May 2021
By Festus Adedayo
The New York Times report of
March 13, 1976 put the story of
Nigeria’s perennial human sacrifices
by the bloodthirsty grove
of coup-plotting most startlingly. The day
before, newly appointed Chief of Defense
Staff, Brigadier Musa Yar’Adua, had announced
that former Defense Minister,
Major General Iliya D. Bisalla and 29
others, had been executed by the seaside
suburb of Victoria Island. The bar beach
execution ground was jam-packed with
thousands of onlookers who had come to
watch the execution. The 30 persons were
killed for their roles in the assassination
of military Head of State, Murtala Ramat
Mohammed, alongside his aide-de-camp,
Lieutenant Akintunde Akinsehinwa.
While announcing the execution,
Yar’Adua also called on Britain to extradite
ousted Head of State, General Yakubu
Gowon, then student of Political Science at Warwick
University in England, to answer charges
of co-plotting the coup. Gowon, by Col Buka
Suka Dimka’s confession, had invited him to
London when he (Dimka) traveled to Madrid,
Spain on official assignment and asked him to
contact Bisalla for execution of the coup. Of the
125 people arrested, 40 were released and 32,
including Bisalla, were sentenced to death. This
included Abdulkarim Zakari, a radio journalist,
said to be a relative of Victoria, General
Gowon’s wife. Dimka, who also participated
in an earlier counter-coup of July, 1966 which
toppled General Aguiyi Ironsi, was as at this
time still being interrogated to further implicate
Gowon. He was later publicly executed at the
Lagos Kirikiri Maximum Security Prison on
May 15, 1976.
Bisalla’s inclusion among the coup plotters
had sent shock waves round the country. He
was highly respected and distinguished as an
ex- military commander of an infantry division
during the civil war and who was also renowned
for his postwar conciliation efforts. About the
oldest General of the lot at the time, when he was
arrested upon Dimka’s canary-like confession,
Bisalla was reported to have soliloquized, (in my
paraphrase) “how can these young boys end one’s
military career like this!” Huge and tall, Bisalla
was dressed in a cream-coloured safari dress as
he walked down to the stakes. Not only was his
military career ended. Bullets ended his life as
well. Till today, Bisalla’s conviction and execution
are still being put to the impunity of military era
court-martial as there was no single tissue of corroboration
of the allegation of his involvement
in the coup plot, aside Dimka’s evidence.
Sixty nine years after the July 23, 1952 first
coup in Africa called the Egyptian Revolution
of 1952, led by Mohammed Naguib and Gamal
Abdel Nasser and which overthrew King Farouk
and the Muhammed Ali Dynasty; 55 years after
its first variant in Nigeria that took place in
1966, the word “coup” is rearing its ugly head
again. It was a word Nigerians thought had been
consigned to the realm of academic discourses
or as statistical analyses of a past epidemic.
The Nigerian presidency and the Defence
Headquarters (DHQ) resurrected the ghost
of coup and coup plotting. Elder statesman,
Robert Clark, SAN, initially belled the cat by
amplifying what hitherto were hushed tones
on Nigerian streets. Speaking on a Channels
Television programme recently, he had said that,
in view of the near total collapse of Nigeria in
the hands of President Muhammadu Buhari, he
should hand over the administration of Nigeria
to the military.
Onyema Nwachukwu, Brigadier General and
Acting Director Defence Information, in a May
3, 2021 press release, would however have none
of this Doomsday prophesy. Warning politicians
and soldiers against any collusion to foist another
military coup on Nigeria, Nwachukwu said that,
canvassing coup was an “anti-democratic utterance
and position,” and “warn(ed) misguided
politicians who nurse the inordinate ambition
to rule this country outside the ballot box to
banish such thoughts as the military under
the current leadership remains resolute in the
Defence of Nigeria’s democracy and its growth,”
while reminding “all military personnel that it is
treasonable to even contemplate this illegality” as
“the full wrath of the law will be brought to bear
on any personnel found to collude with people
having such agenda.”
If anybody thought that the idea of a military
coup was the figment of the imagination of the
above two actors, the Nigerian presidency also
jumped into the frenzy. The apprehension, even
from government, on coup and its possibility
became glaring and palpable. On Tuesday last
week, Special Adviser to the President on Media
and Publicity, Femi Adesina, also alleged that
some “disgruntled religious and past political
leaders” were plotting to convene what he
called “an illegal National Conference” and
their ultimate aim was to pass a vote of no
confidence on Buhari, leading to overthrowing
his government. Elder statesman and
SAN, Chief Afe Babalola, was one of the conveners
of the conference. So Babalola, who
has undoubtedly made more contributions
to Nigeria’s growth, even more than Buhari,
is now disgruntled?
