Of Godfathers, Infallibles and Indispensables in the Nigeria Problematique. Part 3

Ademola Araoye

Ademola Araoye

The contrived political culture of violence is characterized by the reign of ruthless Godfathers, ancient infallibles and outmoded indispensables that have translated the playbook of the criminal underworld into a paradigm of governing. Central to this tradition of the annihilation of the sanity of the public sphere is the entrenchment of a villainous national elite criminal syndicate as the pivot of whatever went for the national process. In that dispensation the institution of violence and the militarization of the totality of the Nigerian state space was inevitable. Everything was also negotiable in transactional relationships as the pecuniary interests of all engaged: the individual, the group, and of the class, prevailed above all else. Nothing is spared, including the judicial system.  In this scenario of the pervasive infiltration of politics of the rentier state into the systemic nerves, the notion of justice had become farcical as it has tottered toward a calamitous disintegration. Samuel Okutepa, a Senior Advocate of Nigeria, lamented that judgments of the courts, like the system in which it is located, defied logic and justice, while noting further that the legal profession appeared to be bifurcated along political lines. Thus, attorneys engaged in a charade where they take sides based on who pays their bills rather than upholding the Rule of Law and democratic principles. The sad evaluation of the state of the judiciary was reinforced by Chidi Anselm Odinkalu who summed up that “the federal high court has become a the place where law falls into disrepute and Lady Justice suffers repeat rape… given the pay-as-you-go judicial dispositions that can only originate in the bedrooms of politicians”. Even fly-by-night structures such as Global Network for Justice and Equity as well as bodies like Center for Reform and Advocacy had been established by professional hirelings to defend habitual malefaction of those who supervise judicial malpractice as standard procedure, Odinkalu adds.

In the evolved universe denuded of Constitutionalism and a respectable legal process, the emerged dystopian planetary order expressed itself in a transformation of the national psyche in the direction of the habitual deployment of the vehicle of the bastardized legitimate force of the state for partisan acquisition of power and illegitimate violence in the factionalized social discourse at all levels. Against this background, the military produced its unique variant of the Godfather-General at the apex of the structure of a pathetic paradigm of governance that spawned and revolved around senior foot soldiers of the Godfather-General as governor-proxies in the fiefdoms of the states put under their control. Constituted and constructed outside the framework of the abandoned guiderails of a disdained Constitution or any legal framework or rational parameters other than brute force, the absolute loyalty of the senior proxy-subaltern operating at the lower echelons of the state was to the Godfather-General at the pinnacle of the power pyramid. And they were amply rewarded for this. In this peculiar firmament, armed robbery of political power became fashionable and tolerated, even legitimized, in the illogic motorized by the agenda of partisan appropriation of the state space and force condoned, even acceptable, in social interaction. Both, legitimate force and its equivalent in untamed and headless violence in civil society, though conflated, more decidedly, were acceptable as the main currency of engagement in the state’s political life and social economic processes. The armed robber political interventionist, now hailed by all, was king! The momentous incarnation of the Lord in stiffened khaki was real and was here to stay.

This distortion of fundamental values and foundational ethics of the troubled nation-in-being also found expression in the ascendance of the utility of lethal weaponry to back demands for legitimate rights by aggrieved social aggregations and resistance by the radicalized civil society groups across constituencies. Ethnic militias were born out of this dynamic and, paradoxically, endorsed by hitherto disciplined but frustrated prominent leaders in politics and society. This development was not unexpected. It was a direct adjustment of a deeply factionalized society and re-socialization to cope with the jarring trajectory of Nigeria’s (d)evolution and, at the same time, metamorphosis into the formal playground of armed elements. This social transmogrification endured within the context of a converted armed forces appropriated as an instrument of partisan control of the national social, economic and political space mainly by the dominant contending hegemonic group. Grouse laden civilian circles as well as movements in the South took a cue from these developments. These unruly non-governmental armed forces understood that the eminently imbalanced and unjust status quo could neither be reformed nor be rationally reasoned into achieving the required radical fundamental changes for structural equilibrium, equity, and social justice. Violence had become legitimized as the main currency of social and political interaction. Force had been elevated as the first and last resort instrument at the highest level of Nigeria’s statecraft.

