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OBASANJO'S USE OF ARMY FOR POLITICAL SURVIVAL: RECIPE FOR DISASTER by
The recent justification of the use of the army in domestic crisis in Nigeria by President Obasanjo during his speech at the Chief of Army Staff Training Conference on Monday December 10, 2001 at Kaduna and published by all the Nigerian newspapers of December 11, 2001 cannot go unchallenged. His justification lacked any basis in fact and it is prone to danger. President Obasanjo by his statement and justification is making the democratic order dependent on an unaccountable institution, the highly politicized armed forces. This is fraught with danger, especially from the immediate past.
President Obasanjo's comparison of his increasing dependence on the army in tackling internal war in Nigeria with the US' use of the US National Guard during the post September 11 Terrorism is in bad taste and it is misplaced. What happened in the US on September 11, 2001 or any other time in 1992 bears no relationship with the erosion of the President's competence in Nigeria and the crisis of governance in Nigeria.
As one conversant with the genesis of the crisis in the oil producing areas, it is offensive to the people of the oil producing areas because of their relative political impotence to be so caricatured in the President's justification of the army invasion of Odi.
It is unfortunate that the President is unrepentant in what he used the army to do to the people of Odi. Yes they are atomized people of the Niger-Delta and so could be so treated that up till today, the President has not thought it wise despite the fact that they are members of his party to make amends. He is still counting on them for his 2003 rerun.
If the President did not know what the army did in Odi was nothing short of genocide from the reports in the Nigerian newspapers and in the Senate. No matter what he says today, what history would record of his administration would be that he used the army to teach the small people of the oil producing areas some lesson because they are powerless and have no representative in the armed forces. His decision to set up a Commission of Inquiry into the crisis of the Benue State arose from the fact that they are well positioned in the army. Even here again, the action of the army was not part of the terms of inquiry surprisingly. Nigerians have not commented on this. What this demonstrates is that the President is starting from the position that what the army did was right and only the victims of the army atrocities are the one who should be made to appear before the Judicial panel… President Obasanjo is always blaming the victims. He did it in Odi; he is blaming the Tiv people today.
I once used my appearance before the Amnesty International in Cambridge in 1999 after the destruction of Odi to lay out the basis of arraigning the Nigerian President before The Hague for crime against humanity in what he used the army to do to the people of Odi in 1999. If the President did not know what he used the army to do in Odi was pure and simple, genocide.
Assuming that what he said was correct, that what he did in the Niger-Delta was as a result of the 'youth agitation and marginalization of oil producing areas government' then why should he compare the US use of the National Guard in domestic unrest and emergency with his use of the army to inflict untold damage on the people of Nigeria? The President is wrong and he should revisit his policy of using the army for purely political crisis, which he should resolve through political means. The crises in the middle-belt and in the oil producing areas where he used the army to kill Nigerians and destroyed their property are political in nature and arose from failure in intelligence and declining legitimacy of the civilian political order. The army should not be made to fill this void.
DIFFERENCE BETWEEN NIGERIA AND THE US TOO OBVIOUS President Obasanjo's wanton comparison of the Nigerian army and the US army and their use in domestic arena is like a comparison of apple and orange. He should have told his audience the number of people killed in Nigeria from the use of the army and the number of people saved in the US as a result of the use of the US National Guard.
President Obasanjo failed to say that the US National Guard is a friend of the US citizens and would not kill or destroy the citizens' property.
President Obasanjo failed to say that the army in Nigeria considers itself superior to the civilians they ruled for many years; the citizens see the army as an enemy of the people and drafted to kill and like locust, meant to destroy where it visits. While the US National Guard saves the civilian and protects the property of the citizens, the Nigerian army destroys lives and property of civilians where and when it steps on the various locations as was witnessed in the Niger-Delta in 1999 and recently in the Tiv land.
There is another point of difference between the US and Nigeria, the President failed to appreciate. The Nigerian army is a political army from many years of military involvement in politics. The US army does not have this background.
The President knows but sets out to confuse the Nigerian public as to who is in charge of the National Guard in the US. He knows that the US National Guard is under the State Governor and called upon in time of emergency on special arrangement with the Federal authority to help in civil defense and in emergency. The Governors can also use them with out the authority of the Federal Government for the same purpose.
What is significant and not told the Nigerian people by President Obasanjo is that the US National Guard is drawn from civilian sector and not from the standing army. The US National Guard is drawn from highly trained sectors of the US society, lawyers, engineers and University Professors who are called to duty as and when the case arises. There is nothing to compare it in Nigeria.
