“Despite the lethal might of the military government, what appeared to be high and unyielding walls of dictatorship came tumbling down. The dismal fortress exists no longer.
“The power of an idea, the power of the people proved more potent than all the guns and munitions, and the threats of the strongmen…” – President Bola Tinubu, June 12, 2024
Here are excerpts from the 7 September, 1998 edition of TELL: “Between these two men, the alleged plotters went through a scale of torture considered as horrendous, even by military standards. For instance, Fadile, Gwadabe, Colonel Gabriel Ajayi, Major Akinloye Akinyemi and over 20 other military officers implicated in that (phantom) plot were hung upside down for 14 days in one burst of drunken zeal to please Aso Rock. Gwadabe, the alleged ‘ringleader’, was given a script to confess to. He refused. So he had his finger nails pulled. The soldier gritted his teeth, refusing to cry out. Then he passed out. After he was revived by a dash of ice-cold water, his knee caps were smashed, with the intent to cripple him.”
MEDICAL CONSULTANTS REVEALED HOW MEN CAN NATURALLY AND PERMANENTLY CURE POOR ERECTION, SMALL AND SHAMEFUL MANHOOD, AND INFERTILITY ISSUES WITHOUT SIDE EFFECTS. STOP THE USE OF HARD DRUG FOR SEX! IT KILLS!!!..
“To get Bello-Fadile to lie against Obasanjo and Yar’Adua, he was tortured beyond human tolerance. He later confided in fellow convicts that he would have committed suicide but for the fact that his hands were perpetually chained behind him.”
“If this plan had worked, where Diya was to implicate (Abdulsalami) Abubakar, and Tokoya had implicated Akhigbe, and Bako had implicated Bamaiyi, all of them, Diya, Abubakar, Akhigbe, Olanrewaju, Adisa and Bamaiyi would have been condemned to death and shot within 24 hours of their conviction.”
Life was solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short during the military interregnums in Nigeria.
The military head is both the executive and legislature with judicial powers largely circumscribed. The constitution is suspended. Legislature is proscribed. Life is taken off other laws of the federation through outer clauses. The judiciary becomes effeminate for fear of dismissal of its officers.
After stormy conferences in Ibadan (1950), London (1953) and Lagos (1954), the founding fathers of Nigeria agreed to live together under a federal arrangement, with each region eating what it killed. This led to accelerated development in the three regions of the North, West and East. Nigeria had its golden years before the military struck. The military, with its centralized command structure, destroyed the federal structure, replacing it with a unitary system. This also destroyed the once robust and initiative-driven Civil Service. What we have today is Unitary Republic of Nigeria, because every road leads to Abuja. For a multi-ethnic society with such a vast territory, this is antithetical to a peaceful coexistence. In short, Nigeria has yet to recover from the strangulating unitary structure foisted on it through endless coups.
On March 7, 2018, Senator Ike Ekweremadu made some unguarded comments on the floor of the Senate, to wit: “The problem in Nigeria is that our democracy is receding. Who says army cannot take over? Let us not joke with our democracy; that is the issue.” Such egregious effusion from the otherwise sanctuary of democratic governance betrays monumental ignorance of the role of the military, institutional amnesia and the road this country had marched to the present civil rule. Military officers, whether in Nigeria, Mali, Guinea, Burkina Faso or Niger, do not seize power on behalf of the people. The military usually cashes in on the frustration of the public to stage a coup in order to satisfy the lust of its officers for power. Hence one military coup usually leads to another, political instability and cycles of violence. Ekweremadu and his ilk should read Out of the Shadows: Exile and the Struggle for Freedom & Democracy in Nigeria by Dr Kayode Fayemi.
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Drawing from the benefit of hindsight, Nigerians will prefer a devil in civilian dress to a saint in an army uniform. This country has not recovered from the pains of military regime and may not fully recover from the depredations foisted on the nation via coup d’etats in the next 50 years, because it is easier to destroy than build.
It appears quite easy to forget that it was military rule that led to the Civil War, which cost the nation about three million lives and socio-economic dislocation that remains with us till date. It amounts to mental derangement for a people that suffered such cataclysm to accept a situation that will orchestrate its recurrence.
Be it a good or bad civilian government, the era of military regime is over in Nigeria. The military is not the watchdog of our democracy and should not constitute itself as one. That role has been handed to the press by Section 22 of the Nigerian constitution (as amended). The military is not an alternative government, being not a political party. If one political party in power is not doing well, then let another political party replace it at the next general elections. That is the prescription in all civilized societies. If we want a role for the military in political governance, then let’s insert the role in the constitution. It’s sheer megalomania and the height of insult to our collective intelligence for a group of officers to stand before cameras like Nollywood actors and claim they have removed an elected government and suspended the constitution just because they carry guns! Do you know the amount of time, resources, wide consultations, discussions, negotiations in a deliberative assembly, etc. that go into constitution-making process? Then a handful of deranged elements in uniform will announce glibly that they have suspended the constitution just because they have guns! Very well then, let everyone carry gun.
The teachers are carrying out their lawful duties in the classrooms, the doctors and nurses are fulfilling their constitutional mandates in the hospitals, the farmers in the farms, so should the members of the armed forces fulfil their lawful duties of defending the country against external aggression and internal insurrection, as permitted by the constitution and the Armed Forces Act. This is the right and proper way to build a nation that we all can be proud of.
The military cannot claim to be more important than teachers. Neither can doctors claim superiority over the police. Let everyone and every institution fulfil their constitutional mandates.
‘Treason Orders Disobedience Protection Law’
Soldiers, we all know, obey orders. They are not exactly protected from disobeying patently treasonable orders such as an order to protect an officer announcing a coup on a radio or television station, to take over a Government House of a state or the seat of the Federal Government. Since no society can be completely free of deviants, there is need for a law to protect the rank and file or junior officers for disobeying treasonable orders and a law empowering them to arrest any superior officer who issues treasonable orders, to wit, to take over a media station for the purpose of announcing a coup, to take over a Government House of a state and the seat of the Federal Government for the purpose of governance.
Notwithstanding the isolated incidents mentioned earlier in this discourse, the present crop of officers appears keen on maintaining professionalism for which the military is known for over ages. The armed forces bequeathed to Nigeria by the departing colonial master was of the British mould – disciplined, professional and subservient to civil authorities. Unfortunately, some politicians in the first republic began to employ the services of these soldiers – against unarmed Nigerians – to settle political scores and sustain their grip on power. From then began a new orientation of the military towards the civilian populace and constituted civil authorities. So far, the President and Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces has not towed the path of past governments in using the military to settle political scores. The current crop of officers appears set to play their allotted constitutional role in the socio-economic development of the nation. They will subordinate themselves to constituted civil authorities. They will remain the pride of the nation.
Finally, according to an Irish politician, John Curran, “The condition upon which God hath given liberty to man is eternal vigilance; which condition if he breaks, servitude is at once the consequence of his crime, and the punishment of his guilt.” Citizens of Nigeria must guard jealously their God-given and constitutionally-guaranteed inalienable rights through vigilance.
…Concluded
