By 

Prof. Omo Omoruyi, 

Research Fellow, ASC, Boston University, Boston.

Now that the Commission moved to Abuja, it should have been an opportunity for the Generals Babangida, Buhari, Abubakar and Danjuma to VOLUNTARILY appear at the OPUTA Commission and set the records straight about their stewardship. It should also be an opportunity to respond to various allegations of human rights violations leveled against them.

They as former military rulers should not expect Justice Oputa to issue them special summons different from what other Nigerians get before they could appear to clear their names, if their names mean anything to them.

They as former military dictators should not expect the President to go to the National Assembly to get a special law specific to them because they were former military officers. They as private citizens should obey the law governing the Commission under which they as dictators conducted fact-finding inquiries, which they used to deal unjustly and harshly with bloody civilians in the past.

Justice Oputa should stop worrying himself if they refuse to appear. For them not to appear would open them to national ridicule as Nigerians would come to the conclusion that they have something to hide. Doesn’t this bother them? If they are worried by what Nigerians would say, they must not forget that they would be open to international action no matter when. Don’t they see their conduct or misconduct as a slight on their senior colleague, Chief Obasanjo? They are also undermining him as the President, Commander in Chief. President Obasanjo has been bending over backward to provide for them including honoring their pensions as military Heads of State, despite the objections from the National Assembly and other retired military officers that they should not benefit from their past criminal act of forceful take over of government.

President Obasanjo as a retired General is giving a good example of how an officer should behave; he is asking the serving and retired military officers to do what he says and does. Unfortunately these former military Chiefs want to adopt the policy of ‘do what they say and not what they do’, which is at variance with the example set by President Obasanjo.

ABUJA AN OPPORTUNITY FOR ALL INVOLVED IN JUNE 12 AND ABIOLA

Abuja should be devoted to the ‘issues in the annulment’ and not with financial mismanagement, which may be sensational. The Brigadier General Sabo expose of the various manifestations of ‘lootocracy’ under General Abubakar can be handled elsewhere even right away before OPUTA completes his assignment. Naturally, this should form the basis of further investigation and action after the OPUTA Commission shall have completed it assignment. Maybe one should remind the President of the divine prophecy of Chief Obasanjo in June 1998 as follows:

To erect the structure of democracy.

See Vanguard June 21, 1998.

The OPUTA Commission for obvious reasons should concentrate on gross denial of right to human dignity. Annulment took place in and around Abuja. The leaders of his party at Abuja signed the mandate of Chief Abiola away. The original death notice on Chief Abiola was served on him on July 4/5, 1993 at Abuja. The plan to put Chief Abiola in detention was hatched and executed at Abuja. The conspiracy to kill Chief Abiola after the death of General Abacha 'to balance equation' was conceived and executed at Abuja. Finally, Chief Abiola was eventually killed at Abuja at the end of the thirty-day national mourning period in the presence of the General Abubakar’s Chief Security Officer Major Aliyu.

The actors in all these episodes from General Babangida and his 1001 officers he claimed worked with him on the annulment and General Abubakar are still alive and residing in and around Abuja. They should have seized the opportunity created by the OPUTA Commission to bare their minds and tell the truth.

One of the unwritten conditions for their decision to go for General Obasanjo when he was in prison was that their past anti-democratic acts would be covered up. General Abubakar and Admiral Akhigbe dismissed the idea of a truth commission during their last days in office. How many of us still recall what General Abubakar said about the prospect of thePresident setting it up. General Abubakar even added blackmail that he knew General Obasanjo very well that he would not be bothered by going to the past. What made them think that way? Did they know what moral fiber Chief Obasanjo is made of? Did they know his revulsion against the type of military rule of his sponsors under which he suffered? General Babangida at one time must have regretted his mistake of 1993, which in my view still remains the fatal political error of judgment. He must be regretting his second error of political judgment, which occurred in 1998. These were the two costly mistakes in his life. Is this why he wants to make the third mistake by avoiding to appear before the OPUTA Commission instead of using the Commission as the platform to apologize to the Nigerian people for his sins? I appealed to him before that he should have used the June 23, 2001 to own up his crime against humanity and apologize. I still strongly believe so, that he should own up his crimes and ask his countrymen to forgive him. He should use the OPUTA Commission.

