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UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs |
NIGERIA: Focus on the dominance of retired generals in politics
LAGOS, 30 January 2003 (IRIN) - Prior to elections in 1999 that ended more than 15 years of military rule in Nigeria, soldiers had steered the ship of state in Africa's most populous country for all but 10 years since its 1960 independence from Britain.
When Olusegun Obasanjo, a former military ruler, won the elections four years ago, many analysts justified his victory on the grounds that someone with a military background was needed to keep adventurous soldiers in check while Nigeria made the transition to sustainable democracy.
Now, with Obasanjo seeking a second four-year term the ruling People's Democratic Party (PDP)'s candidate at presidential elections on 19 April, two of his leading opponents are retired generals.
General Muhammadu Buhari, candidate of the main opposition All Nigeria People's Party (ANPP), was the man who toppled the elected government of Shehu Shagari in December 1983. He ruled for 20 months before he was in turn overthrown by his then army chief, General Ibrahim Babangida.
The presidential candidate of the National Democratic Party (NDP), Ike Nwachukwu, another retired general, was a foreign minister in the Babangida regime.
Retired soldiers are not only making their presence felt in presidential politics. Several others had won elections in 1999 either as senators or representatives in the national legislature. The ANPP's Mohammed Lawal, a former navy chief, was elected governor of Kwara State in central Nigeria. Dozens more are now seeking election as governors, senators, state legislators or local council chairmen.
"There are two ways to look at the development," Ike Onyekwere, a political analyst, told IRIN. "It's either that these former soldiers who had been military rulers have become converts to democracy and want to be active participants, or that having tasted power they have become addicted to it and now want it by other means."
At a recent public lecture, Wole Soyinka, a Nigerian writer and Nobel laureate, described the trend as a bad omen for Nigeria. What he saw emerging was a process whereby former military rulers, "usurpers of our national will", were now using the means and clientele built up during their years in power to continue imposing their will on the populace.
"The military elements are changing their studded boots for shuffling shoes," Soyinka said. "They have accumulated so much wealth in office that they can afford to bankroll political parties with tentacles in every locality."
He singled out for particular criticism former military ruler Babangida, who annulled elections in 1993 that had been adjudged free and fair by local and international observers and plunged Nigeria into its worst political crisis since civil war in the late 1960s. Babangida has admitted nursing presidential ambitions, but wants to await an auspicious moment. He is reputed to be the main backer and financier of at least four leading political parties.
In 1999, Babangida had provided substantial support for Obasanjo that made his eventual victory possible. His imprints and those of his close friend General Abdulsalami Abubakar, Obasanjo's predecessor, are very visible in the current government.
Retired General Mohammed Aliyu Gusau, who was Babangida's national security adviser during his eight years in power, is performing the same function for Obasanjo. General Abdullahi Mohammed, who was Abubakar's national security adviser, is now the chief of staff at the presidency.
With such a constellation of retired generals at the forefront of Nigeria's democratic dispensation, local newspapers have dubbed the coming elections "the battle of the generals". Some analysts fear that military tactics may even be unleashed in a desperate attempt by various factions and interest groups to win power, and fear what the consequences might be for Nigeria's fragile unity.
Buhari, who appears to be the main challenger to Obasanjo, has promised to give the president "the fight of his life" in the polls. With his recent antecedents, there is a likelihood that his candidacy may further serve to polarise Nigeria along ethnic and religious lines.
A Muslim Hausa-Fulani from the north, Buhari was reported by local newspapers to have supported the adoption of the strict Islamic or Shari'ah legal code by several northern states in the heat of religious riots that rocked the city of Kaduna in early 2000.
In his bid to have a second term in office, Obasanjo has secured the support of his Yoruba home region in the southwest. The southwest had felt cheated by the annulment of the 1993 vote, which businessman Moshood Abiola, a Yoruba, had been poised to win. That victory, scuttled by a military then dominated by Hausa-speaking Muslims, heightened tension between Yorubas and northerners, resulting in periodic outburts of ethnic violence.
The southeast, dominated by the Ibo ethnic group, has produced presidential candidates with military backgrounds in the form of the NDP's Nwachukwu and Emeka Ojukwu, who as a colonel in the Nigerian army declared the secessionist Republic of Biafra in 1967.
Both men have pitched their campaign on the need to end the perceived marginalisation of Ibos since they lost the civil war more than 30 years ago. Ojukwu opened his campaign as candidate of the All Progressive Grand Alliance last week by urging his supporters in the Ibo heartland of Aba to "be good Ibos before being good Nigerians".
Nigerian analyst Bade Adejare sees a danger that these military elements may be uncompromising in their attitude to politics and may further polarise the country of 250 ethnic groups and 120 million people. With Nigeria's unity shaken by ethnic and religious violence in the last three and half years that has claimed thousands of lives, Adejare doubts it has the capacity to withstand further violence without risking disintegration.
"That certainly will not be the shelter from the storm which the presence of the generals in politics was supposed to provide Nigerian democracy," he told IRIN.
Themes: (IRIN) Governance
[ENDS]
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