Rethinking the coup option
By
IN capitalising on the failings of the Presidency and attempting to rationalise those shortcomings as an enabling environment for jettisoning the prevailing constitutional order, President Olusegun Obasanjo's adversaries are entrapped by the country's flawed notion of federalism. Pivotal as the Office of the President of the Federal Republic is, mere incompetence of the occupant, or a catalogue of his inadequacies and breaches such as the House of Representatives has done, is neither sufficient nor necessary to instigate a disbandment of the democratic structures, as would appear to be the ulterior motive of the hidden manipulators of the House.
As I had indicated in previous columns, if we all paid critical attention to other tiers of government, our national condition since 1999 might not have been so hopeless. Presumably also, the frustration felt by the opposition would not be so deep as to trigger off thoughts of a putsch. If the President's antagonists devoted a quarter of the time they have spent plotting against him on the goings-on in their respective local government areas and states of origin, there would be far fewer stories of thieving councillors and their chairmen; of absentee and downright incompetent governors; of squabbling and distracted state legislators. In a sense, therefore, the President's antagonists do not come across as apostles of true federalism. Should their wishes be realised, our federalism would be much worse off, beating a retreat once more in the face of a military-backed unitarism.
Those who are flirting with the idea of a change of government, other than by constitutional means, have been remarkably careless in their study of the country's fault lines and available hardware of mutual destruction. This is no longer the Nigeria of December 31, 1983 or of August 27, 1985 when coup broadcasts were made and Nigerians trooped out in celebration. Ours is now a radically altered country: sensitised, divided, hardened and merciless. In the past decade or so when satisfactory answers have not been found to the National Question, there have been dark hints of a break-up of the country: a rejection of the amalgamation of 1914. The attitude was formed largely because succeeding military regimes rather than being messiahs turned out to be brigands. They arrested the country's development. They exacerbated ethnic cleavages. They looted the treasury.
That treasury, then as now, was/is stuffed with earnings from crude oil. Let those who are toying with the idea of a coup go to the Niger Delta and test the mood of the people. Let them smell the anger in the breath of the oil people of the country; let them see women, girls and boys who are ready to die - and have been dying - in order to take charge of their divine bequest. Let the coup dreamers put their ears to the ground and hear the reverberations of arms cache. Let them ask whether they would have that part of country to govern if ever they made the fatal mistake of striking. Once upon a time there was Yugoslavia. There is also a place called Somalia. In neither case was there a textbook format to the chaos and anarchy that descended upon them. Let the coup dreamers in our midst learn of the intellectual ferment in the various regions. Many are now asking whether the oil-rich Gulf states are as large and populated as Nigeria. They are asking whether one or two oil-producing state(s) in Nigeria is/are not bigger than Kuwait. Those who ask these questions must be wondering just what another military regime might do, if not to deepen the agony of those with natural resources, especially because of the ethnic flavour of Nigerian military coups.
It is a great pity that even when President Obasanjo repeatedly announces, and to an extent demonstrates, his commitment to a united country, his short-sighted adversaries, who ironically have a lot more to gain from a united Nigeria, are working furiously to unhinge the basis of our oneness. Those who are wishing for an unconstitutional change of government should read again the resignation resolution passed by the House of Representatives. Inconsistent as some of the assertions are, they nevertheless signal a potential source of revolt: without oil money, even the House cannot function. Yet those from whose lands the oil wealth is derived are in penury. Elsewhere in the country where people are ready to self-actualise, they are being bolted down by medieval forces whose atavism is a major source of the country's squalid condition. Unless we are firmly resolved to keep out the cowboys and to strengthen the ramparts of democracy, not in the mode of the current self-seeking shenanigans, there could be deep regrets down the years.
In their fury, those battling President Obasanjo have either forgotten or failed to learn some lessons. Yet we need to remind ourselves of the intrinsic evil of the option they are contemplating. Besides the infrastructural and structural damage wrought by earlier years of military rule, one of the cardinal consequences of soldiers in politics is the psychological destruction, or more mildly the psychological malformation, of a generation of Nigerians. This lies at the root of some of the social problems the country now faces and the even more daunting difficulties it will face in the future. Anyone born and/or raised in Nigeria since the end of the civil war in 1970 has been socialised in a milieu of extreme authoritarianism, where arbitrariness governs life.
The generation in question knows nothing else but a life of failed and dilapidated infrastructure. There are no models of efficiency that they know of in the public domain. They know nothing of ECN; but they know that to get electricity, you do not have to rely on NEPA but your generator. Tell them about P & T and how letters posted in one remote corner of the country would get to the addressee in another remote corner and the generation in question is at a loss. The generation knows nothing of well-equipped government hospitals. The generation believes that any stretch of road, whether intra-state or inter-state, without a pothole is an aberration. This is the generation that has been socialised into believing that hard work, patience and diligence are not the prerequisites for success in life. Why study hard when you can buy your grades? Why stress yourself when you can access cheap oil money? Why work when you can steal? Why execute a contract when your father, uncle, brother, or some other connection, can cover up? Why can't you look the law in the face, spit at it and walk away in a jaunt? Because your connections will reprieve you. Is it any surprise that lawlessness is unabating in our society?
Military rule is like a mind-bending drug. Nigerians were given lethal doses for nearly 30 years. In the last three-and-a-half-years or so, since it hasn't been administered, the drug continues to show signs of its earlier potency. We must be wary. Unless we have a vision of future society in stasis or retrogression, we must never relapse into the mind-bending drug. The generation born after 1970 is just now getting into middle-level manpower positions. A good many have fallen off as cretins: armed robbers, drug dealers, 419ers and a motley crowd of hardened criminals. If the best of their generation knows nothing other than the lingering state of disorder, that generation is unlikely to be an agent of reformation and desirable change. If they roll on with the mindset of arbitrariness and the hangover of military authoritarianism, by the time they reach mid-life, they become set in their ways and there will be further trouble for us as senior citizens, and our own children will vainly be in search of good examples. It is years if military rule that created the mistaken impression, now often mindlessly dramatised, that democracy is a conferment of a tablet of inalienable rights without duties" the reckless interpretation that democracy is a licence to even to be a criminal, and not be subject to sanctions.
Successful or not, coups hurt the military class as well. Wasted lives of officers with widows and orphans to be shunned and neglected by surviving colleagues. Truncated careers (find out the trauma of those who suffered sudden retirement). The jealousies, the destruction of esprit de corps, the perpetual sense of insecurity (because of the ambitions of others), the corrosion of professionalism. All that for what purpose? Power that you will soon lose. Wealth? The value of which you will soon find eroded because neither the coup plotter nor their successors can manage the economy. A coup is analogous to an armed robbery operation. Potential putschists must ask themselves whether they want their bodies displayed ignominiously when their bid fails and they are killed. Or whether, they want to smell the whiff of ephemeral success and still face inevitable ruin.
Nov 2002