As for General Abubakar he just has no excuse for refusing to appear before the OPUTA Commission especially with the alleged complicity of his office with the death of the winner of the June 12 in his custody. He maybe must be thinking that they would have gone for the winner of the June 12 election who was still alive and in the military Gulag when Abacha died. OPUTA Commission would be an opportunity for him to tell the Nigerian people why that did not work.

In the first part of this paper, the focus was on the relationship between the revelations at the Oputa Commission on Human Rights Violations and the ‘issues in the annulment’. On this part of the paper, the focus will be on the relationship between the revelations at the OPUTA Commission and the ‘nature of the armed forces’.

It should have been obvious to all Nigerians from the revelations at the Commission that Nigeria does not have a national army, but that what Nigeria has in the name of Nigeria is a geo-ethno-military organization. It is an army in the name of Nigeria but operating with a regional agenda. General Diya was displaying his naiveté when he confessed after his appearance at the Oputa Commission that

‘When the chips are down, You always find the north, No matter their differences Being united against you If you are an outsider’.

Was this new to General Diya in the Nigerian armed forces? Did he forget his role in the enterprise?

From the way the political generals behaved at the Commission and from their testimonies about their actions in the immediate past in the military, it should be obvious by now that Nigeria does not have a professional army, but soldiers of fortune, with an economic and political agenda. President Obasanjo's words before he became a candidate of the same military clique after his release from Abacha’s Gulag in June 1998 would be helpful again in the understanding of the enormity of the crisis. President Obasanjo who was both a victim and a witness said as follows:

See Vanguard June 21, 1998.

I do not want to belabor this point. I am on record on the nature of the armed forces; this was analyzed in my latest book on the June 12. I dealt with the matter in many lectures in different fora in the US. What I said is that the Nigerian armed forces can be likened to the dreaded apartheid regime of old in South Africa or of the Japanese and German fascist armies during the Second War. Just as the world came down hard on these regimes’ armies, the world and Nigerians should impress on President Obasanjo that he would not be able to save the so-called Nigerian army through piecemeal reforms. Would he be able to achieve reforms through the military pact with the US? I doubt this too because the whole arrangement with the US is based on faulty analysis of the nature of the armed forces. This was why I advocated wholesale demobilization and depoliticization, the two Ds as the solution to the nature of the ‘military in politics’.

It should have been obvious to OPUTA Commission already that his Commission cannot be the avenue for embarking on this. It is more than even the President and the National Assembly.

I am glad that there is a ground swelling movement for restructuring even though the Nigerian political class, especially those in the National Assembly, are still lukewarm to the idea. This is understandable because many of them went into politics on the ticket of some military officers, while others are either the annullists or the so-called ‘militicians’. I would have thought that after the revelations at the Oputa Commission, Nigerian would have been calling for the disbanding of the armed forces in its present form. Of course, the lone voice of a democrat from the June 12 days is still talking. I am referring to the Governor of Ogun State, Chief Segun Osoba.

The Governor of Ogun State voiced his usual dissent against the lukewarm politicians at the National Assembly. According to him from what he saw and read of the testimonies by the so-called generals before the Oputa Commission, he came to the one indisputable conclusion.

‘That the nation’s army has to be restructured’.

(See the Vanguard, January 1, 2001).

President Obasanjo and the Nigerian political class could learn from the ‘weeping general’, who is very loquacious and who also vowed to be with General Abacha when he dies. I am referring to Adisa who held the view

‘That those who participated in The issues at stake are still in Service’.

He was very specific where they could be located. According to Adisa,

‘They are in the ranks of majors and colonels’.

