“Most of wars or military coups or invasions are done in the name of democracy against democracy”
– Eduardo Galeano
LUCKY Irabor is a 57-year-old four-star General in the Nigerian Army and the country’s current Chief of Defence Staff. Therefore, when he speaks about security in any ramification, whether of the country generally or the security of our elections and democracy, his opinion carries weight – a heavy weight – and we must pay attention. He says his constituency, the military, is under pressure to “compromise” the 2023 elections as widely reported in the media.
Right from Africa’s first coup in 1963 in the Republic of Togo, African militaries have always played interventionist roles in African politics under one guise or the other. The oft-repeated excuses for overthrowing democratically elected governments in Africa border on corruption and bad governance. But the history of military rulership in Africa shows that either the subsequent military governments performed not differently from the civilian governments they had overthrown or even worse as often was the case.
The late revered political economist, Professor Claude Ake, described the Nigerian experience as walking in a circle under civilian rule and marching in a circle under the military. The more you looked the less difference you saw beside the differences in the dressing codes of the rulers. One wore agbada or babanriga while the other wore a military uniform. The one accessed power via the ballot, the other via the bullet. As for the character configuration of governance, the accuser (the military) was often worse than the accused (civilians) in the areas of corruption, misuse of power and other indices of anti-people governance. That’s why there were often incidences of countercoups when soldiers would overthrow an incumbent military government accusing it of the same offences the military had accused the erstwhile civilian governments it overthrew.
More often than not, it was the frustrations experienced under a previous government that made Africans welcome the military with pomp and pageantry whenever they struck to overthrow elected governments. Wherever the ballots have failed, the bullets sometimes become the last resort to reset the craft of state but the objectives were hardly actualised in the aftermath.
So, when General Lucky Irabor publicly admitted that the military under his stewardship was under pressure to “compromise” the 2023 general elections it is a matter that deserves both prospective and introspective interrogations.
It was Chief Obafemi Awolowo who said in 1984 that “The worst civilian rule is better than the best military dictatorship”. Academics and and political pundits defer on this statement by the late sage. Personally, especially in the African context, I believe that the people deserve a good government irrespective of whoever is in power. However, it is a known fact that under a military regime, the government is not only unpredictable but also that the people have little or no say at all in how they are governed and what their interests should be. Everything about governance and the citizens is regimented in a draconian, unquestionable system of military fiat. Even the thinking of the citizens is attempted to be regimented and, definitely, all human rights are decreed out of circulation. The military put the society in a zombie straitjacket that stifled debate and opinion. That’s not a government style meant for a human society.
It is a matter of national interest – it should be – when the head of a country’s military comes out to say the institution over which he presides is under pressure to compromise democratic elections. A few questions naturally should arise rather than treat his exposé nonchalantly.
Who are those putting pressures on the military to “compromise” the elections? Secondly, what kind of “compromise” is he talking about? Is it to scuttle the democratic processes by overthrowing the elected government and return to military jackboot? Is it to be involved in the rigging machinery as we have seen in some of the elections since return to civilian rule in 1999? We deserve to know the details and not simplistically subscribe to a generalised statement about election compromise and its unknown purveyors like the notorious unknown gunmen currently ravaging the Southeast.
A rigging incident in the 2015 governorship election in Ekiti State allegedly involving one Brigadier-General Aliyu Momoh in cahoots with some notable chieftains of the then ruling Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, as leaked by one Captain Sagir Koli of the Nigerian Army, remains an indelible embarrassment on the institution of Nigeria’s military. To the best of my knowledge, that disgraceful rigging collaboration was never investigated and nobody was sanctioned despited public outcry. That, also, did not cause the election to be nullified by any legal processes. The aggrieved political Party, the All Progressives Congress, APC, did not have a united front on how to respond to the open rigging which bordered on voter intimidation executed mostly by military personnel as alleged by one of their own. While the governorship candidate of the Party, Kayode Fayemi, favoured rejecting the election result and challenging same at the elections tribunal, he was said to be overruled by the Party’s leadership. Captain Sagir Koli, the whistleblower, had to flee the country for his safety thereafter. A hero that ought to be celebrated became a fugitive on the run from the gaping teeth of injustice.
General Irabor owes Nigerians a duty to go the whole hog of exposing the dramatis personae behind the compromise pressure and relevant state institutions activated to deal with them accordingly. Whether the compromise pressure is to overthrow the government and scuttle the election and replicate another June 12 scenario or to partake in the rigging machinery of the political cliques, it is a treasonable felony and the CDS cannot convince Nigerians that such individuals should simply be overlooked or merely accorded a cursory attention or mention for public consumption.
As far as I’m concerned, I consider it a national security threat whichever side of the compromise coin we may be dealing with and should, therefore, not be shrugged off as an inconsequential happenstance. One would have expected the National Assembly, in the absence of presidential action, to take the allegation seriously and set up a powerful investigation committee that would be assisted by the CDS in unravelling the whole truths about the compromise threats. But we are in a country where the most crucial businesses of state are left unattended by those in authority until they become intractable. In leadership trainings we are taught that one of the most crucial elements of effective leadership is to deal with a matter before it becomes an emergency. This quality is egregiously lacking at several levels of leadership in Nigeria, I daresay.
But the biggest compromise with regard to the 2023 elections is if Nigerians decide to elect the ‘wrong’ president. At this juncture of its challenging history, Nigeria deserves only the best in terms of national leadership. A president that can actuate a unique revolutionary leadership to achieve the impossible in terms of strengthening institutions, building sustainable infrastructures, destroying the fabrics of poverty, corruption, and injustice. A president with the capacity, the competence, the creative intelligence and the unshakable will to make Nigeria the true giant of Africa beyond its population size.
That’s who Nigeria deserves now!
