As General Mohammed Sani Abacha allegedly took his final salute to the sweet, carnal tomb which eventually drew him to his final tomb, the dominant, conservative, but disgraced military-in-power, including both its retired and still serving wings, took a rear-guard step. They re-mobilised to ensure that the hurriedly-planned short transition programme which followed Abacha’s demise did not end up in the hands of the real democratic forces, “the bloody civilians”.
Even the sworn-enemies among the lot agreed on one thing: A truly civilian democracy with all the idealised principles and practices of popular democracy was dangerous to the class interests of the ruling mili-garchy, as we can call them - which included their para-military wings and the accomplished “civilian” hustlers allied with them. That was why, despite their struggles against one another in the previous decade, a General Ibrahim Babangida could enter into an informal alliance with a General Theophilus Danjuma - or even a General Muhammadu Buhari, to some extent - to work together to ensure the victory of the neo-martial forces between 1998 and 1999. When they recruited their former boss, General Olusegun Obasanjo, to impose him on Nigeria as president in 1999, the neo-martial forces were quite clear about their mission, despite the democratic flirtations of some key members of the group in the previous few years: It was to make democracy work strictly, and only, for them. This informal agreement included some key retired para-military elements, such as the retired police officer, Chief Tony Anenih, and a retired Customs officer, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar, just to cite, for now, two examples. They were aided and abetted by key politicians, who we can call the “petit-militariat”, those who had made good through martial patronage or were created, sustained and reproduced by the emergent militariat.
What came out of this equation were a retired military president, Obasanjo, and a para-military vice-president, Abubakar. The unofficial party leader, Anenih, was also of the retired para-military. Therefore, as General Abdusalami Abubakar handed over power to General Obasanjo on 29 May 1999, the retired military was taking back with the right hand what the serving military had offered with the left hand. In the party of predators, the lioness almost always makes the kill for the lions and baby lions to feast on. The way in which this coup against the sovereignty of the Nigerian people was executed must fascinate even the uninitiated. From the apparent conspiratorial - not discounting his ill-health - sudden-death of Abacha, to the release of an already-convicted (though unjustly) Obasanjo - while the one who was still on trial for winning a popular election, Abiola, remained in gaol - to the terminal “cardiac-arrest” that killed Abiola and the emergence of Abdulsalami Abubakar, through to the “victory” of Obasanjo, the militri-cians showed their civilian wing the value of their training. For them, given the global push towards democratisation, democracy became yet another means of accessing power, while election would remain a coup-d’êtat by other means. The legitimacy they lacked as soldiers-in-power they now have as retired-soldiers-with-political-power. And they have successfully ramified their structures throughout the country. Thus, the process of de-militarisation and re-democratisation of the polity also became a process of the militarisation of democracy. Even though for most of their public lives the coup-democrats have always aimed their guns at the very heart of a budding nation, let us give dishonour to whom it is due, they have always aimed well! Now, the “democratic” militariat has exploded on the political space like a micro-waved bag of popcorn.
Welcome to the age of the coup-democrats!
Let us take one man and one recent party “election” as illustrations of the triumph of democracy as coup-d’êtat by other means. First, few persons best illustrate the contradictions of Nigeria’s current democratic rule like David Bonaventure Alechenu Mark: retired Coup-General, accomplished mutineer, fabulously rich ex-martial governor and minister, resolute anti-democratic soldier who, when he fell out with a more ambitious and far more ruthless rival, General Abacha, had to go on exile and was even compelled to take a “sandwich course” in pro-democracy struggle under the logic of “my-enemy’s-enemy-is-my-friend”. There is more on his vital vitae. The man who allegedly threatened to personally execute Basorun Moshood Kashimawo Abiola for daring to claim a democratic mandate fairly and freely given by millions of Nigerians is now not only a distinguished Senator in a democratic assembly, but also the Senate President in a “democracy” which he, for many decades, wielded his gun against.