Why would coup and coup discourses
dominate political analyses of the chaotic
Nigerian governance space at this time? Why
has Buhari, who rode into power in 2015 in
a galaxy of talisman-like public acceptance,
become, six years after, this disreputable and
worthless in the estimation of same Nigerian
people? Is the sociopolitical discontent and
instability in Nigeria so hopeless that a military
coup should seethe below the surface
as solution?
Until the 1990s when democratic waves
began to sweep through Africa, the continent
had been a hotbed and volatile region of the
pestilence of military coups. Between January
1956 and December 2001, there were over 200
coups in 48 independent Sub-Saharan African
states, including Nigeria. Many others have since
taken place, 21 years after. Whether in the 80
successful coups de tat that took place during
this period of 45 years interval, the 108 failed
attempts and 139 reported coup attempts, the
pestilence of coup in Africa during this period
cannot be overemphasized.
In virtually all the countries on the continent
where coup took place, as salvationist as they
portended to be, the military have often left
such countries worse than they met them. Either
through their inordinate ambition to transmute
into civilian dictatorship, sit-tightism or recourse
to draconian rule, the barrel of a gun defined a
huge chunk of African governance. Heloise Ruth
First, South African scholar and anti-apartheid
activist, wrote about this in a provocative book
which she entitled Barrels of a Gun. In the
book, she said that coup had always left Africa
shattered and underdeveloped. Perhaps as recompense
for her revelations and activism, First
was parcel-bombed by assassins on August 17,
1982 in Maputo, her exile country of Mozambique,
by persons later discovered to be South
African police.
Over the years, it has become clear that the
military intervenes in political affairs in the
region mainly for reasons not outside the locus
of personal greed. They have been found to be
hugely motivated by the “rents” and juices they
always extract from gaining power and control
of the state. Indeed, experiences of military
destruction of Africa in the last 64 years have
birthed the provocative cliche that the worst civilian
government is better than the best military
government.
In Nigeria, for instance, the 1966 military
coup that brought Johnson Aguiyi-Ironsi and
his wayfarer military colleagues into government
truncated the series of development hitherto
witnessed in all the three regions. It also collapsed
the federal system of government that was
the best answer to the Nigerian plural question,
setting the country on a path of future implosion
and destruction. Soldiers barely off mental
diapers but who had acquired fat epaulettes on
account of their involvement in coup-plots, suddenly
took over the administration of Nigeria,
many of them in their 20s and 30s.
Other than, “about turn!” “salute!” and “stand
at ease!,” many of the soldier-rulers didn’t have
understanding of how a country as diverse and
multi-ethnic like Nigeria could be administered.
They had nil understanding of economics and
society and thus dragged Nigeria to their personal
mental prostrate levels. In defence of ego,
soldiers took Nigeria to a very costly war and
could not manage the huge petro-dollars that
accrued to the country. That was why Yakubu
Gowon, on a visit to the Bahamas, could announce
that Nigeria was so stupendously wealthy
that she didn’t know what to do with her wealth.
Nigeria was so audaciously profligate that she
paid salaries of workers in some African countries,
pumped billions into liberation movements
in Africa and as recent as in the 1990s, was playing
Father Christmas roles in Liberia and Sierra
Leone. In the process, Nigeria failed to build a
tomorrow for generations yet to come. Soldiers
of fortune that the military conquerors proved
to be overtime, enriched themselves and cronies.
Many of them still living today are billionaires,
owning wealth as stupendous as King Solomon’s
concubines.
There is virtually no country on the continent
that has not witnessed the chaos of military
putsch, except South Africa which is buoyed by
its very strong institutions and strong adherence
to democratic ethos. The worst of them is
Burkina Faso, which has never witnessed any
peaceful transition of political power since its
independence. Till date, that country, made
famous by Thomas Sankara and his killing by
his friend, Blaise Compaore, has witnessed the
highest coup attempts on the continent, with ten
coups and attempted putsches.
The question to ask is, why have unconstitutional
hijacks of democratic governments in
Africa become pastimes? What can be said to be
the real sociopolitical conditions of Africa that
nurture this seedbed of hijacks of power? While
some experts say that the prevalence of coups
in Africa cannot be divorced from incompetent
civil leadership and corruption, others put it
at the doorsteps of dictatorial civilian regimes,
mismanagement of the economy and desire of
the military to posture as Messiahs.
Narratives of corruption today under Muhammadu
Buhari are worse than what was in place
that pushed Chukwuma Nzeogwu to plan the
January, 1966 coup. Gowon and his triumvirates
also claimed that killing of northerners was reason
why he and the coupists of July, 1966 struck.
