IBB reveals why Nigeria suffered 5 military coups

FORMER Military President, General Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida, IBB (retd), has justified military incursions into governance in Nigeria.

IBB, who explained why the country had five coups between 1966 and 1985, added that military governments had more development projects than civilian governments.

In extracts from Part Three, Chapter Five, pages 104 to 115 of his controversial Autobiography: ‘A Journey in Service’, launched last Thursday, he highlighted the motivations behind military interventions, the historical context of coups in Nigeria and Africa, the structural reforms initiated by military leaders, and the on-going challenge of ensuring responsible governance.
He wrote:

When I started working on this autobiography a few years ago, I knew that, as someone who had participated in military coups, I would, at some point, need to reiterate my position on the problematic issue of military interventions in politics.

Anyone, who reads descriptions of me, particularly in foreign publications, as a ‘serial coup plotter’, or as ‘the moving spirit behind most military plots in Nigeria’, would think that my 35-year military career was devoted entirely to coup plotting!

One foreign journalist, Karl Maier, whom I readily obliged with an interview, ‘returned’ the favour in his book: ‘This House Has Fallen’, by claiming that ‘coups seem to run in my blood’!

He was not the only one with that mindset. In its reporting of the coup that brought me to office as head of the government, one international news magazine headlined its story: ‘The Triumph of the Trouble-maker’! I will not bother responding to the discriminatory implications that I did no more than plot coups as a soldier.

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This volume bears testimony to the modest contributions of a soldier who stood up to play the role assigned to him by destiny at a notably peculiar moment in his country’s history. And as I will show in subsequent chapters of this book, it’s a role (my mistakes and shortcomings, notwithstanding) that I look back upon with pride.

Resurging coups in Africa

When I started writing this book, I had also hoped that I could say that coup d’etats in Africa are now a thing of the past. But, thirty years after I left office, sadly, seven African countries, from across the Sahel to Sudan, are under military rule.

First, let me restate my position on the matter. Military coup d’etats, that is, overthrowing an incumbent government, whether as redemptive or corrective measures, are an aberration and should never be encouraged. Indeed, coups in the context of a democracy such as ours are not just unacceptable; they are illegal.

Appropriate sections of the Nigerian constitution insist that ‘Nigeria shall not be governed, nor shall any persons or group of persons take control of the Government of Nigeria or any part thereof, except in accordance with the provisions of the Constitution’. So, the question should be this: if these are the provisions of our constitution, how did we end up with five military coups since 1960, the last of them being the 1993 Abacha coup?

Why we had coups in Nigeria

To put these in perspective, we would have to go back to our history as a nation and the challenges that have defined and shaped our collective existence.

But first, the larger picture. Military takeovers are not peculiar to Africa or isolated to Nigeria. The history of post-colonial Africa shows that where civilian leadership and the political class have failed to live up to their billings and progressively build upon the legacy of the colonialists, the military attempted to step in. In some cases, these interventions have been nothing short of revolutionary…

The point to note here, of course, was that the sordid failure of a particular ruling class created the need for an inevitable change. A pattern where the political class virtually abdicates its responsibility to the governed typically created the conditions that led to several military interventions in post-colonial Africa. Also, certain coups, given the peculiar political and socio-economic circumstances, are genuinely revolutionary, especially where the masses support the coup and where the coup-makers, beyond their own rhetoric, embody the people’s hopes and aspirations.

But the risks were always there because, to go back to Colonel Ibrahim Taiwo, whom I referred to earlier, a ‘good’ coup is only a successful coup, and a failed coup is a mutiny and high treason! Again, before I am misunderstood, let me reiterate my position: I do not suggest that military interventions, which can be undue interferences in the politics of a country, are replacements for incumbent governments. Nor do I imply that the military is the guarantor of good behaviour; far from it. All that I suggest is that coups don’t just happen.

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They are sometimes inspired by extraneous conditions that demand interventions. Generally, the abject failure of civilian governments is the cause of coups. Therefore, a fairer assessment of why the armed forces seized power was not to be found in their success or failure to deliver once they took over but in the various factors and events preceding the intervention. Our example at home in Nigeria bears me out.

Without necessarily justifying the actions of the young majors of the 1966 coup, it’s possible to argue that the conditions that the young majors were compelled to face, even without sometimes asking for it, drove their actions. And to understand how and why a group of young, idealistic and a political UK-trained army majors violently overthrew an elected civilian government of Sir Balewa, it would be proper to examine the circumstances that led to the 1966 coup briefly.

Meddling of politicians

The first of the many problems of those years was the unwise meddling of politicians in Army affairs. As the powers of the Balewa government were weakened by crises like the Tiv riots and Western Nigeria’s Operation wetie, it relied on the military to quell what were essentially ‘political’ unrests.

Almost as if hamstringing their powers, the politicians looked up to soldiers to restore some control in ways that may have unwittingly politicised and radicalised the young officers.

One should also remember that these were highly skilled young officers who, by the nature of their orientation, were nationalistic by training and idealistic by inclination. For instance, no one remembers now that Major Chukwuma Kaduna Nzeogwu, who led the 1966 coup, was the first Nigerian officer to be trained in military intelligence and who served as the military intelligence officer during Chief Obafemi Awolowo’s treason trial.

