The young ones are asking through the Obi-Datti ticket for a regime change to a proper civilian politics under the rule of law. I think the youth of this country have a good case and they have presented it with dignity and decorum. THAT IS WHY WE NEED TO VOTE OBI-DATTI INTO POWER THIS YEAR.
By Elder Dr. Uma Eleazu
1960 to 1966: Crises and Conflict.
Times of crises have a way of testing the leadership qualities of people in power.
One such crises was the 1961 census. The census was to be taken before the federal election of 1959 so that we can have accurate figures for the delimitation of constituencies, but for reasons best known to them, the British agreed with the Northern leaders to leave the matter of census till after independence. So in 1961 a census was conducted under the supervision of a British Administrative officer. Somehow the result leaked before the official announcement, and this caused such an uproar that the premiers of the three regions agreed to have a rerun. The result too was disputed by the leaders. Till date, we really have not had a reliable census. Everything is guess work and guestimation.
The second crisis started with attempt to reconfigure the constituencies ahead of the 1964 elections. The two southern regions felt that allowing the north to have a preponderance of seats in the House of Representatives had no basis in fact since as they claimed, the 1961 census proved that more people lived in the two southern regions than in the north. The leaders of NPC resisted the move and the country nearly went to war. This also caused shifting alliances among the parties. So the countries went into the 1964 elections campaigning knowing fully well that they were toying with a tinder box.
The elections into the Western Regional House of Assembly, had led to a conflagration that was consuming the whole of western region, to the extent that neither the party could concede defeat to the other. The fight in the House spilt into the streets of Ibadan, Oyo, Oshogbo, everywhere people were being killed or burnt alive (operation wetie). The so called political parties were splitting and reforming under new names only to split again and create new alliances. Under the shadow of what was going on in the Western Region, the Federal Elections of 1964 was held with inconclusive results. Everybody was disgusted with politics and politicians, who in their own selfish interests could not care what happened to the country. It was under this climate that the January 1966 coup d’état took place. The military came in and sacked the politicians and took over power. Initially, people everywhere heaved a sigh of relief. The Army has taken over. Will the young majors do better?
The Military Regime 1: 1966 to 1979
WITH THE COUP OF the Five Majors, Nigeria was ushered into the ranks of military dictatorships. The class of January ’66 that staged the first coup did not have the grit to carry it to its logical conclusion due to internal squabbles and conflicting values. They were conned into handing over power to their seniors who were in league with the Higher Civil Service and the British High Commission to upstage the coup plotters and take over power (but not the objectives of the coup). Self-preservation and self-interest superseded the altruistic motives, and the public interest arguments of the young majors who staged the coup. So the coup failed and people once again“ went into that limbo of hopelessness and wait and see attitude.
Power fell into the hands of senior officers who were ill-prepared to take the burden of statecraft. Major General J T U Aguiyi Ironsi, on whose shoulder leadership fell could not handle the dynamics of military/civilian relationship. He mis-read the mood of the times and the seething anger within the barracks. In the meantime politicians from the north who felt aggrieved by the death of their leaders (Sir Ahmadu Bello and Sir A. Tafawa Balewa in particular ) regrouped and were able to convince the Northern officers to stage a revenge coup to avenge the death of their leaders.
And so from May to July, 1966, there were sporadic killings of non-northerners in many parts of the north. Ironsi met them with appeasement which did not work, and on July 29, 1966, the country witnessed a more horrendous coup in which the Head of State, Major Gen Aguiyi Ironsi and Brigadier Adekunle Fajuyi, and a host of other senior officers mainly of eastern region extraction (over 300 senior officers from the Eastern Region) were murdered in one night. The leaders of the revenge coup chose Lt Col Yakubu Gowon as new Head of State. He was then 32.
For the next six months there was really no government in Nigeria. The Constitution had been suspended by the first coup. The country went into an era of government by decree. Leadership of the country fell into the hands of the soldiers and the civil servants, with coopted old politicians and later some academics. From about September 1966 through to April 1967, the country was just wobbling rudderless as the top brass of the military fought over power, leading to dividing up of the country into fiefdoms called states in order to isolate and carve up the Eastern Region.
It back fired and created its own problems which culminated into the fratricidal war when the Eastern Region broke away under the name Republic of Biafra in May 1967. Lt Col Gowon mounted a “police Action” to remove Lt Col Ojukwu, then Governor of Eastern Region; the police action turned into open warfare between the East and the rest of Nigeria. As long as the war lasted, every other aspects of governance and development lay in abeyance until the guns were silenced in January 1970, with the unconditional surrender of the “Biafrans”. (For a more detailed treatment of this period, see my “Nigeria as I see it: Reflections on the problem of leadership in Nigeria”
Leadership under the Military: 1970 to 1979
Military rule, anywhere is an aberration. The soldiers knew it, the retired politicians knew it, and the upper echelon of the Civil Service knew it. Not long after the war, the top brass (young men who arrived at the top of their military career as Brigadiers and Generals by fighting and killing their “brothers”) undertook to remake Nigeria in their own image. The war years created a lot of social problems. Many people had been recruited into the army with little or no training on both sides. Some became officers by knowing some BIG man out there who knew General this or Brigadier that. Besides, the federal side under Gowon had been over bloated by ill equipped, ill-trained soldiers armed with deadly weapons. Following the sudden rise in crude oil production in the period 1968/69, and a sudden rise in price of crude oil, thanks to OPEC, Gowon was able to decree a rearrangement of the fiscal basis of the federation in favour of the federal government.