The Senate president represents the new class of trigger-happy soldiers and coup-generals who have transformed themselves into the category of coup-democrats. Indeed, for this class, politics is truly levying war by other means.
Despite being a great representation of a gross social phenomenon, Mark is, understandably, not alone; his old comrades-in-arms are with him. In the Senate where he presides, and around the country in which he gallivants at will, you will almost always find a few of his old lieutenants, other retired soldiers who also initially came to power through the barrel of the gun, and have since come to prominence and unexplained plenty and even assumed democratic power. Some of them have also made it into the otherwise hallowed chambers of the parliament – obviously at the expense of the people for whom the parliament was supposed to have been created.
Such is the inflationary conceit that fuels the ambitions of these coup-democrats that, at a point, rumours were rife that Mark and his men were even getting ready to assume the presidency, if President Umaru Yar’Adua’s election was invalidated by the Supreme Court. The Senate President was alleged to have deployed his own arsenal – a natural inclination, if you ask any student of military strategy – to ensure that the Supreme Court nullified the election so that he could be heralded into the Aso Rock Villa. If this had happened, Mark’s detractors insisted, the man and his other ex-coup-makers would have ensured that the process of another party election was annulled, and that Mark became the candidate of the misnamed ruling party, the Peoples Democratic Party. This alleged manoeuvre came after he had “snatched” a curious victory at the appeal court out of the jaws of defeat at the election petitions tribunal.
But, truth be told, if David Mark is emblematic of the rot in the Nigerian system that allows the most formidable foes of human liberty and democratic governance to be, not just beneficiaries – which, ordinarily, is not logically contradictory – but the dictators of the new terms on which human liberty would be trivialised and democratic governance operationally invalidated, he counts only as one who is symptomatic of a new path that is leading Nigeria to a new perdition – and perhaps the end of her history.
But before I deal with another manifestation of the reign of coup-democrats with a “civilian” example, it is critical to note that the emergence of Mark marks the very logic that has motorised the PDP from early in its birth. If you go back to the formation of PDP, you will find that even though two civilian attempts at national salvation preceded and heralded it, the party eventually answered to the political bastardy that had always defined the Nigerian equation. The first of the civilian attempts was indirectly or remotely linked to the creation of the PDP, while the other was directly linked to it. The first was the attempted alliance between the core northern conservatives, led by Chief Sunday Awoniyi, and core southern progressives, led by Chief Bola Ige, to form a national party - to end the regular relapse into military rule and “push Nigeria forward”. That collapsed as the core conservative northerners formed the All Nigeria Congress, ANC, while the core progressive westerners formed the People’s Consultative Forum, PCF. Towards the end of Abacha’s infamy, another attempt was made to form a broad-based, multi-ethnic, national political party. From the earlier formed Group of 18 (G-18) of northern politicians opposed to Abacha’s self-succession bid, the initiative transformed into the Group of 34 (G-34) which included politicians from all over the country. G-34 directly metamorphosed into the PDP. But as the party moved towards consolidation in the immediate post-Abacha period with an informal agreement that the next president had to be a southerner, the core militariat became troubled with the possibility of the emergence of one of the leading progressive elements within the G-34 as the president of Nigeria in 1999.
Helped along by the strategic folly of the civilian politicians, the militricians made their move. From that period, a certain logic which had always driven that conservative core of the Nigerian political ruling elite overtook the rest of the history of the PDP. The core conservative ruling elite of Nigeria, given a mixture of their training by the British and the political culture that threw them up, have never left their fate to the people. Unfortunately, as the truly civilian politicians left or lost the PDP to the militicians who hijacked the party and later began to recruit the likes of Babangida, Anenih, Nzeribe and the rest, to the party, they forgot to drop “People” and “Democratic” from the name of the party.