As if that was not specific enough, he went on

‘They are still there holding important posts’.

And he virtually sent a serious warning indirectly to the President to be careful of certain officers. He described them as:

Those who were used by the authority in 1995 and 1997.

The President should know what happened in the 1995 episode, Adisa was part of the decision-making body and a close friend of General Abacha as he claimed in many fora and publications. He was a victim of that same group of officers. Political general Adisa then dropped the bombshell with the warning that

‘Unless these people are retired, I don’t think things will be different…’

(See the Vanguard, December 18, 2000).

When I warned the incoming administration along this line in April 1999, I was called an alarmist. See Tell of April 6, 1999). The question is who will ‘bell the cat’?

SOLUTION NOT IN CURRENT POLITICAL LEADERSHIP OF ARMED FORCES

My advocacy of the two Ds was based on empirical cases from Germany and Japan. My study of the ‘military in politics’ between 1966 and 1999 made me come to the conclusion that only a wholesale demobilization was desirable after the era of General Abacha, which would be followed by a fundamental reorientation of the new armed forces. I repeat the new armed forces, and this means that the current efforts through the retreat and the US would not do the trick.

The two Ds would have been the only way to redeem the armed forces of Nigeria. General Danjuma confessed this much in his Guardian interview of December 24, 2000 that he underestimated the enormity of the problems facing the armed forces before he assumed office. How can a man who in his military career was part of the lingering problems of the armed forces be able to estimate the problems of the armed forces and prescribe a solution? Can the administration of President Obasanjo understand the enormity of the problem? Can it pursue both goals of demobilization and fundamental reorientation of the armed forces? This is a million-dollar question.

I have my doubt that the President would be able to perform these functions in order to promote the twin goal of a national army that is representative of all ethnic nationalities in Nigeria and a professional army that is committed to democracy. My doubt arises not from the President’s inherent weakness, which has root in his crisis of legitimacy. The crisis of legitimacy is both real and life threatening politically.

All efforts made in the past by Nigerians who meant Chief Obasanjo well to make the President move to the side of the Nigerian people and enlarge the base of support were rebuffed. It is now demonstrated over and over that President Obasanjo derived his rule from a narrow base of support, retired and serving members of the armed forces from one part of the country and not from the Nigerian voters, hence he is in a dilemma. Let us take three issues to demonstrate his problems.

President Obasanjo surrounds himself with northern retired military officers from past ‘criminal regimes’ or past ‘regimes of criminals’ as his Chief of Staff, his National Security Adviser and his Minister of Defense. The President ought to know or should have known that at issue today is how to cope with the past. Let us call a spade a spade!

Can we expect General Abdullahi Mohammed, the former National Security Adviser to General Abubakar to give the President advice on how to deal with his former boss whose conduct when he was his adviser is before the OPUTA COMMISSION?

Can we expect General Aliyu Mohammed Gusau, the former National Security Adviser to General Babangida when he was the military President to give an honest advice to the President on how to deal with matters involving General Babangida during his tenure as President?

Can we expect General TY Danjuma, with a career steep in the ‘military in politics’ to advise the President on what to do about himself?

Who is advising the President on what to do when the past of the military is under investigation?

What does the President do when the same functionaries are not only involved in these criminal regimes or regimes of criminals but that their former bosses activities as military Heads of State are being questioned at the OPUTA Commission?

It should be obvious that these former advisers to former dictators and now in the service of an elected president would be conflicted in the performance of their roles. They would have to be available to their former bosses to refresh their memories and assemble facts, which they were privy to in their previous roles and they would at the same time be expected to be advisers to the current President. Does it not occur to the President that it would be unrealistic to expect these political generals to be honest with him?

