicity shy general took up the mantle of
leadership. His name: Abdulsalami Abubakar. Abubakar was clever enough to read
the then political barometer correctly. He thus immediately embarked on a short
transition programme to civilian rule. But how faithful was Abubakar? Did his
junta handover the leadership of Nigeria to civilians in 1999? What the
self-effacing general did was comparable to the biblical raising of Lazarus.
The famous oil and gas-merry general was released from his death-cell and
rehabilitated to resume the office he had vacated in 1979, even amidst
countless eminent candidates for the coveted office. Nigeria thus went through
the proverbial cycle. Rather half-expectedly, Obasanjo subsequently doubled as
the executive president and the minister of petroleum resources for the entire
tenure of his two terms.
Upon exiting office in 2007, Obasanjo remorselessly invoked
in observant Nigerians reminiscences of 1979. He foisted on Nigerians an
executive president and vice president that the country could have done much
better without. Barely three years following, a highly challenged President
Umaru Yar’adua (sibling to Obasanjo’s late deputy) died.
Afam Nkemdiche; engineering consultant; Abuja. January, 2020
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