Should the Nigerian President be able to compare his basis of legitimacy with that of the US President? Does the President appreciate the basis of political order in the US compared with that of Nigeria? Can the Nigerian President imagine a situation where and when a US Secretary of Defense would write the Senate Committee on Defense threatening its members to desist conducting hearing on matters within its constitutional responsibility? Could one imagine a situation where and when a Secretary of Defense would refuse to appear before a Senate Committee on Defense? All these happened in Nigeria.
In the US, politics is left to politicians to handle and the army is not invited to resolve political dispute as President Obasanjo has been doing with the Nigerian army since 1999. The use of the National Guard in the US is not to resolve domestic political dispute; this is for politicians. The domestic crisis in Nigeria resulting in violent outburst should have been left to the politicians to resolve before they become violent. One would have thought this was elementary. I am sure the army officers he was talking to in Kaduna knew this much that the President lacked any basis of comparison between what obtains in the US and what they are called upon to do in Nigeria by President Obasanjo. The Nigerian President, therefore, has no basis to compare what he is doing with the Nigerian political army in Nigeria since he came to power in 1999 with what the US is doing with the US National Guard after September 11, 2001.
WARNING SIGNS In fairness to General Olusegun Obasanjo, it is part of his history in the 'military in politics' in Nigeria that he was alien to how coup came about in the past. Yes, he was a beneficiary of the military intervention in politics in the past, but he did not know how the military schemed to take over power from the civilian political order because of the undue dependence of the civilian authority on the army for political survival. Professor Bayo Adekanye, a scholar of the military in politics should advise the President on this elementary relationship. Maybe he can also benefit from the former and experienced professional coup plotters in his service as the Chief of Staff, the National Security Adviser and the Minister of Defense. They should be able to give him some tips on how the army can take advantage of his political weakness if they find him vulnerable and losing the support of the people. He should not abandon the Nigerian people and depend on the army for his political survival. This is what he has been doing since 1999. The army knows that he is losing grip of the political order and that he is putting his survival on the army. The army knows that the day the army throws him out that no one would cry.
Let me leave President Obasanjo with one message. Increasing participation of the army in domestic crisis would make the army an integral part of the political process and erode the power of civilian institutions. The army as an actor in the political process would only lead to undue dependence of the President on the army and less on the civilian political actors. This is the situation Nigeria is increasingly finding itself today.
It is a fact well known in Nigeria and in the international community that the Nigerian President had since 1999 defined his policy and priority in foreign policy to mean that what is good for the armed forces is good for the country. That is why the military was the first to gain from the US dollar, instead of the dilapidating infrastructure and social sectors of health and education. He signed the Military pact with the US and the other European countries and South Africa and failed to replicate this in the Health and Education sectors.
NATIONAL ASSEMBLY'S POWER OF OVERSIGHT AND INVESTIGATION The failure in the nascent democracy is the inability of the National Assembly to subject the Armed Forces to civilian control by demanding from the President an articulation of a Defense Policy in Nigeria after 1999. What is the Nigerian Defense Policy since the military handed over to civilian authority in 1999? A Defense Policy in a capsule form means, 'who is the enemy of Nigeria?' President Obasanjo answered this when he carved a role for the army in quelling internal insurrection. The National Assembly should have held a hearing on this vital question. Some of us with a deep knowledge of the Nigerian armed forces and what the role of the armed forces should be in a democracy should have sent memorandum if not make personal appearance. The National Assembly is failing in its oversight function and in its power of investigation.
The National Assembly failed to subject the President and the Minister of Defense to question after the military destruction of Odi and recently in Benue State. This is why the President is further justifying his misuse of the army in domestic political purpose as a rule.
President Obasanjo's message to the Nigerian army at the Chief of Army Staff Training Conference in Kaduna on Monday December 10, 2001 was a wrong message. One hopes the Nigerian army would not take it as a license to kill and continue its destructive role in various locations in Nigeria. President Obasanjo rightly characterized the situation as serious and lamentable. Yes as he said, 'the growing internal threat is a threat to national security'. His definition of national security is warped. The President failed to identity the root causes of the what he called the growing internal threat to national security that it arises from the lingering political issues afflicting this country, which he failed to identify and resolve since coming to power in 1999. Nigerians know them; only the President believes that he would play games with a panel or commission on security instead of convocation of a conference of nationalities to answer two broad questions:
I dealt with these two issues in my Vanguard Independence Essay of October 1, 2001. If after over hundred years of colonial rule, over forty years as an independent country and after thirty years of military rule and after three years of Obasanjo rule, the country is still being faced with these two nagging questions, then there is something basically wrong with Nigeria. President Obasanjo thinks that he can use the Nigerian army today, which is part if not the major part of these problems to resolve them! Good luck, Sir. It will fail. December 2001
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