 

If any thing has become obvious from the testimony at the OPUTA Commission, it is that the armed forces should be restructured. If President Obasanjo wants to restructure the armed forces, he would not have named Lt. General TY Danjuma as the Minister of Defense and General Malu as the Chief of Army Staff and appointed other retired generals to key security offices. The reasons for my coming to this position ought to be obvious by now and from the above analysis. They are the wrong persons to be entrusted with the policy of restructuring of the military. Their past and their commitment to a given constituency in the armed forces ought to have disqualified them. Maybe this was why the President is using the Chief of Staff in the Presidency, a retired general and a former National Security Adviser to General Abubakar to liaise with the former military Heads of State who refused to appear before the OPUTA Commission. This is the wrong approach.

Can the OPUTA Commission deal with General Danjuma’s past? General Danjuma’s career is very rich in the literature on ‘military in politics’ in Nigeria. Wouldn’t this have sensitized the President to rethink the decision to entrust the distinguished General with the assignment of restructuring the armed forces? I was with a retired General in Washington and a political scientist with a thorough knowledge of Nigeria. He asked in a very serious manner because we were going over publications on Nigerian military in politics and he knew what he was saying:

‘Professor, is the President actually serious With doing something about the military in politics?

I asked what he had in mind when he asked that question. He then asked:

What message was he trying to send to the young officers? That one could be a political general and Later become a Minister of defense?

Before I could make comment not necessarily a response to his observation, he asked in a pointed manner:

Why did he name General Danjuma, the Minister of Defense?

He went on;

‘Is the President aware of his record as an expert in the use of the army for partisan political end?’

What this colleague of mine was saying is that General Danjuma cannot be a role model for the up and coming apolitical army officers for democracy. This is a fact of life; General Danjuma’s military career is an integral part of the history of the military in politics in Nigeria. That past is part of the matters now being dealt with by the OPUTA Commission. Does the President not believe that the past is now haunting the distinguished political general of the 1960s and 1970s. Does the President not appreciate the Minister’s dilemma when he wanted to opt out of the public life? The Minister’s past should be haunting him.

Going over the speeches of Chief Harry Akande, the Chairman of APP Board of Trustees and General Robert Adeyinka Adebayo at the celebration of the life and times of Lt. Col. Francis Adekunle Fajuyi, one wonders what was going through the mind of the General? (See The Guardian July 31, 2001). One wonders how the military officers in the second coup led by General Gowon feel when the crisis of the past was recently played back during the celebration of the life of Lt. Col. Adekunle Fajuyi! I hope they all would read the moving speech of General Robert Adeyinka Adebayo and his invitation to all the military adventurers in politics who ruined this country to appear before the Oputa Commission and apologize to the Nigerian people.

General Danjuma’s past makes him a liability to the present administration with respect to the issue in the twin goal of promoting ‘a representative armed forces’ and ‘a depoliticized armed forces’, which formed the kernel of Chief Akande’s address at that occasion. If the President needs his advise, General Danjuma in recognition of his competence, which he demonstrated in the private sector since leaving the service and in appreciation of his position in the political dispensation the President should have found a befitting role for him to play. Nigeria would recall that it was the plan to demobilize in 1975 under his command as the Chief of Staff that precipitated one of the most violent bloody coup in February 1976 in which one of the most popular military Heads of State in Nigerian history, General Murtala Muhammed died. It is a contradiction in terms to use a ‘professional coupists’ to undertake the function of demobilization and reorientation of the armed forces. This was why General Babangida in one of his best moments decided to choose General Salihu Ibrahim in preference to a professional coupist, General Joshua Dongoyaro as the successor to another professional coupist, General Abacha as the Chief of Army Staff. The message he tried to send to the armed forces was drowned by the annulment of June 12 and the unceremonious retirement of the Service Chiefs on August 25, 1993, which left General Abacha to commence his entrance to the Presidential Villa.