By the time the military wing of this elite, described by Professor Ali Mazrui as the “lumpen militariat”, hijacked power and superseded the civilians wing, that fraud became militarised and further elaborated. In its recent full consolidation, many of their old enemies have even been sucked-in and acculturated, and many more than ever witnessed at any stage of Nigeria’s history have now become totally sold on the logic of democracy-as-coup by other means. That election has become a formal but violent decision-making process by which a cabal chooses for the population through electoral fraud should therefore not be a surprise. It even goes beyond this. For the most account, the coup-democrats force their decision down the throats of real democrats and the ELECTORATE by acting as the SELECTORATE in very violent processes. But some of the time, and in some constituencies, the coup-democrats assume so much “sovereignty” that they “peacefully” select the elect in place of the electorate. The processes of actual voting by the concerned constituents, in such instances, are simply circumvented. The recent selection of Dr. Charles Soludo as the gubernatorial candidate of the PDP in Anambra State is a good example of the total exasperation of the coup-democrats with real elections and their full embrace of the logic of the barracks in democratic politics.
Democratic politics has become a mutiny of sorts and even the inducted coup-democrats like Soludo, a former university teacher and former Governor of Central Bank, have warmly embraced this option. The former CBN Governor is particularly illustrative of how this virus can spread and turn even civilian politicians to militri-cians. While some of Soludo’s opponents were mobilising their constituents for victory at the party polls, Soludo was concentrating his energy on mobilising the Abuja-based PDP SELECTORATE - “the real electorate” - the party lords and enforcers, the reigning coup-democrats in the PDP. With a party leader, Tony Anenih, here, a party chairman, Prince Vincent Ogbulafor, there, acting in concert with the most scandalous and shameless element ever mistaken for an “electoral umpire”, the INEC boss, what need had Soludo of the members of the PDP in Anambra State? This was not about public political contest for genuine popularity, but a conspiratorial enforcement of narrow interests; it was a mutiny. Therefore, first, Soludo’s “war cabinet” - without doubt, boasting of a financial war-chest - created a stalemate, and then seized the initiative from the party voters and announced Soludo as a “consensus” candidate for the party ticket, without seeking anyone’s consent in the Anambra wing of the party. They are “the consensus”! When strategically placed military officers conspire among themselves and seize power through a successful coup-d’etat, no one demands evidence of the “consensus” that was reached by the rank and file before they struck.
For coup-democrats, “winning” elections is no longer about mobilising the electorate generally, through, first, the representation of key beliefs and ideas about the total social organisation of life in the affected constituency, then, the selling of these principles to the voting constituents, and, lastly, the activation of key interests and interest groups of all shades and colour to win the majority of votes. This route has become a most tortuous and unappealing one to the coup-democrats. You no longer need the electorate for an election, coup-democrats need only the selectorate - and the violence that they can command to enforce “popular compliance”. The accompanying violence that we have witnessed cannot be a surprise because its instrumentality is core to the structural mentality of the military and the militariat. They mobilise key powerful elements, whether members of the constituency or not, and sometimes also assemble violent enforcers with enough muscles and ammunition to by-pass the electorate and deliver the “votes”. It is a most unprecedented psephological assault on the very foundations of democratic politics. But it is the reality we are living with in Nigeria today. And the sooner those still pretending that this is a civilian democracy based on popular election approach this reality properly, the better for them.
All the logics of the barrack have now been fully transferred to the civic space by the coup-democrats under the watch of their former commander-in-chief, General Olusegun Obasanjo – who, in 1999, was forced on Nigerians under a democratic disguise by other Generals, particularly Generals Ibrahim Babangida, General Theophilus Danjuma, Abdulsalami Abubakar and Aliyu Mohammed Gusau, in concert with the politicians of the martial order. Elections have since moved not only from routine competitive thievery and the old bizarre bazaar to a “do-or-die affair”; and electioneering campaign has become an advance on “enemy territory”, with bazookas landing in the homes of electoral opponents, while routine summary executions are carried out in the living rooms of nay-sayers, opponents and their ilk – from Marshall Harry, Aminasaori Dikibo, and Bola Ige to Funso Williams and Ayodele Daramola. Democracy is supposed to count votes and subjects, as the late French deconstructionist, Jacques Derrida reminded us. Under the coup-democrats, democracy counts arms and cash – and dead victims! Little wonder then that the PDP tagged its rally where Obasanjo vowed to “capture” Lagos State in 2003 the “Tsunami Rally”.
