Dictatorship and Military Coups
By
Edwin Madunagu
culled from
GUARDIAN, April 22 2004
WE start with the
front-page report in The Guardian of Thursday
April 1, 2004, titled "Military authorities move
Al-Mustapha from prison." The summary of the report
was that at about 2.00 a.m the previous day,
Wednesday, March 31, "some 200 armed men and mobile
policemen" came to Kirikiri Maximum Security Prison,
Lagos, where Major Hamza Mustapha had been detained
on court orders, and "seized" him.
The Comptroller-General of Prisons, in whose
custody the detained army officer was placed, gave
the approval for the seizure and eventual transfer
of the former security officer to late General Sani
Abacha to "an unknown destination". This report, if
substantially true, as I think it is, was a
sufficient indication that not only the army, but
the entire country, was in trouble.
But in Nigeria, playing with the intelligence of
the people, through massive deception, has always
been a mode of governance. Fortunately, however,
many Nigerians can reasonably and correctly analyse
most of what they see or hear " official
pronouncements notwithstanding. And Nigerians who
are trained and equipped through the strivings of
the masses to be able to do so owe themselves and
their countrymen and women a duty to continuously do
this analysis, and sound early warnings.
Putting aside the official and semi-official
statements that were later issued by, or extracted
from, the government and the army, let us proceed
from the verifiable reports obtained from the media
and eye-witnesses. First, the armed contingent that
came to, or was sent to, Kirikiri was large enough
to put down an incipient rebellion, or initiate one.
Secondly, this force came to "seize" a junior army
officer who has been in one form of confinement or
another for over five years. Thirdly, the regime
which the army major served was officially replaced
almost six years ago and the army in which he is an
officer has since been so thoroughly purged and
restructured that one can say that it is now, in
fact, a different army from the one he knew when he
and his master were in power. Fourthly, although the
prison authorities claimed that the detainee's
seizure and movement were authorised by them, what
happened was, prima-facie, an illegality.
The officer was detained at Kirikiri by a
Nigerian court, and only that court can discharge or
move him by its own decision, or by the decision of
a higher court, or by the pronouncement of a
political authority constitutionally empowered to do
so. I say to those who claim to have brought, or
restored, democracy to Nigeria: What happened at
Kirikiri Maximum Security Prison in the early hours
of Wednesday, March 31, 2004, together with the
official attitudes towards it, shows that Nigeria is
as far away from democracy as the sun is from the
earth. The characters of those involved in the
episode, and the crimes attributed to them, are
immaterial in this assessment. Democracy is not
designed for, or against, individuals.
The nation later learnt from various sources that
the army officer in question was either planning a
coup, or was involved in a coup plan, at the time of
his forcible seizure from Kirikiri. The question
that jumped out of my mouth when I heard this rumour
was: How can a person in the circumstances described
above be planning a coup
 | I immediately realised that this was a very
na•ve question. Is this not Nigeria |
| Is the Nigerian army not the one described
by a former respected Chief of Army Staff as
"army of anything goes" |
| In any case, the initial statement from the
Federal Government was to the effect that there
was no coup plot, that what happened was a
"security breach" by some soldiers and civilians
and that the breach was being investigated.
There was a hint that civilians and serving
soldiers were involved. The army first denied
that there was anything at all. I could sense
some nervousness from the way the army chief and
his spokespersons responded to media questions.
We should sympathise with, or even salute,
those Nigerians who have vowed to resist any
coup d'etat with their blood. I believe many of
them are sincere and patriotic. But then much
more than sincerity and patriotism is required
here. You can only resist a coup d'etat if you
know that what is happening, or has happened, is
a coup d'etat, or if the people who are in the
position to say so declare that what is
happening, or has just taken place, is a coup
d'etat. Otherwise, you, the coup resister, may
become a coupist or a coup suspect. Suppose, in
the concrete case under review, an honest and
patriotic Nigerian had noticed the unusual
operations around and inside Kirikiri Prison,
and had decided - quite justifiably for anyone
who believes that Nigeria is a democracy - that
what he or she was seeing was an incipient
d'etat, and had acted on that perception. It
would have been a multiple tragedy. If the
patriot came out alive, he or she would have
been told by the prison commander that what
happened at Kirikiri was normal, and that, in
any case, it was authorised; government
spokespersons would have declared that nothing
unusual happened, that it was a mere "security
breach"; the army would have denied knowledge of
any military movement.
What I have said so far is not simply a
comment on the recent "coup scare". It is also a
fragmentary essay on manifestations or
attributes of dictatorship. There is a
relationship between dictatorship and military
coups. I make two propositions. First, every
class rule is a dictatorship. And this
dictatorship is essentially a dictatorship of a
class, or a coalition of classes, over other
classes and groups in the polity. Since a state
rules over a polity as a whole, this
dictatorship is, in the formal sense, a
dictatorship over the polity. But we know the
victims. To the extent that every class rule is
a dictatorship it can be said that practically
every state in the world is a dictatorship. This
is a maximalist position, I admit. But it is
correct; or, rather, it is more correct than any
other position on the question of social classes
and political power. My second proposition is
that states and regimes vary in democratic
content, from near - zero to the maximum
democratic content compatible with class rule.
Nigeria's dictatorship has a miserably low
democratic content.
The poor democratic content of governance in
Nigeria is manifested in various ways including
election rigging; disrespect for basic human
rights, the dignity of the human person, and the
rule of law; contempt for the constitution and
its provisions; political intolerance;
maginalisation of the broad masses of the people
and groups including women, children, workers,
and ethnic minorities, in decision-making
processes; unilateral imposition of harsh
material conditions on the people; state
repudiation of agreements entered into with the
citizens, etc. The masses are primary victims.
But fractions and factions of the ruling classes
and power blocs that are temporarily disaffected
or out of favour also complain. The latter are
however usually in stronger positions to respond
to situations they do not like. One of the
responses of disaffected fractions and factions
of the ruling blocs to situations they do not
like is the coup d'etat, actual or threatened.
By the way, the bloc, or faction, in power also
uses the charge of attempted coup d'etat as a
weapon against the "opposition" factions. Either
way, the masses are primary victims. Many
innocent lives have been destroyed in this
country in the name of state security. I have no
illusion that that era has come to an end.
Although I have told this story several times
in the past, I will tell it again, but now in a
summary. I met a military governor in an
official capacity a fairly long time ago. In the
course of our discussion, the governor advised
me to rule out a presidential contest from the
set of elections proposed for the return to
civil rule. When I asked why I should do this,
he replied that a presidential election had
already been held. "When and where |
| ", I asked. "Just before dawn on August 27,
1985, and in Lagos", he replied. "Who were the
candidates and who were the electors |
| ", I pursued. He replied that General
Babangida was the only candidate, and Nigerian
army officers were the electors. The governor
then went on to make a declaration, namely, that
the Nigerian army was a legitimate segment of
the Nigerian nation and had, through its
patriotism and courage, demonstrated its right
to elect a president. Other segments of the
population could go ahead and fill other
political offices. The army - or any armed
faction, for that matters - has earned the
authority to choose presidents and of course,
depose presidents.
It is difficult to say how far this "militarised"
consciousness still rules the Nigerian army, the
purges and education of the last five years
notwithstanding. The least we can say is that
the low democratic content of the Nigerian
polity, together with the severely restricted
spaces for mass political intervention and
participation, continuously feeds this type of
consciousness, not just in the military, but in
the society as a whole. Only mass political
empowerment and active political participation
of the people can bury "militarised"
consciousness and its manifestations: coup
scares, actual coup, and false allegations of
coups.
|
|
|
|
|