These contortions of a state process were manifest in the recent bafflements of the distressing universe of Nigeria. As Omo Omoruyi adumbrates in the insightful x-ray of the dynamic of partisan hegemonic control in the Tale of June 12, the convergence of two cliques of Northern origin entrenched in the top hierarchy of the military aligned with its civilian political variants that included preeminent northern intellectuals and foremost traditional and ethno-religious rulers, the god-ordained infallible under various names, constituted one formidable group committed to an undisputed permanent hegemonic domination of the country. It was this regional strategic imperative, however warped, of the dominant Godfathers, infallibles and indispensables, both in society and critically in the caucus of the armed forces who were not too secretive about their inflexible sectional agenda driving the partisan logic of state appropriation agenda that derailed the June 12, 1993, presidential elections. This was even though the elections had been acknowledged as the fairest and freest elections ever held in Nigeria: a cauldron of intense mutual recriminations and animosities of the major constituent stakeholders. June 12, the episode depicting the sheer wickedness and carelessness, utter insensitivity to the halting pulse of a struggling nation by a clique, brazen contempt for the threat posed to the longevity of a tired nation, and irresponsible hubris and disrespect of the dominant partisan forces in the military to the larger interest of the nation, thus became the most critical and irredeemable watershed. It shoved the nation in the uncertain direction of the dissolution of the flickering hope for the survival of a caricature of Nigeria in any form. June 12, aimed at rekindling hope, cemented the indelible imprimatur of the nakedness and hypocrisy of the Nigerian state as a pretend nation. In the unambiguous message painfully recorded by Omo Omoruyi, June 12 happened because one man “Sani (meaning General Sani Abacha) was opposed to a return to civilian rule. Sani could not stand the idea of Chief Abiola, a Yoruba, becoming his Commander in Chief at all: Meanwhile, Sani seemed to have the ears of the Northern leaders that no Southerner, especially from the Southwest, should become the President of this country.” And, for the same illegitimate cause, one of a generation of new Generals threatened before his Commander-in-Chief to shoot the democratically elected President. What a country! What a nation! What a people!

It is instructive that the clique-dominated military that operated explicitly as arrow heads of the partisan agenda of the North was unrivalled by any other force, movement or resistant group within the military. Officers from other constituencies, sworn to the protection of the unity and inviolability of the state had unquestionably imbibed the narrative of “one nation, one destiny” under an open, even if unspoken northern hegemony. Paradoxically, it was against this myth that the entrenched northern domination reached a crescendo under the Babaginda administration and seemingly attained its most treacherous apogee under the dark goggled barely literate Sani Abacha, a professional coupist who was not considered to be in the league of the brightest officers in the force, and who ruled with disdain for the cultivated intellect and with unimaginable depth of impunity in wielding power.  The hope of a Nigeria underpinned by a sense of fairness and justice was further quashed by the connivance of major characters from the South East to scuttle the transfer of power to a Yoruba in the June 12 saga. And of course, the Yoruba, as usual, produced opportunistic and historic villainous sycophants of their own. The emergence of a Yoruba as President thereafter was a calculated but time bound concession to placate the South West by the still scheming North. It was a tactical respite that allowed the northern hegemons to regroup with adequate time to plan the next move, especially as the Yoruba antecedents of the favored retired General only meant anything to him when convenient. Since his unflinching loyalty to the status quo was unquestionable, he was a safe bet.

Again, the cycle of venomous national process unfolded. As the 2007 democratic elections drew near, the political process in Nigeria was heated up, as the North, the South and the South-South, all clamored to take over the Presidency from a reluctant outgoing President, a Yoruba from the South West. Victor E. Dike observed that as the 2007 election got nearer, the drumbeat of power-shift (or retention) politics got louder, irritating, insulting, confusing and destabilizing. The politicians from North and South were throwing political punches at each other, as each is claimed ownership of the Presidency. The pitch of the political trumpet got higher among ethnic politicians that furiously and arrogantly thumbed their noses at each other, swearing in the name of their political gods that the world would cave in if the presidency were not dropped on their doorstep. In their bid to achieve their selfish purpose, each region was stereotyping and insulting one another. And the minority groups within the regions were equally claiming the presidency for varied reasons. While some of them were saying that the presidency should be given to them because they feed the nation. Others argued that they had been politically marginalized and, therefore, should be allowed to occupy Aso Rock, the seat of federal power. However, Dike highlights, the irksome noise caused political birds of unlike feathers to flock together to actualize their selfish zonal ambition without anyone taking cognizance of the damages their actions were doing to the democratization process and the unity of Nigeria. In this Nigeria epitomizes the reality of a pretend nation, in an almost Hobbesian setting of contrived anarchy of all against all. It is in that context that corruption in all manifestations and across the lines of cleavages, tying the Godfathers and indispensables together, is a dark blessing holding the country together. Without corruption, the organic glue holding the powerful national elite criminal syndicate and their conniving spiritual guides together and that oils the running of the caricature of faux democratic governance, Nigeria would seize to be.