Yesterday, the complaints were from the civil society and the solution they arrived at, is that a National Conference should be called to raise, discuss and resolve these issues. The commitment of the President to the northern led military is putting the President in a dilemma as to how to approach the issues raised by all the ethnic nationalities except the Arewa. The conservative leaders of the Arewa are unduly blackmailing the President. They are on record as saying that the President agreeing to a National Conference would be against the pact with them and would amount to a capitulation to the leaders of the southwest, his people who want a fundamental restructuring of Nigeria as their cardinal agenda.

From what has been happening to the country since 1993 and from what we are hearing from the OPUTA Commission about the past criminal regimes and regimes of criminals of the past military rulers, on face value it would look that the northern officers are unduly targeted. They monopolized the rule of Nigeria and they did not think there would be a day of reckoning. Those who are arraigning others and coming forward to talk and educating other Nigerians about the criminal past of the criminal regime are from the Arewa part of Nigeria. What they succeed in doing is that they have been able to educate Nigerians that there is dire need for a rethink on the part of the Arewa leaders in their dealing with other Nigerians. What Nigeria needs is fundamental restructuring of the Nigerian federal system including the armed forces. Simple! There is no reason why the leaders of the Arewa should erroneously interpret fundamental restructuring to mean the break up of Nigeria. For goodness sake, the fundamental restructuring of Nigeria including the restructuring of the armed forces and the break up the country are not the same thing.

This is wrong, as the end of such a conference would lead to ‘a more perfect union’. Otherwise, the President has no reason why he should be opposed to Nigerians through their accredited representatives talking. He should allow them to talk. What the proponents of such a Conference are advocating is that the decisions, which arise from such a Conference are so fundamental that only the Nigerian people would override that. This should be at a referendum and not be the White Paper writers in the Presidency or by the National Assembly.

Very soon, the Arewa leaders are beginning to see the Oputa Commission as another way of getting at them and reaping the benefits of a Sovereign National Conference. Is this why the President is not interested in increasing the power of the Commission? Nigeria expects more from President Obasanjo, if he really wants Nigerians to cope with the past human rights violations of the military regimes. This is why in terms of focus and effectiveness, the Oputa Commission would not compare with the pioneer settings in ‘a criminal regime’ and ‘a regime of criminals’, of Argentina in South America. This was recently applied to another criminal regime and ‘a regime of criminals’ of South Africa. The past in Argentina was a military unjust rule and the past in South Africa was about the unjust rule of a racial minority. Both compared with the military regime in Nigeria; this regime happened to be a northern affair since the creation of Nigeria. Why do the Gowons, the Buharis, the Babangidas and the Abubakars not want to come clean with their records of alleged past injustices to their fellow citizens? Most of their accusers are from the north.

We should call a spade a spade. We thought the nascent democracy in Nigeria understood what our past meant and was picking from these experiments and not beating about the bush. The past has come to mean the northern rule; Certainly not the rule in the hands of the Ndi Igbo who had been cleansed out of the politicalmilitary since 1970. President Obasanjo can still revisit the instruments setting up the Commission otherwise the noble intention behind the setting up of the OPUTA Commission could be achieved if the political generals who misruled the country would cooperate.

The issues so far raised at the OPUTA Commission as they affect the military regimes of the past ought to have convinced the President that he should allow Nigerians to talk about TWO critical issues.

How the Nigerian ethnic nationalities want to live together and

How the Nigerian ethnic nationalities want to be governed.

That after forty years of independence, Nigerians are still concerned with how they want to live together, and how they want to be governed. Does that not tell the President, the National Assembly and others especially our northern political leaders that things are not well with the existing political order and in the system of rule? These issues are not for the OPUTA Commission to handle; but they are at the root of the many revelations.

Those who would want to distort history should be told that our history demonstrates that no opportunity was created for Nigerian representatives to freely come together and tackle these two issues before and after 1960. What we had under the colonial regime was not as a free people. All those London Constitutional Conferences were for colonial peoples who had to be brought together to consider what the colonial master had already drafted.

