“We must also be aware that there are those among us who will try to exploit current challenges to undermine, if not destroy, this democracy for which so much has already been given.
“We could not have won the battle against military dictatorship without the irrepressible Nigerian journalists, who mounted the barricades along with the pro-democracy activists…”
— President Bola Tinubu, June 12, 2024
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Military rule must have set Nigeria back 50 years in terms of development. The robust economy of Nigeria was progressively destroyed by the military. Whereas a few of the civilians of the independence era might have engaged in larceny in secret, the military regimes that succeeded them, one after the other, progressively turned the public till into personal pocket, dipping their hands with relish, since no one could question a man with a gun! The military juntas institutionalized corruption, which has permeated the entire fabric of the society. Military rule brought Nigeria to its knees economically, socially and politically.
Some years ago, I watched on the Nigeria Television Authority (NTA) a former Chief Justice of Nigeria, Alfa Belgore, lament how militarism stifled Nigerian development. He recalled the many development agreements with the German government in critical sectors of the country’s economy in the early 60s, which had to be abandoned because of army rule.
Recently, there was a flashback report in the Daily Times. The paper had carried a news item in the Friday, March 14, 1958 edition, quoting the 1958-59 budget of the Western Region of Nigeria as £14, 837, 630. If Nigeria had adopted Naira as its currency in that same year, the £14, 837,630 would have been far less than N14, 837,630. Indeed, the Nigerian Naira was stronger than the British Pounds Sterling up to the end of the 70s. I often remember a particular write-up by a renowned economist and newspaper columnist, Mr Henry Boyo, now of blessed memory. He had arrived from the United Kingdom in 1979 and wanted to pay a commercial taxi operator in Pounds. The driver flatly rejected, preferring to be paid in Naira! The strong economic foundation laid by our founding founders, began a gradual plunge from the period of military take-over in January 15, 1966, notwithstanding the oil money that came later, which was largely mismanaged.
The precipitate indigenization/ nationalization of private companies by successive military governments signalled the premature death or decimation of hundreds of these industries, many of them multi-national. Even those established during the heyday of army rule did not survive the depredations of the subsequent military governments, as once coup succeeded another. The public corporations too collapsed under the mismanagement of military regimes – Nigeria Railway, Nigeria Airways, Nigeria National Shipping Line, etc., etc. Indeed, things became so bad for the country that national aircraft and ships were seized in foreign countries on account of unpaid debts.
The very training of the military is antithetical to political leadership. Imagine the take-over of private schools from Voluntary Agencies, as they were called then, by the military. All those flourishing schools have become carcasses today. Just like unwarranted interventions in other sacred institutions, varsity autonomy was equally undermined during the years of army rule, and the nation is yet to recover from it till today.
Journalists are usually the first victims of any despotism, as free speech becomes an offence. Segun Sowemimo eventually died as a result of having been “brutally beaten, he and other colleagues, by soldiers on the orders of a Military Governor.” Bagauda Kaltho was equally not lucky to witness the return of civil rule in Nigeria. Tunde Thompson, Nduka Iraboh, Nosa Igiebor Onome Osifo-Whiskey, Godwin Agbroko, Dapo Olorunyomi, Dipo Ajibade, Moshood Fayemiwo, Babafemi Ojudu and many others of the guerrilla journalism era suffered untold hardships in the hands of various military juntas. The Guardian, TELL, The PUNCH, VANGUARD, The NEWS, TEMPO, etc. were at various times shut and proscribed. Thousands of newspapers were regularly confiscated and destroyed. Many editors and publishers spent months in detention without trial, especially in the notorious DMI, where they were kept in chains or locked in underground cells. Some family members, including children, were sometimes not spared: ABACHA AGENTS ON RAMPAGE: MOTHER KILLED, ELEVEN-YEAR-OLD HELD HOSTAGE IN POLICE CELL!