The role of the military in undermining the sense and vision of a Nigerian national being leads to a generalized appreciation of the military in post-colonial environments. The armies of post-colonial African states are political armies. Kees Konnings and Dirk Kruijt define them as military institutions that consider involvement in –or control over-domestic politics and the business of government to be a central part of their legitimate functions. These armed forces started off as tools for repression and to slow down the agitation for the creation of the postcolonial state. Often, they were used by the colonizers as repressive tools against political dissent from pre-independence activists.  The relationship in the beginning was hostile especially, as the political elites considered their compatriots in the military unsophisticated stooges. The application of the concept of civil military relations in the post-colonial era presents clear difficulties and paradoxes. Since independence, the military have become more politically sophisticated and have been co-opted as the pivot of the intra societal struggle for hegemony in the new state.

 

Two factors are critical to the understanding of these paradoxes in civil-military relations in the post-colonial state. Since society in the post-colonial state is unpacified and relations between the constituent bodies in society can range from deep suspicions to mutual antagonisms, in a Schmitian sense, the continued integrity and autonomy of constituent groups in the state are of paramount concern to those groups contending in the political space represented by the state. This character of intra-societal relations elicits forcefully a security dilemma to all the constituent units in the state. This dilemma, which, against the background of the pervasive disaffection with the political process in the post-colonial African state is real, largely remains unresolved. These tensions in society are reflected in the political contestations surrounding the structure of the military and the turbulence that characterizes its internal dynamic in the post-colonial state setting. The military therefore lack internal cohesion as an autonomous institution, and it is closely implicated and integrated into the broader schisms of civil society. These problems closely replicate the internal incoherence in society.

 

The colonial origins and legacy of the military in the post-colonial African state greatly constrain its ability to realize its potential as a truly national institution. This legacy carried over by the military into the newly emerging African nations was in accordance with their respective colonial philosophies and was their direct by-product. One of the most distinctive characteristics of African armies is the way they were disconnected from the socio-political environment.  Two strands of tendencies are manifest. In one group of post-colonial militaries belong those armies that are barely more than ceremonial outfits. These military formations, mostly in francophone post-colonial state, lack the leverage to mount autonomous operations. They are designed to depend heavily and exclusively on their French mentors for logistical and operational support. They are tied by formal political agreements between their governments and the colonial power to assure the subservience of the post-colonial state as well as incapacitate any political challenges from them to the political dispensation or influence the course of political developments. Thus, the relationship between such militaries and civil society is based largely on a jointly shared role of assuring the perpetuation of neo-colonial domination of the state. The Africanization of the officer corps may have provided opportunities for the hegemonic group to take over command positions in the military, yet being functionally incapacitated, divisions in the military did not alter the calm in relations with civil society. Such militaries were often insulated from the political process. When a perceived need arose to act, French forces often came to change regimes or reinstate those removed by the ceremonial armies. In recent times in Cote d’Ivoire, France armed, kitted and fought alongside rebels Forces Nouvelles to remove President Laurent Gbagbo from office. President Gbagbo had tried to roll back the domineering influence of France in that country. It also used its influence to ensure that the deposed President and his wife were handed over to the International Criminal Court at the Hague to be tried for violations of human rights. The pro France rebel forces and Alhassane Ouattara, imposed as President largely through the machinations of France and its cohorts on the continent, has been protected by French forces and intelligence services. France’s attempt to consolidate its strangle hold on its former colonial entities, despite official pronouncement of its intentions to disengage from the internal politics of its former colonies, has failed woefully. The French strategic playbook has been shredded by recent developments in the Sahel that have culminated in the formation of the Confederation of the States in the Sahelian (CSS). As noted elsewhere, the outcome of the presidential election in Senegal that took place on 24 March 2024 was earth-shattering. The result of the election unimaginably moved Senegal from the enshrined Sedar Senghor-instituted conservative state in the orbit of France in West Africa to the rank of a vanguard state mobilized by radical pan-Africanism. France is thus on a back foot in West Africa.

 

To be continued

 

* Professor Ademola Araoye is a retired official of the United Nations and former Director of Abuja Leadership Center, a TETFUND Center of Excellence in Public Governance and Leadership at the University of Abuja. He is author of Sources of Conflict in the Post- Colonial African State (AWP, 2012).