This article is an in-depth analysis of civil-military relations in Nigeria's nascent democracy. It chronicles the factors responsible for the Nigerian army's descent into the abyss—once a professional body—shortly after political independence in 1960. The author argues that much still needs to be done to effectively tame the military, which has indeed become a monster. However, unless the “contradictory pressures of depolitization and renewed political involvement” are curtailed, the hope of a consolidated democracy in Nigeria, and in virtually all other states emerging from military absolutism, will remain a mirage after all, despite all pretensions to the contrary.
Claude E. Welch Jr., “Civil-Military Agonies in Nigeria: Pains of an Unaccomplished Transition,” Armed Forces & Society21, no. 4 (Summer 1995): 593-594.
2.
See Peter M. Lewis, “Endgame in Nigeria: The Politics of a Failed Democratic Transition,” African Affairs93 (1994): 323-340.
3.
Ben Nwabueze, “Our March to Constitutional Democracy”, The 1989 Guardian Lecture, delivered on July 24, 1989, Guardian Press[Lagos]. See also Emmanuel O. Ojo, “The Military Political Transitions,” in Nigeria's Struggle for Democracy and Good Governance, ed. A. A. B. Agbaje, Larry Diamond, and Ebere Onwudiwe (Ibadan, Nigeria: Ibadan University Press, 2004), 63-82.
4.
For the debilitating impact of how successive regimes in Nigeria collapsed as a result of legitimacy crisis, see Emmanuel O. Ojo, “Governance and Legitimacy Crisis in Nigeria,” Research for Development18, nos. 1 and 2 (December 2003): 103-130.
5.
Jimi O. Adesina, “Civil Society and Abacha State,” Linear Communications Quarterly Review1, no. 3 (January–March 1989): 62-73.
6.
For the duration of all transition programs in Nigeria from the precolonial to the colonial and postcolonial state, see Ojo, “Military and Political Transitions,” 63-82.
7.
See Melissa Browns, “How USAID is assisting the Democratic Transition in Nigeria” (Development Policy Centre's Eminent Personality Seminar Series, Ibadan, Nigeria, June 20, 2001).
8.
See Nigerian Tribune[front-page editorial comment], May 29, 2001, 10-10. For a graphic illustration of the military era in Nigeria, see also Kunle Amuwo, “Transition Planning in Nigeria: A Critique of the Military-civil Transiting Variant,” Africa Development XVIII, no. 1 (1993): 87-98.
9.
In virtually all majorworks on the challenges of sustainable democracy in Nigeria and Africa in general,-there is a yawning gap in the literature on the debilitating effect of military impatience. See Samuel Decalo, “The Process, Prospects and Constraints of Democratization in Africa,” African Affairs91 (1992): 7-35; Bruce Baker, “Can Democracy in Africa be Sustained?” Commonwealth and Comparative Politics 38, no. 3 (1992): 25; and such other works like D. Beetham, “Conditions for Democratic Challenges,” World Policy Journal 9, no. 2 (1992): 40; and Emmanuel O. Ojo, “Democratic Transition in Nigeria: A Panoramic Overview of the Hurdles,” in “Governance, Democracy and Civil Society,” special edition, Ife Social Sciences Review(July 1998): 7-18. Likewise, International Democracy and Electoral Assistance (IDEA), Sweden, in a special publication titled Democracy in Nigeria: Continuing Dialogue(s) for Nation Building (Capacity Building Series 10, Stockholm, Sweden, 2001), equally noted a number of inhibiting factors, which space constraints do not allowme to enumerate. But the fact remains that all factors identified with the armed forces are still not given sufficient attention.
10.
See The News(Lagos, Nigeria), “The Grand Conspiracy: Disgruntled Politicians, Others Plot to Scuttle Democracy”, March 31, 2003, 21-21.
11.
See Boubacar N'Diaye, “How Not to Institutionalize Civilian Control: Kenya's Coup Prevention Strategies, 1964-1997,” Armed Forces & Society28, no. 4 (Summer 2002): 620-620.
12.