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The conduct of the men of war on the streets remained brutish throughout the dark and dreary years in Nigeria. “These soldiers plunder such commodities as palm wine and even food-stuffs from the pedestrians and cyclists as they pass through the check-points.” “We recall that some time ago… a federal officer on duty in Calabar was similarly flogged and his hair scraped before he escaped to Lagos,” as recorded by Soyinka in The Man Died.
Ola Rotimi, the renowned playwright and author of The Gods Are Not To Blame, was once ordered to put his both hands on a car and horsewhipped like a schoolboy by one of the ubiquitous soldiers set to define their times!
Gani Fawehinmi, Beko Ransom Kuti, Shehu Sani, Chima Ubani, Femi Falana, the NADECO, CD, NALICON, JACON men, and others too numerous to mention, quite a good number of them had a spell of prison regimen. Others were not lucky to make it alive from the various military gulags.
Arrest and detention of civilians without trial was the norm. Some citizens simply vanished and were never seen till date by their families. Horse-whipping and gun-butting became pastime, apart from summary imprisonments all over the country. The various military detention centres (DMI, DIA, NIA, etc.), especially in Lagos, became torture chambers. So many compatriots were driven into exile while other voices of dissent landed in prisons, when they were not murdered in cold blood. Shehu Yar’Adua was not lucky as he was allegedly injected with a lethal poison by his military captors. Olusegun Obasanjo lives to tell his own story; not so with MKO Abiola.
The vestiges of militarism remain with us even after the restoration of civil rule. We find them in Lady Uzoma Okere who was nearly wrecked on November 3, 2008 at Victoria Island in Lagos by six naval ratings under the command of a Rear-Admiral! Thanks for the smart Nigerian that recorded the atavistic conduct of the officers on a camcorder and released its video footage to the world. Could such savagery have taken place in the US, Britain or France – a Rear-Admiral, Major-General or Air Vice-Marshal, supervising the mauling of an unarmed female citizen, striping her of her cloth in the full glare of the public, in this age? Did a naval officer not gun down an okada driver in Lagos for hitting his Mercedes Benz 190E car? Did Gen. Victor Malu – as then Chief of Army Staff – not invade Lagos with a battalion of soldiers when he came to appear at the Oputa Panel? “Who’s that bloody civilian human rights investigator?” he must have muttered.
Any pretender in uniform is to be hallowed and worshipped by the civil populace. A couple of years ago, The NATION carried a front-page picture of a citizen at the feet of a horse-whip-wielding soldier, doing the frog jump. Sometimes, you have a choice between receiving horsewhips and gun butts and charming your car with instant wings in order to disappear from the sight of oncoming convoy of soldiers. I have seen commercial buses run over commuters while fleeing to avoid our gun-toting masters of violence.
Soldiers’ exploits should be in the warfronts, not on the streets. A heavyweight boxer is not paired against a featherweight boxer. You do not maul an unarmed civilian and claim a show of force; you actually display your weakness when you do so. You show your strength is in the battle-field when you confront your equals.
You seized power by force of arms, sat behind a desk in a cosy Government House and began to appropriate promotion to yourself like confetti (of course, after wiring a tranche of your loot abroad): from Lt. Colonel to Lieutenant-General, from Colonel to General… Even one of those men once fondled with the rank of a Field-Marshal. Field-Marshal! Not for deeds of derring-do in war front but for sitting behind a desk in a Government House! Never again will this happen in Nigeria.
Make no mistake about it. The military was not kind to itself either. One coup after the other, it destroyed the lives many of its finest officers, destroyed discipline, command structure and esprit de corps. We had junior officers not only disobeying but dishing backhand slaps to superior officers – once a taboo in the military. Some officers were framed in phantom coups. Coup scare was an opportunity to implicate your foes or rivals and dispatch them to early grave. It was also the era of (attempted) elimination through bombs. So much blood-letting in the barracks during the dark years of military rule! Since a military government is patently illegal, it is always not stable, living in perpetual fear of coups from its own men.
…To be continued
