Antecedents of the Fourth Republic

By 

Edwin Madunagu

My concern here is simple, embarrassingly simple. It is the periodisation of the political history of Nigeria since independence. When, a couple of weeks ago, I had a light discussion with a group of young Nigerians and foreigners, I was questioned on my reference to the present era as Nigeria's Fourth Republic, a name I had myself adopted only very reluctantly. The irritation of my listeners increased when I went ahead to delineate the preceding three republics which are implied in the reference to the present one as the fourth. I was challenged on the criteria used for this delineation and accused of inconsistency. Let me recapture what I said.

By the First Republic we mean the period between October 1, 1960 when Nigeria gained independence from Britain and January 15, 1966 when the first military coup d'etat took place. But strictly speaking, Nigeria was not a republic throughout this 63-month period. Becoming independent as a constitutional monarchy (although the monarch, in our case, was the Queen of England, represented in Nigeria by an indigenous Governor-General) Nigeria acceded to the republican status only on October 1, 1963. Since the changes brought about by the event of October 1963 were not really essential no-one has seriously objected to the naming of (1960-1966) as First Republic. The period between October 1, 1979 when the military government of General Olusegun Obasanjo handed over power to an elected Executive President, Shehu Shagari, and December 30, 1983 when the latter was overthrown in a coup led by Generals Buhari, Babangida, Abacha and Idiagbon is what we refer to as the Second Republic.

Between the First and Second Republics was a 13-year period of military dictatorship (1966-1979): Aguiyi-Ironsi (January-July 1966), Yakubu Gowon (August 1966-1975), Murtala Mohammed (July 1975-February 1976) and Olusegun Obasanjo (February 1976-September 1979). This period is not referred to as a republic probably because there was no clear or coherent Constitution and the governments were not elected. I shall call this period the First Military Dictatorship. By the Third Republic is meant the tenure of the state and local government administrations elected during the regime of General Ibrahim Babangida. The Third Republic thus lasted from January/February 1992 to November 1993 when General Sani Abacha overthrew the regime of Babangida's nominated successor, Chief Ernest Shonekan. The designation and acceptance of this period as a republic, side by side with the (1960-1966) and (1979-1983) periods is, to say the least, very irritating. Only state governments and local councils were elected; the Federal Government which exercised military hegemony over these two tiers was not elected; it was a military one. The two registered political parties that ran the state and local governments were created by the military. There was a Constitution, the 1989 Constitution, but it was not used. Yet, that period has been accepted as a republic; the political office holders in that republic are today referred to as Honourable, Senator, His Excellency, etc. What a country! The period between December 1983 and May 1999, encompassing the regimes of General Buhari, General Babangida, the interim government headed by Shonekan and the regime of Abacha, I call the Second Military Dictatorship.

The Fourth Republic was inaugurated on May 29, 1999 with Olusegun Obasanjo as its first elected president. Abacha's regime (November 1993 to June 1998) is not referred to as a republic although at certain stages there were political parties, political activities, elected local government councils and a Constitution, the 1995 Constitution. That President Obasanjo is referred to as "Chief" and not "General" is a reflection of the hypocritical and opportunistic character of Nigeria's political class. Here is a man who was a commander of an army division during the civil war, who received the surrender of the Biafran forces, who later commanded the entire armed forces as military Head of State, who passed through all the army ranks, jumping over only the rank of Major-General, who was unjustly jailed, but then released and pardoned with his rank of General fully restored. He is therefore as qualified as any other Nigerian army officer, alive or dead, to be called a general. But since the political class wants to give the impression that the man is now a civilian, running a civilian government, he is referred to as a Chief while Buhari, Babangida and others who served under him and were promoted and endowed by him are called generals.

We thus have four republics and two military dictatorships. Two explanatory notes are however necessary to complete the delineation. First, the Third Republic is embedded in the Second Military Dictatorship. Two, Shonekan's Interim Government (ING) which lasted from August 26, 1993 to November 17 of the same year was merely a sluggish change ñ over from one phase of the Second Military Dictatorship to another phase of the same region. Of all the periods of our post independence history, the one most useful in the work of constitutional review and political restructuring is the First Republic. This is why I say so: What is undesirable for us in the year 2001 is depicted so clearly in the politics and governance of the First Republic. Put differently, the subsequent periods of our history have merely given false solutions to the problems of the First Republic, while destroying the relatively positive element of the latter. Let us see. Nigeria became independent as a federation of three unequal regions, and later, four: three in the South and one in the North. The latter, in land area, was three times the size of the three southern regions combined; the official records put the population of Nigeria at the time as nearly equally divided between the North and the South.

During the First Republic, Nigeria practised what was known as parliamentary system of government. At the centre, was a Head of State at first a Governor-General and later, after the attainment of republican status, a President; and a Council of Ministers headed by a Prime Minister. The presidency was ceremonial, that is, it had no executive functions; federal executive power lay with the Prime Minister and his Council of Ministers. Every Minister was a member of Federal Parliament, either an elected member of the House of Representatives or a nominated senator. Each minister had an assistant, called parliamentary secretary, who was also a member of parliament. The Prime Minister, his ministers and the ministers parliamentary secretaries did not receive double pays as members of the executive and members of the legislature; each was paid from only one budgetary allocation. There was a Leader of Opposition who was the leader, in parliament, of the minority party, or leader of the largest minority party. The position was officially recognised and officially paid as such. The set-up at the centre was replicated in the regions. In terms of relationship with the centre, the regions were as autonomous as they could be in a federation: the regions were fiscally autonomous and had their own constitutions which were, in the final analysis, subordinate to the Federal Constitution. There were regional police forces and native court messengers or enforces, called Kotuma in the East. These institutions were political instruments in the hands of the party and government in power.

The First Republic operated a multi-party political system. The parties did not require registration by the electoral body to exist and contest elections. In addition to three large parties there were several medium and small ones. There were provisions for independent candidates. If you check the first decree which the army issued immediately on assuming power in January 1966 you will see the number and types of political parties banned: from feudal and conservative parties to radical, socialist and revolutionary ones. The left alone had about 10 parties, from reformist social-democratic to revolutionary Marxist. Two of such small parties later bore arms and collaborated with the federal side in the present South-South political zone during the civil war, thereby playing a more significant historical role than the big parties that caused the war. I may add, however, as a sad digression, that when the war ended the victors suddenly remembered that their armed collaborators were banned organisations. They were ordered to shut up. Some complied, but those who did not were dispatched to join the defeated Biafrans in Prison. We can see in this narration, the positive, semi-positive and negative aspects of the First Republic quite clearly. We cannot say the same of the other periods.