See Boubacar N'Diaye, “How Not to Institutionalize Civilian Control: Kenya's Coup Prevention Strategies, 1964-1997,” Armed Forces & Society28, no. 4 (Summer 2002): 620-620.
13.
For a discussion of the common criticisms leveled against the case-study method, see Robert Yin, Case Study Research: Design and Methodology, 2nd ed. (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 1994), 9-11.
14.
Yin, Case Study Research, 2-3.
15.
Van Evera cited in N'Diaye, “How Not to Institutionalize.” An earlier case for the various scientific uses of the case-study method was made by Arend Lijphart, “Comparative Politics and the Comparative Method,” American Political Science Review65 (September 1971): 682-693.
16.
Emmanuel O. Ojo, “The Military and Democratic Transition in Nigeria: An In-depth Analysis of Gen. Babangida's Transition Program (1985-1993),” Journal of Political and Military Sociology28, no. 1 (Summer 2000): 11-20.
17.
Emmanuel O. Ojo, “The Military and Transition”, The Herald(Ilorin, Nigeria), December 3–9, 1997.
18.
Niccolo Machiavelli, The Art of War, ed. Neal Wood, from the Ellis Farneworth translation, (New York: Bobbs-Merril); and Machiavelli, The Prince(1532; New York: Modern Library, 1956).
19.
ibid., 3-4.
20.
Cited in Adekanye ‘Bayo, “Machiavelli and the Military: The Prince and the Psychology of Empty Power” (Paper presented to the Defence and Security Group of the National Workshop in Planning Strategy for the 1980s, jointly sponsored by the Nigerian Institute of Social and Economic Research and the Federal Ministry of Economic Development, University of Ibadan, Nigeria, January 9-15, 1978).
21.
Femi Otubanjo, “Illusion of a People's Army”, Sunday Tribune(Ibadan, Nigeria), June 11, 1998, 4-4.
22.
See Andrew Cottey, Timothy Edmunds, and Anthony Forster, “The Second Generation Problematic: Rethinking Democracy and Civil-Military Relations,” Armed Forces & Society29, no. 1 (Fall 2002): 31-56.
23.
Samuel P. Huntington, The Soldier and the State: The Theory and Politics of Civil-Military Relations (Cambridge, MA: Belknap, 1957).
24.
Brent Abrahamsson, Military Professionalisation and Political Power(Beverly Hills, CA: Sage, 1972), 98-98.
25.
For an elaborate discussion of military professionalism, see N'Diaye, “How Not to Institutionalize,” 621-621.
26.
Cited in N'Diaye, “How Not to Institutionalize,” 621-621.
27.
Samuel P. Huntington, “Civilian Control of the Military: A Theoretical Statement”, in Political Behaviour: AReader in Theory and Research, ed. Heinz Eulau et al. (Glencoe, NY: Free Press, 1956), 381-381.
28.
Morris Janowitz, “Civil Consciousness and Military Performance”, in The Political Education of Soldiers, ed. Morris Janowitz and Stephen D. Wesbrook (Beverly Hills, CA: Sage, 1983), 55-80, esp. 74-76.
29.
See James Burk, “Theories of Democratic Civil-Military Relations,” Armed Forces & Society29, no. 1 (Fall 2002): 7-29.
30.
Samuel E. Finer, The Man on Horseback: The Role of the Military in Politics(Harmondsworth, UK: Penguin, 1962).
31.
See Harold Lasswell, “The Garrison State,” American Journal of Sociology46 (1941): 70-70; also cited in Cottey, Edmunds, and Forster, “Second Generation Problematic,” 31-56.
32.
Stanislav Andrzejewski, Military Organisation and Society(London: Routledge Kegan Paul, 1954).
33.
Andreas Schedler, “What Is Democratic Consolidation?”Journal of Democracy9, no. 2 (April 1988): 96-96.
34.
