Why two civilian governments were given the boot in 1966 and 1983 in Nigeria
By Ademola Adegbamigbe
Samuel P. Huntington, America’s political scientist, identifies three classes of coup d’état: breakthrough coup d’état, where a revolutionary army overthrows a traditional government and creates a new bureaucratic élite; Veto coup d’état, which happens when the army “vetoes the people’s mass participation and social mobilisation in governing themselves”. Huntington’s third coup is the Guardian coup d’état, where the stated aim “is usually improving public order, efficiency, and ending corruption…” Generally, as Huntington put it, “the leaders portray their actions as a temporary and unfortunate necessity.” That was the situation in Nigeria in 1966 and 1983, where, after the military struck, the civilian governments dissolved like a travelling circus leaving town.
On the 1966 coup, Dipo Kolawole, a professor of Political Science and current Vice-Chancellor, University of Ado Ekiti, in an essay, Political Violence: A Case Study of Ondo State, blamed two events––the intra-party squables within the Action Group, AG, which led to the declaration of a state of emergency in the region and the crisis that followed the Western Region election on 11 October 1965.
According to Kolawole: “The election was believed to have been massively rigged and this led to an unprecedented electoral violence in the region. Houses were burnt, property destroyed and human beings were murdered in cold blood. There was thus a complete breakdown of law and order. What is more, the effect was contagious. In a matter of weeks, the unrest spread throughout the federation.”
And when Major Kaduna Nzeogwu and his men struck on 15 January 1966, he declared that the aim of the Revolutionary Council was to establish a strong, united and prosperous nation, free from corruption and internal strife. “Our enemies are the political profiteers, the swindlers, the men in high and low places that seek bribes and demand 10 percent; those that seek to keep the country divided permanently so that they can remain in office as ministers or VIPs at least, the tribalists, the nepotists, those that make the country look big for nothing before international circles, those that have corrupted our society and put the Nigerian political calendar back by their words and deeds…” Nzeogwu and his cohorts never ruled as more senior officers took over the reins of power.
About two decades later in December 1983, coupists latched on a similar political situation to steal power. Brigadier Sani Abacha, who announced the coup said: “You are all living witnesses to the great economic predicament and uncertainty, which an inept and corrupt leadership has imposed on our beloved nation for the past four years. I am referring to the harsh, intolerable conditions under which we are now living.”
Abacha told the nation that the economy had been hopelessly mismanaged, adding that Nigeria had become a debtor and beggar nation where there was inadequacy of food at reasonable prices for the people who were fed up with endless announcements of importation of foodstuffs. Health services, according to Abacha, were in shambles “as our hospitals are reduced to mere consulting clinics without drugs, water and equipment.” The educational system, he said, was deteriorating at an alarming rate. Unemployment figures had reached embarrassing and unacceptable proportions. In some states, workers were being owed salary arrears of eight to 12 months and in others there are threats of salary cuts. “Yet our leaders revel in squandermania, corruption and indiscipline, and continue to proliferate public appointments in complete disregard of our stark economic realities.”.
When the army mounted the saddle of power on 1 January 1984, the nation did not experience full blown democracy until May 29, 1999. An attempt to restore democracy between 1991 and 1993, was sabotaged by the soldiers themselves when the High Command annulled the June 12 presidential election, Nigeria’s freest and best election in its history.
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Patrick Agbobu
8 February 2010 (5 weeks ago) 17:06If you make democratic change and process impossible, you make a violent change innevitable and desireable. If through injustice and abuse of power, one human being tries to tyrinise it over another, it is a power usurped from God and resistance is a prime duty. Injustice is a wrong and a wrong must be righted. All these were said by Edmund Burke hundreds of years ago, in support of the American war of independence. These statements were true then and are more through today. We should all pray and hope that the intervention, will be patrioltic, through, selfless and brief to bring in sanity to the polity.