What are the implications of the advent of the coup-democrats and what is the meaning of their ascendancy for the future of Nigeria? These questions are pertinent as the current democratic experiment enters its cul-de-sac and begs to be rescued from the emergency democrats - even if that rescue already appears too late. The questions are even more critical particularly for genuine democratic forces who took all the beatings and made all the sacrifices that forced the soldiers officially back into the barracks in May 1999. Genuinely democratic forces, particularly a faction of the power elite that has crystallised an intellectual vision of a modern and better Nigeria, and consequently articulated and elaborated same and have consistently pursued these ideals, must realise that genuine democracy has not only been lost to the dogs, even the dogs have lost it to the swine.
Those who still doubt the capacities of the coup-democrats for turning liberal democracy into a limited warfare should be reminded about the pattern and nature of “troop deployment” in the Ekiti State case. When the Speaker, Dimeji Bankole, requested that the pretence should end and that the serving professional managers of violence, the army, should be summoned to secure the PDP’s planned theft of the people’s mandate in Ekiti State, the whole country rose to condemn his “honesty”. When the Ekiti State AC also unveiled the “strategy meeting” where Brigadier-General Oyinlola of Osun State allegedly gave instructions of the deployment of violent fraud, some expressed doubts. But while Dr. Kayode Fayemi, the AC gubernatorial candidate, was bothering with mobilising votes and key interests to show that he would be the better governor, his opponent - with the particular aid of that rapscallion in the Senate in whose charge was the required violence - was mobilising key persons that would ensure that the electorate did not matter. When the electorate intervened to show that it mattered, Oni and his federal enforcers, summoned the reprehensible supposed umpire, who had briefly pretended to a measure of conscience, to Abuja and gave her the marching orders. Step in line or…! Like a zombie whose illogic and “obey-before-complain” ethic Fela so cerebrally and lyrically dissembled, the woman went back and did as the Abuja-based commanders instructed.
The electoral field-commander had met the General Officer Commanding the Selectoral Forces, the chairman of the misnamed Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, Dr. Maurice Iwu, one of the biggest dangers to democratic rule that ever featured in our national history. Initially, Iwu was a bat-man for the generals of coup-democracy; then, he became the head of their brigade-of-guards for electoral felony. But in recent times, he has been promoted to the GOC, First Selectorate Division. Together with practising coup-democrats, they form the most successful and the most accomplished class of mutinous “democrats” that has prevailed best in the current global democratic chart.
From Brigadier-General Olagunsoye Oyinlola (retd.) in Osogbo, Osun State, through Air Commodore Jonah David Jang in Jos, Plateau State, to Admiral Murtala Hammanyero Nyako (retd.) (infamous for his tripartite first ladies!) in Yola, Adamawa State, the coup-democrats have taken over the national space. They have found that it is far less risky and far more rewarding to plan “democratic coups” than the martial mutinies that brought most of them to public life. If you fail in this ascendant “democratic coup-plotting”, you run no risk of execution or even jail, as you do in the other. Indeed, even when it is apparent to all that you have executed a mutiny against the sovereignty of the people through violence and fraud during elections, you can mobilise sufficient resources to run a reconnaissance mission as part of combat intelligence around INEC and the electoral tribunals and move in the cash-troops for the kill. Between text-messages and cash-messages, tribunal judgments are deliverable – as it allegedly happened in Osun State with the first election petitions tribunal. And those who charge that this is not the best show of constitutional democracy can go and swim in River Benue!