See C. E. Welch, “Obstacles to Disengagement and Democratization: Military Regimes in Benin and Burkina Faso”, in The Decline of Military Regimes: The Civilian Influence, ed. C. Danopoulos (Boulder, CO: Westview, 1988). For more on the sense of fear of the military as a potent threat to democracy, see Eghosa E. Osaghae, “The Study of Political Transitions in Africa,” Review of African Political Economy 22, no. 64 (1995): 183-97. For the same line of argument on the extent to which the military is a threat, see also David Goldsworthy, “Armies and Politics in Civilian Systems,” in Military Politics and Power in Black Africa, ed. S. Baynham (London: Groomhelm, 1986).
35.
David F. Trask, “Civilian Control of the Military in the United States”, Crossroads(a publication of U.S. Information Service, Lagos, Nigeria), May 1998, 1212.
36.
Ibid.
37.
Ibid.
38.
Samuel P. Huntington, “Civil-Military Relations”, in vols. I and II of International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences(New York: Macmillan and Free Press, 1968), 491-491. Also cited in Gboyega Ajayi, “The Military-Industrial Complex and the Electoral Processes in the U.S.: Influence Dynamics in Civil-Military Relationship in an Advanced Democracy,” inGovernance and the Electoral Process: Nigeria and the United States of America, ed. Oyin Ogunba (Ile-Ife, Nigeria: American Studies Association of Nigeria, 1997), 235-49.
39.
These five major issues were well discussed vis-à-vis Nigeria in an in-depth and extensive work by IDEA, Democracy in Nigeria, 175-175.
40.
See Pita Ogaba Agbese, “The Day After: Governance and Civil-Military Relations in the Postmilitary Era” (Paper presented at the International Conference on Rethinking Governance and Development in the 21st Century, Ambrose Alli Univerdsity, Ekpoma, Nigeria, June 24-26, 2003), 3-4.
41.
Claude Ake, “A Plausible Transition”, Tell(Lagos, Nigeria), September 25, 1995, 34-34.
42.
See Civil Liberties Organisation, advertisement in Nigerian Tribune(Ibadan, Nigeria), July 20, 1995, 4. The human rights body published the names of all the coup victims in Nigeria, both military officers and civilians.
43.
Cited in Kola Olufemi, “The Military Trap”, Linear Communications Quarterly Review(April-June 1998): 51-51.
44.
For the reasons that the First Republic was aborted by the military and the implications for stable civil-military relations, see Kayode Fayemi, “Dilemma of Civilian Control”, The News, May 14, 2001, 56-56, 57-57, and May 28, 2001, 52, 53.
45.
To emphasize the fact that African armies do not tend to be the most detribalized, Westernized, modernized, integrated, and cohesive institutions or the most disciplined agency of the state, as we have been made to believe by Western scholars, see Femi Otubanjo, “Soldiers in Ethnic Quagmire,” Sunday Tribune, June 3, 1990. An in-depth study of General Sani Abacha's administration between November 1993 and June 1998 when he died in power also established the same fact of rabid ethnicity in terms of appointments. For the boomerang effects, see Okechukwu Ibeann, “All the King's Men, All His Kinsmen: Ethnicity and Politics in Nigeria under Abacha,” Nigerian Forum(Lagos, Nigeria), January-February 1999, 29-45.
46.
For details of how Brigadier Babafemi Ogundipe's seniority and authority were repudiated for ethnic reasons, see Major General J. J. Oluleye (retired), Military Leadership in Nigeria (1966-1979)(Ibadan, Nigeria: University Press Limited, 1985), 38-44.
47.
See Adegbenro Adebanjo, “Descent into the Abyss”, Tell, January 22, 2002, 26-26, 27-27. They were retiring-into a life of opulence and eventually becoming emergent power factors in Nigeria. The implication is that military officers became more enamored of plum political jobs than of their careers. For details, see J. ‘Bayo Adekanye, The Retired Military as Emergent Power Factor in Nigeria(Ibadan, Nigeria: Heinemann Educational Books, 1999).
48.
On the plum jobs held by military officers coupled with the businesses they floated after retirement, along with their retirements into directorships of multinational corporations, as the basis of their becoming an emergent power factor in Nigeria, see Adekanye, Retired Military.