In that capacity, he would have had unrestricted access to some of the most vulnerable information of the rot of the civilian administration. Obviously, many of the young officers were conversant with information that would have infuriated them, such as the flaunting of wealth and squalid crookedness displayed by politicians.

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When Chief K. O. Mbadiwe moved into his landmark castle at his home in Arondizuogu, ‘the Palace of the People’, opened by Prime Minister Tafawa Balewa, and the press complained about its extravagance, Mbadiwe told the public off by jocularly reminding everyone that his new home was indeed for the people! First Republic Finance Minister, Chief Festus Samuel Okotie-Eboh, was also in the eye of the storm. One unforgiving retired colonial officer, Harold Smith, described ‘festering Sam’ in unprintable words and ended up designating him as ‘synonymous with corruption in Lagos’!

First Republic mistakes

There’s no question at all that the politicians of the First Republic made many mistakes, traceable, presumably, to some of the defective institutional structures they inherited and the poor choices they were forced to make. However, it can also be argued that Indian political leadership inherited similar structures at independence in 1947 but managed to create complex but different choices that led the country along a different path.

Several studies have shown that some of the fundamental issues that have continued to plague us to this day as a nation, as, for instance, the mindless interplay of ethnicism and religious identities, can be traced to the First Republic. As the situation in the country deteriorated in the days leading up to January 1966, many of the young majors came under the influence of radical southern intellectuals, particularly at the University of Ibadan, who were openly calling on the military to save the country from disintegration.

In some cases, the call for intervention resonated with incitement and even instigation. In other cases, politicians secretly called upon the military to intervene. This enthusiasm for change partly explains why, when the young majors, driven, as I have said earlier, by a genuine patriotic desire to correct the political mess in which the country had found itself and decided to overthrow the civilian Balewa government, there was an initial sense of national relief before the situation was mishandled.

Surprisingly, with the possible exception of the Abacha coup of November 1993, each of these military takeovers was welcomed with jubilation and relish and subsequently legitimised by public opinion in ways that would have impacted the psyche of the military. And this brings me back to my earlier point: coups don’t just happen. The failure of civilian governments is the cause of coups. They derive from deplorable conditions created by a political leadership that abdicates its responsibility to the people. Conversely, the best antidote to coups is sound, transparent civilian governance that constantly reminds itself that governance’s prime purpose is the people’s welfare. Curiously, in witnessing the jubilation that accompanied military takeovers, I took away a few lessons (a subject to which I shall return later) from the hypocrisy of the political elite that recurred throughout my career.

Some of the most vociferous opponents of military rule were those who first stepped forward to request and lobby for benefits from the system after successful military takeovers. In other cases, some of the same members of the elite class who secretly advised on the extension of military rule were the same to accuse the military of a ‘hidden agenda’ to perpetuate itself in office!

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Between these groups were genuinely patriotic Nigerians who offered their services, sometimes in return for nothing save for helping to grow and develop the country. For the umpteenth time, let me repeat: the days of military rule in Nigeria are over. Neither do I suggest that the military doesn’t have its share of blame for how we got to where we are today as a nation. But to indicate beyond that that military intervention was irredeemably disastrous is grossly unfair.

Those who are quick to accuse the Nigerian military of being no more than spoilt brats who merely fought to perpetuate themselves in power must never forget that as trained military officers, we, too, invested our lifetime, our youths, hopes, dreams and energy in the promise of a great country. For instance, the one thing that has hardly been adequately recognised in our history is the gallant peace-keeping roles of the Nigerian military worldwide…..

But, even if we ignore these roles and concentrate solely on military interventions in government, the Nigerian military has much to be proud of. Indeed, in certain respects, military leadership did more than the political class in the growth and development of our country. For instance, the military did creditably well in confronting the fundamental reform matters that have plagued us since 1960.

The military’s attempt to resolve the issues of the structural balancing of our polity, the choices between a federal, unitary or even a confederal structure, and the problems of creating states deserve to be recalled. And as I stated earlier, it should never be forgotten that General Ironsi’s attempt at a unitary government, self-delusionary as it may have seemed at the time, was an attempt to address this structural challenge. Similarly, the still-born 1967 Aburi Accord was an attempt to redress the challenges of (to use a more politically correct word) restructuring!

Although Aburi failed, among other things, for reasons that had to do with the absence of legal experts and the shortness of the available two days to thrash out the complex problems of national balancing at a difficult time in the country’s history, General Gowon made up for it by creating, as I stated above, on May 5, 1967, 12 new states that assuaged some of the anger of the moment.

Then, as if to consolidate on the gains of that momentous event of the creation of states and further unify the country after the successful execution of the Civil War, General Gowon initiated, again, as I stated above, the National Youth Service Corps Scheme on May 22, 1973, to foster, in his own words, ‘unity and peaceful coexistence of Nigeria at a period when the country was just recovering and at a low ebb’.

…The cumulative strides of those years were genuinely noteworthy, that is, the Gowon years through the Muhammed-Obasanjo administrations, the creation of states and the corresponding stabilisation of the polity, the monumental infrastructural developments that opened up the country, and the full implications of the free educational programme. While it’s difficult to fully assess their impact on the socio-economic growth and development of the country, it is sufficient merely to state that those measures were not only inspiring, but they laid the foundation for succeeding governments, civilian and military, for many years after.

IBB reveals why Nigeria suffered 5 military coups