Today, insecurity and killing of northerners and
southerners are far worse under a man who was
elected based on the belief that, as a retired General,
his military bravura would stop genocidal
insurgents.
Colonel Dimka must have sought forgiveness
from Murtala Muhammed for killing that mercurial
temperament soldier, if he could see what
is happening today in Nigeria from the land of
the dead. Speaking in a national broadcast after
the assassination of Muhammed, Dimka had
said that the widespread orgy of “corruption,
indecision, arrest and detention without trial,
weakness on the part of Mohammed and maladministration
in general” were reasons why he
overthrew Murtala’s government. In announcing
the execution of the coup plotters of February
13, 1976, Yar’Adua also alleged that their grouse
for killing Murtala was that his government
planned to cut the number of members of the
armed forces. Today, the quantum of such vices
under Buhari is mind-boggling.
Apart from the schism between him as Commanding
officer of the 3rd Division when he
stiff-neckedly cut off fuel and food supplies to
Nigeria’s Chad neighbor and how his military
unit shelled Chadian soldiers off 50 kilometers
radius from the Nigerian border, which provoked
President Shehu Shagari, Buhari and
his allies claimed they upturned the Second
Republic due to the widespread corruption of
the political class. Can anyone juxtapose the
corruption under Shagari and Buhari now?
Paradoxically, then Major General Ibrahim Babangida,
on August 27, 1985, also claimed that
he overthrew Buhari because, “he was too rigid
and uncompromising in his attitudes to issues of
national significance.” Buhari has since morphed
from being rigid into an ethnic jingoist who gives
terrorism wooly padding and supervisor of a
comatose economy.
The Major General Mamman Jiya Vatsa
December, 1985 coup against Babangida was
said to have cited worsening situation among
military personnel, among other reasons, for its
attempted coup. Vatsa allegedly finance the coup
through a farming loan decoy granted to Lt. Col
Musa Bitiyong.
The April, 1990 coup that followed, masterminded
by General Gideon Orka, claimed that
the Hausa-Fulani had constituted themselves
into the lord of Nigeria. The last known military
overthrow of a civilian government in Nigeria
was the palace coup led by General Sani Abacha
and which took away the interim administration
of Ernest Shonekan. It based its strike, among
others, on the lack of legitimacy of the interim
government.
If we then juxtapose the alibi for truncating
governments in Nigeria in the past with the current
state of affairs under President Buhari, will
one conclude that Nigeria was ripe for a coup,
long due for a coup or shying away from its due
worth of a coup? If the truth must be told, but
for the fact that coups have lost their relevance
in the world and military hijacks have proved to
be incapable of solving democratic problems, the
current state of hopelessness in Nigeria makes
the country ten times ripe for a coup. Deliberately
through his innate cronyism or as a result of
his manifest incompetence, President Buhari has
driven Nigeria to the brinks of war. The economy
is prostrate, blood litters all parts of Nigeria and
no time in the history of the country have things
been this hopeless. To worsen matters, Buhari is
so near, yet so distant from Nigerians, masqueraded
from the world by a battery of lickspittle
aides who appropriate and approximate his
interface role with the people of Nigeria.
The above are why the reasons adduced for
all the coups in Nigeria since 1966 pale into
insignificance when compared to the abyss
that Buhari has taken Nigeria. Killings under
his watch will rank side by side killings during
the civil war, with government advertising
ineptitude and incompetence like a sore thumb.
The government has changed from its hitherto
empty threats to criminal elements who are
having free reign in all parts of the country, to
a cowardly pleading with criminals to sheathe
their swords. Under Buhari, the state, renowned
for its awesome powers, has become castrated.
Even under Abacha, there was never this level of
general consensus that Nigerians are being ruled
by Mephistopheles himself.
How the DHQ, DSS and even the Buhari government
itself will know the completely sunken
worth of this government is for them to sample
opinions of Nigerians on the streets. The question
they should ask is, if the military takes over
from Buhari today – God forbid – what will be
the general mood and reactions of Nigerians?
Abacha’s personal and governmental expiration,
which elicited widespread jubilation unrivalled
in Nigerian history, will be child’s play compared
to what Nigerians will reveal as their projected
reactions.
With all the above however, there is still no
alternative to civilian rule. As horrible, closeto-
breaking-point as Nigeria has become under
Buhari’s watch, the hopelessness he foisted on
the polity should increase future scrutiny of our
leaders and squeeze a resolve from us never to
have a Buhari-kind in government again. Ousting
Buhari’s government and replacing it with a
military junta will only give us Pyrrhic victory
over one of the most infernal civilian rules in the
history of Nigeria.
-Dr. Festus Adedayo is a journalist, writer,
lawyer and public affairs analyst