49.
See Adebanjo, “Descent,” 27-27.
50.
For the full list of the officers who were pulled out of the armed forces, see Thisday(Lagos, Nigeria), June 13, 1999, 15-17.
51.
See Rod Hague, Martin Harrp, and Shaun Breslin, Comparative Government and Politics, 3rd ed. (London: Macmillan, 1993), 367-367.
52.
The Oputa Panel was part of the Human Rights Violations Investigation Commission. Justice Chkwuodifu Oputa (retired) headed the commission. Itwas instituted to investigate all allegations of human rights violations during the military eras, as part of the efforts to consolidate the nascent democracy. The commission submitted its report on May 28, 2002. See Nigerian Tribune, May 29, 2002, 1, 2, 3.
53.
See National Discourse Column, “Civil Military Relations”, The Post Express(Lagos, Nigeria), January 11, 2002, 16-18.
54.
See Agbese, “The Day After,” 16-16.
55.
See the text of President Olusegun Obasanjo's speech at the Graduation of Course Seven National War College, Abuja, Nigeria, on July 24, 1999.
56.
For an in-depth discussion of the five D's of civil-military thought, see J. Bayo Adekanye, Nigerian Search for a Stable Civil-Military System(Boulder, CO: Westview, 1981).
57.
IDEA, Democracy in Nigeria.
58.
See the 1999 Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria(Abuja, Nigeria: Government Printers).
59.
Robert Fatton, Predatory Rule: State and Civil Society in Africa(Boulder, CO: Lyne Rienner, 1992), 4-5.
60.
Robert Fatton, “Africa in the Age of Democratization: The Civil Limitations of Civil Society,” African-Studies Review38, no. 2 (September 1995): 67-68.
61.
For an in-depth analysis of the democratic functions of civil society, see Larry Diamond, “Rethinking Civil Society towards Democratic Consolidation”, part 2, Crossroads, March 1995, 10-12.
62.
For details on the shortcomings of Nigerian civil society, see Emmanuel O. Ojo, “The Character of the Nigerian Civil Society and Democratization Process: The 1993 Presidential Election Revisited,” The Nigerian Journal of Political Behaviour1, no. 1 (June 1997): 104-112.
63.
R. T. Suberu, “The Travails of Federalism”, Journal of Democracy4, no. 4 (October 1993): 39-53.
64.
J. S. Furnival, Colonial Policy and Practice: A Comparative Study of Burma and Netherlands(Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1948), 304-304.
65.
E. Gyimah-Boadi, “Civil Society in Africa”, in World Democracies: Themes and Perspectives, ed. Larry Diamond, Mark F. Plattner, Yun-han Chu, and Hung-Mao (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997), 280-280; also cited in Nelson Kasfir, “Civil Society, the State and Democracy in Africa,” Commonwealth and Comparative Politics 36, no. 2 (July 1998): 1, special issue.
66.
IDEA, Democracy in Nigeria, 181-181.
67.
Daniel Wit, Comparative Political Institutions: A Study of Modern Democratic and Dictatorial Systems(New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1953).
68.
See Awake!(Benin City, Nigeria), “The Police: Why Do We Need Them?”, July 2002, 6-6.
69.
Newswatch(Lagos, Nigeria), January 22, 2003, 19-19.
70.
Newswatch, January 27, 2003, 19-19.
71.
Ibid.
72.
For details of the forms of corruption in the police force along with the reform strategies of 1999, see Emmanuel O. Ojo, “The Nigeria Police Force, Phenomenonof Corruption and Effective Policing in a Democratic Setting: An Overview”, The Jurist7 (May 2002): 11-28.
73.
See U.S. Department of State, Report on Nigerian 2000(Whitney M. Young Jr. Information Resource Centre, Public Affairs Section, Lagos, Nigeria, 2000), 15-15.
74.
Agbese, “The Day After,” 17-17.
75.
See Ojo, “Military and Democratic Transition.”
76.
See Tell, “How the Coup Plot Was Financed”, May 3, 2004, 6-6.