It is a matter of record that all the post 1966 Constitutional Conferences or Constituent Assemblies were held under the auspices of the military, which set ‘no go areas’ for the various assemblies. Even where ‘no go areas’ were explicitly indicated, the military doctored the original documents beyond recognition by the original drafters of the political plan. Examples were the Constitution of 1979, 1989 and 1995. In fact the one of 1995 never saw the light of the day as Abacha’s handlers kept doctoring until he turned himself into a sole Presidential candidate, which was not provided in the Constitution. Of course the one General Abubakar handed to the elected officials in 1999 was a fraud so called by Chief Rotimi Williams. Nigeria is being governed under that fraudulent document today, hence all the monumental problems of governance.

The post annulment era in 1998 posed such a monumental opportunity for the two lingering political issues to be raised, discussed and resolved. Nigeria embarked on a foreign/military backed transition program, which produced a civilian regime. Of course we know today that this civilian regime has not been able to prove to be independent of the past. Is it not why President Obasanjo’s administration is proving unable to deal with the lingering political problems? Maybe so! President Obasanjo would have liked to leave some legacies behind if he were to use the second opportunity given him by God to serve as an instrument for dealing with these problems.

I will want to make a personal appeal to my friend, General Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida with the following words:

The Dele Giwa affair is now a matter for the alleged human rights violations. General, I beg you, you and Brigadiers General Akilu and Togun should stop using the normal court to obstruct the search for truth and impede the work of the Oputa Commission as it applies to the bombing of Dele Giwa. Rushing to court to stop the search for truth runs foul of this emerging right available to citizens whose rights to human dignity had been denied or violated in the past. The search for truth is a fundamental requirement in the healing process.

May I warn our military rulers of the past that they should be careful with the way they are playing games with the OPUTA Commission. These matters may snow ball and may end at The Hague, if they persist in using the normal court to obstruct the search for truth.

It is an irony that this was Chief Rotimi Williams who advised IBB in a highly reasoned brief in June 1993 on the need to actualize the June 12 and he turned him down with ignominy for reasons, which I would not want to go into here. Would he take advantage of the OPUTA Commission to bare his mind?

I did counsel General Babangida as a friend that he would not be able to control  the fall out from the annulment. He was too concerned with his safety and in the process he abandoned the country rudderless. If the June 12 had been actualized all these human rights cases involving Generals Danjuma, Buhari and Abubakar would not have arisen. That is not saying that what they accused of today are not valid. Certainly General Abubakar would not become an issue. The Buhari/Dikko cum Danjuma case would have been litigated in normal court in Sharia court if General Danjuma as a Christian would agree.

Again chasing the human rights violators anywhere under the sun is an idea whose time has come; you cannot stop it. You cannot therefore rush to Chief Rotimi Williams to help you obstruct the search for truth in a human rights violations case. The Abiola family should drag you to the panel, if you will not voluntarily go for denying Chief Abiola in particular and Nigerians in general their right to human dignity.

Other military officers, traditional rulers and other civilian leaders from 1966 to 1999 should follow the advice of General Adebayo and come to terms with their past and apologize to the Nigerian people. President Obasanjo showed the way; General Robert Adebayo followed on Fajuyi Day; General Gowon should follow. His harm was not only to the Ndi Igbo as the story of General Adebayo demonstrated that he offended the Yoruba people with the way he emerged in July 1966. Chief Emeka Ojukwu should do so; he should apologize for the harm he did to the people of the former Midwest region and to the people of the eastern minority states of Rivers, Cross River Akwa Ibom and Balyelsa.

I strongly advise all former military rulers at all levels to gladly take advantage of the opportunity created with the setting up of the OPUTA COMMISSION. They should use it NOW before they are subject to the International human rights tribunals. The right to truth about their pasts is not negotiable; they must come to terms with their pasts. They and other past rulers must come to terms with the country’s checkered past as the basis of moving the country forward. These past political generals must help, if they still love Nigeria and its peoples. It is not President Obasanjo who should force them or beg them to appear before the Oputa Commission to clear their names.