As we move towards 2011, it has become evident that the coup-democrats are eviscerating whatever ground is left for civil democratic politics and have recruited most practising politicians into their fold. Why bother with campaigns and subjecting yourself to the “enemy” – the electorate – when you can find co-conspirators, recruit physical violence, awe and shock your opponents and have your desired number of “votes” announced by INEC and later consecrated by the tribunals? A few times, they even end up with more “votes” than there are potential voters - even in their already cooked-up voters’ registers! Whether voters register or not, the coup-democrats will “register” votes.
As we have witnessed, blood-letting is one of the tactics of the coup-democrats to awe and shock. Every election is a “mother-of-all-battles”. Already, newspapers have reported a surge in the sale of ammunitions as we approach the 2011 elections. Not only that. There is also a rise in the importation of armoured vehicles, the so-called bullet-proof cars, in preparation for the imminent “war” in 2011. Some newspaper columnists revealed not too long ago how a Texas, US-based automobile company has been benefiting from this craze. The company’s executive vice-president stated that the company had an order for about 100 bullet-proof vehicles from Nigerians with some of the vehicles costing between $400,000 to $600,000. Some even asked to pay whatever amount was demanded for a duplication of President Barrack Obama’s latest presidential armoured limousine! But the company declined. When you add the question of where all the arms and ammunition recently surrendered by the Niger Delta militants would end up, you shrink in total awe of the shock that awaits the nation. The coup-democrats know that they cannot win the consent of their people through actual elections in 2011 – I mean, what would be the excuse to vote for President Umaru Yar’Adua? - so they are mobilising to impose their will through guns, guile and guise. For every potential voter, the coup-democrats are recruiting a bullet. As they watched the arms and ammunition surrendered by the Niger Delta militants, the coup-democrats must have been ecstatic. Every cache of arms is a potential “voting-block” for the coup-democrats. Therefore, let those planning to campaign and mobilise the people and validate the people’s will in 2011 be prepared. The real “voters” are already being purchased and whatever is left of that selectorate – INEC officials and tribunal members – would be purchased when the time comes.
It is therefore evident that the real democrats who want to contest elections in 2011 should be prepared for a contest with the coup (armed) “democrats”, the new class of militri-cians armed to the teeth and for whom a “campaign” is a term in the military dictionary. Indeed, the word is derived from the plain of Campania in the old Roman empire where the armies of Rome performed annual wartime operations. So, the “political-soldiers” can claim that campaign is originally their stuff and turf; because in military science, a “campaign” is applied for “a large-scale, long duration, significant military strategy plan incorporating a series of inter-related military operations or battles forming a distinct part of a larger conflict often called war”. A campaign period is therefore a time during which “a military force conducts combat operations in a given area” – which is often referred to as area of operation, AO. Who will contest that this is the culture that the leading militri-cians have imposed on our “democratic heritage”? And that, in their every day conduct, they shout to us directly and indirectly, in the lexicon of the colonial military: “Apes obey!”
As long as we remain “apes”, and march “left-right” to their say-so, the coup-democrats will continue with their successful run. The choice is ours to mobilise the “victory-or-nothing” mantra of the coup-democrats as honestly articulated by President Olusegun Obasanjo, for which we have perhaps wrongly maligned him. As the vintage coup-democrat reminded us, fellow Nigerians (!), what we are confronted with, as 2011 approaches, is a DO-OR-DIE AFFAIR!
Just in case you are still in doubt, watch the martial rhetoric of even those who have vowed to join the battle to face-down the coup-democrats. A newspaper reported the “threat” of the leading members of the Coalition of Democrats for Electoral Reforms, CODER, when they met Senators recently in Abuja: failure to effect the necessary electoral reforms, CODER warned, would result in “Mutual Assured Destruction”, MAD! That is the coda!
We should be searching for bunkers….
googletag.cmd.push(function() { googletag.display('content1'); });
googletag.cmd.push(function() { googletag.display('comments'); });
googletag.cmd.push(function() { googletag.display('content2'); });