Henceforth all oil proceeds accrued to the Federal Military Government to the detriment of the newly created states. In addition to creating more states (12 states on the eve of outbreak of war) to 19, one had to find the civil servants to man the various autonomous civil services of each state. Demobilization of the over bloated army became a major problem. One could not know who is a soldier and who was not. Military uniforms became badge of power and impunity. The so called “bloody civilian” was on the receiving end of military rascality.
The defeated Biafrans were promised Rehabilitation, Reconstruction and Reintegration. This was to be built into the Second Development Plan (1964-68) which was ongoing, but then extended to 1972. Like most things in that era, shortage of manpower and executive capacity stultified any real growth let alone the promised 3Rs of the immediate post war. Soon the old politicians, now joined by a new cohort of neuveau riches of the war economy started agitating for a return to civilian rule. People were tired of the men in khaki pushing everybody around.
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Social anomie and disillusionment of those who found themselves living in poverty in the midst of so much wealth being squandered by the military elite and their friends, joined the agitation. The bureaucrats tried some palliatives – Public Complaints Commission; Reform of the public Service; increase of salaries of public servants etc. Even Gowon was heard saying money was not a problem, but how to spend it. Unfortunately, they did not know how to spend money wisely.
Since everything was now done by contract, emergency contractors filled in the space and looted the oil boom money. House wives, artisans, titled chiefs, even teachers left the classrooms to become emergency contractors. The hot cakes were supply contracts. All the rules for procurement were roundly sidelined. Before we knew it, a class of briefcase businessmen filled the corridors of power. Along with them grew up a class of influence peddlers, (as man know man), to shield the almighty bureaucrats who awarded the contracts.
In 1975, the musical chairs began among the Top Brass. Gowon was overthrown and Col Murtala Mohammed took over. Not long after, he was overthrown in a bloody coup, and General Olusegun Obasanjo took over as Head of State. From 1975 to 1979, his priority was the return of governance to civilians and save his neck. Those who became politicians thereafter, were from the class of emergency contractors, briefcase businessmen, some ex-service men in their forties who had made money during the military regime. Gen Obasanjo oversaw the drafting of the 1979 constitution and the election that ushered in a civilian president, Alh. Shehu Shagari who was sworn in as President on October 1, 1979.
Civilian rule was short lived. Shagari finished only one term in office, and even won the election for his second term, but this was truncated by a coup on December 31, 1983 by no other than General Muhammadu Buhari. He governed for 18 months and was overthrown in another coup by Generals Sani Abacha and Ibrahim Babangida. Babangida became the substantive Head and later assumed the title of President (unelected).
Once Shagari was overthrown, the civilians were dispersed and engaged once again in working for the military regime as contractors, board memberships, or other forms of functionaries. There were lots of money to be made on development projects, some of which were never completed, but the project funding was depleted. This left many white elephant projects dotted all over the country uncompleted. More states were created and that provided avenues for jobs for the ‘boys’. Cronyism in the army was rampant. Those posted as Governors to states behaved like demi-gods, with immunity from arrest. Impunity became a style of administration. Citizens’ lives did not matter and human lives were degraded. Civic virtues like honesty, fairness, equity, even justice became scarce commodity, but available to the highest bidders. (As one distinguished Senator put it, “What money cannot buy, MORE money can buy.”
From 1985, as soon as IBB settled into office, he started dribbling the civilians ‘a little to the right, a little to the left’. For a return to civil rule, he decreed two parties into existence namely, Social Democratic Party and the National Republican Convention, and invited those who cared, to join any party of their choice. The electoral process to return the country to civil rule was started by fits and starts until finally an election was held that produced a winner (MKO Abiola); and was immediately cancelled by IBB who now stepped aside to allow Gen Sani Abacha to come in and try his hand at ruling. (Was this an agreement between them in 1985? We may never know).
The military chaps were just trifling with the destiny of millions of citizens whose lives had been truncated by all the maneuvering of the soldiers. Abacha, however, took over and stayed in power as maximum ruler until he dropped dead one night in 1997. The generals got together and selected General Abdulsalami Abubakar as new Head of State. He in turn quickly knocked together a constitution – that is how we got the 1999 constitution – decreed into being and called on Nigerian civilians to form parties and return to politics.
In the meantime, the Military Generals had agreed among themselves to allow retired Generals to contest as “civilians”. While we were trying to organize under Ekwueme (the Group of 38), the retired Generals maneuvered rtd General Obasanjo into the PDP, (the party Ekwueme formed) and he won as Civilian President. Some say as compensation to the Yoruba nation in lieu of their son MKO Abiola who was cheated out of an election he had won, and later (“killed”) or died in detention. Thus the country entered into the era of pseudo civilian regimes run by cabals of retired officers and their cronies they made rich by inflated contracts.
- Elder Uma O. Eleazu, OON is the Chairman, BoT of Anya-Ndi-Igbo, a non-partisan, socio-political and economic development-oriented organisation, committed to equity, peace, unity, justice and progress of Nigeria
- To be concluded tomorrow, Wednesday, February 22, 2023
