2nd March, 2024
By Mark Adebayo
“Most of wars or military coups or invasions are done in the name of democracy against democracy”
– Eduardo Galeano
Currently, Nigeria best typifies what the late literary icon, Chinua Achebe, titled one of his numerous works published in 1960, No Longer At Ease.
I’m no aficionado of military rule and I consider it irresponsible and unpatriotic for anyone to advocate or imply that what Nigeria needs now is another military junta which all those with a clear sense of history know would make no difference beyond momentary satisfaction of replacing civilian politicians with their military counterparts. It gives a false sense of change which soon fizzles out with the realization that good governance goes far beyond replacing agbada wearers with those garbed in khaki.
The country is not in the best of shapes at the moment in all ramifications – social, economic and political. It is a a multidimensional quagmire of gargantuan dire straits to which those currently at the helm of government apparently have no ideas as to what effective panacea to apply. In the Nigerian political parlance, it is called ‘cluelessness’ which is evident by the rapid policy somersaults that the Tinubu administration has been engaging in. Looks more like a trial-by-error gambling with no exact predictable values of plus points. It’s a government by mirage, methinks.
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“Former Governor Peter Obi has demonstrated to us that a political revolution is possible with what he achieved in the 2023 presidential election by his unprecedented mobilization of Nigerians, especially the youth demographic, around his manifestos and campaigns. He portrayed himself as an harbinger of hope and restorative leadership. It is for all those interested in the recovery and progress of Nigeria to build on that superstructure as already laid by Peter Obi and actuate a pit maneuver against the established order of retrogressive politicking and systemic rots, not advocating for military takeover. ”
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Evidently, Nigerian politicians are yet to learn any lessons from the tortuous history of democracy in Nigeria judging by their atrocious mismanagement of our democratic processes and, by extension, the country’s affairs. From the fall of the first Republic to the current wobbly civil rule, Nigerian politicians’ insatiable pleonexia and megalomania are principally responsible for Nigeria’s perennial socioeconomic tragedies.
Once again, opinion in some ill-informed quarters is beginning to tilt towards another military interregnum. For some, it’s strictly due to their justifiable frustration with the hardship in the land vis-a-vis the ostentatious lifestyles and allied behaviors of those in power. For some, it is a necessary evil to teach our politicians another hard lesson and penalize them for their bad behaviors. Yet for some, they crave a military pustch strictly as way of punishing the system for the loss of their preferred presidential candidates in the last election and a military coup may pave the way for their candidate. Of the three categories, the last one is the least with noble intentions because of its extremely solipsistic parochiality or egomaniacal crudity.
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“In a country bedeviled by perennial bad governance, hefty corruption, pervasive hunger, chronic unemployment, escalating insecurity and pluridimensional penury the people would, of necessity, be pushed to seek desperate solutions and a desperate populace can cause significant damage that sometimes can prove fatal to a nation.”
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It is possibly in the realization that less than altruistic and patriotic concerns are the motive for these calls that the Chief of Defence Staff, General Christopher Musa, a little over a week ago in Port Hacourt gave a public warning to military intervention apologists to stop their scheme or face some dire consequences. The CDS said “Whoever is making that call (coup) does not love Nigeria. We want to make it very clear that the Armed Forces of Nigeria are here to protect democracy.
“We all want democracy and we do better under democracy. And so we will continue to support democracy. And any of those ones that are calling for anything other than democracy are evil people and I think they don’t mean well for Nigeria.” Well, he couldn’t have said otherwise, anyways. He is technically part of the government in power.
The country is in a very bad shape, no doubt. The cumulative effects of decades of bad governance, inordinate corruption of successive ruling cliques coupled with organized insecurity and poorly conducted elections have sold Nigerians to hopelessness and desperation for urgent solutions with military alacrity.
Fixing Nigeria’s myriads of developmental challenges is actually not a rocket science but for what Patrick Wilmot, a Professor of sociology, once described as the “disruptive orientation to reality” of typical Nigerian politicians. He called it disruptive, I call it destructive. Aggravatingly destructive!
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“If the current anger spreading across the nation about hunger is not promptly attended to with workable solutions that will crash the prices of food items to the barest minimum, the current civil rule is severely endangered.”
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But having lived under military jackboots from General Yakubu Gowon to General Abdulsalami Abubakar, having seen the futility of it all, and having participated in pro-democracy struggles to send the military packing, and having witnessed the atrocities that military government entails and the fact that a military regime is not necessarily better than civilian rule, I would rather we organized better to put the right people in power through the ballot rather than via the bullet.
Former Governor Peter Obi has demonstrated to us that a political revolution is possible with what he achieved in the 2023 presidential election by his unprecedented mobilization of Nigerians, especially the youth demographic, around his manifestos and campaigns. He portrayed himself as an harbinger of hope and restorative leadership. It is for all those interested in the recovery and progress of Nigeria to build on that superstructure as already laid by Peter Obi and actuate a pit maneuver against the established order of retrogressive politicking and systemic rots, not advocating for military takeover.
Like him or not, agree with him or not, Peter Obi stood out as the most credible, respectable and popular presidential candidate of the 2023 elections, and that record will remain unbeaten for sometime to come. If he consolidates well prior, it will be difficult for any presidential candidate to beat him in 2027 no matter the forces that might be arrayed against him.
In a country bedeviled by perennial bad governance, hefty corruption, pervasive hunger, chronic unemployment, escalating insecurity and pluridimensional penury the people would, of necessity, be pushed to seek desperate solutions and a desperate populace can cause significant damage that sometimes can prove fatal to a nation.
The people in government are scared to death about military coups, and they should be. They’re acutely aware that they cannot have the support or sympathy of Nigerians in the event of any military takeover. But they must realize that they must begin to govern in a way that shows that they understand the pains of the people and do something tangible about it.
To the so-called Genzies who think military coup is fun, just know that there are few prices to pay in the event of that happening. First, you’re not going to get the kind of rapid change you seek as the military may not be much different from the civilian politicians in terms of capacity. Moreover, the current freedom you enjoy to say/insult or do whatever you like on social media will be immediately lost. You dare not criticize/insult a military government as freely as you do now and not pay some dire prices. Furthermore, your opinion wouldn’t count and wouldn’t be sought on anything that affects your life. Your fundamental human rights remain suspended because you’d be ruled by decrees or martial laws. You cannot organize public protests without some fatalities or other dire consequences. Therefore, nobody should expect any Eldorado situation under the military because the honeymoon will be quickly over when the real identity of military rule consolidates.
However, the greatest and perhaps the only antidote against military coups is good governance. Democracy is not an end in itself. Without good governance, democracy is like a vehicle with neither engine nor fuel – it is useless! In such a situation, the people might want to experiment with available alternatives because the people can’t play dumb eternally.
Edwidge Danticat puts it best when he wrote that “There is a frustration too, that at moments when there’s not a coup, when there are not people on the streets, that the country disappears from people’s consciousness”.
If the current anger spreading across the nation about hunger is not promptly attended to with workable solutions that will crash the prices of food items to the barest minimum, the current civil rule is severely endangered.