We gave our military political adventurers every opportunity to make our lives better. Their best efforts returned a deficit, a landscape of misery, confusion and anguish…. Our democracy may not yet be perfect. Our elections are still cooked-up street bazaar affairs in many places. Rascals and glorified thugs get to contest elections and most times win and come into power. Our parties are still crude joint stock companies presided over by half-educated crooks, oligarchs and all manner of barons and opportunists.
Special to USAfrica magazine (Houston) and USAfricaonline.com, the first Africa-owned, US-based newspaper published on the Internet.
Dr. Chidi Amuta is Executive Editor of USAfrica, since 1993
The Defense authorities in Nigeria have confirmed that there was, indeed, a foiled attempt by elements of the military to oust Mr. Bola Tinubu from power. But the long-expected disclosure has not made much impact as news.
Our public is preoccupied with more fundamental existential matters to be captivated by stories about some coup attempt. Our long encounter with coups and counter coups and with military autocracies has made our consciousness shockproof to stories of coups. There is an abundance of violence and sensationalism to minimize any coup story.
In themselves, the numerous snippets of the coup tale are too discordant and foolish in places to warrant any serious attention even as sensational news. The tale is somewhat devoid of logic and tidiness. From the still unfolding variants and outlines of the story, the bloody plot was designed to neutralize Mr. Tinubu literally from Eagle Square on the 29th May,2023 inauguration event. It is therefore wrong ab initio to characterize the abortive gambit as a coup to overthrow the government of President Tinubu. It is a novelty in the annals of coup making in Nigeria or elsewhere to plot to topple a government that does not yet exist.
Tinubu was not yet in office or in power. He had initiated no policies or measures. He had made no appointments. The National Assembly had not yet been convened let alone elect its leadership. A coup attempt against a government that was not yet there is indeed a novelty even in our coup-riddled national history. It is hoped that the Court Martial process will reveal what the coup plotters would adduce as the justification for their plot!
Yet among those penciled down for assassination include the President, Vice President, Senate President, Speaker of the House of Representatives, Service Chiefs, and several others. Interestingly, neither the Senate President, House Speaker nor the Service Chiefs had been appointed as at the inauguration day. Penciling down yet unknown people for assassination is not exactly a sign of brilliant coup plotting.
So, which dispensation did the alleged coup aim to topple against what policies was the plot being hatched? Was it against Mr. Buhari who was witnessing his final departing parade or Mr. Tinubu who was just being sworn in? The snippets of the coup story that have been leaking since after the DHQ confirmation leave more confusion than clarity, logic or common sense. Was this coup just a crazy and drunken parade ground blood bath?
According to the tale, the Inauguration Day coup could not proceed because of insufficient funds and untidy logistics; the plotters had to source additional funds. This, according to the tale, is how some of the alleged top civilian conspirators got involved as cash cows to enlarge the coup’s piggy bank. Thereafter, the timeline of the plot was altered and shifted to Independence Day, 2024.
From the timeline of this narrative, what the Defense Headquarters has just confirmed is a coup plot that has been nearly four years in the making with shifting execution dates. Its original D-Day was shifted but the plot is said to have continued through the months without fear that Tinubu’s new National Security machinery may have got wind of it. The plotters obviously persisted in their enterprise and may even have enlarged their circle of conspirators.
It is perhaps a testimony of the thoroughness of the investigating machinery that the investigation of such a serious national security breach has lasted the entire life span of one presidential term (from 2023-2026!). And it is not yet over as the investigation is said to be about to go into a trial phase before a military court.
Of course, a plot involving the toppling of a government is a complex minefield. Nor should we make light of it. It is serious complicated business. A network of communications, meetings, financial flows, conversations, logistics and related conversations need to be unraveled and adduced as part of the evidence bank. Those trained in these things have their own pace of work, ground rules, methodologies and operational models.
The duration of this coup investigation and the timing of the Defense Headquarters recent confirmation are a bit worrisome. Why would a coup investigation that started soon after Tinubu’s inauguration only graduate into the Court Martial stage literally on the eve of the next election? What manner of investigative machinery needs over three years to investigate a plot masterminded by a bunch of dumb, mediocre officers, obviously motivated by greed and silly, narrow interests?
We all know that the eve of a succession election is the height of political opposition and desperate rascality. Everything becomes weaponized for political ends. It is usually time for an incumbent administration to look for regime opponents and accuse them of masterminding even the devil’s manifesto. What is the assurance that the Tinubu administration may not include its major opponents among coup plot suspects to face the planned Court Martial? That may be an extreme possibility but in the survival shark-infested pond of Nigeria’s political witchcraft, no possibilities are too extreme. For Nigeria’s “grab and run” political class, politics is warfare. And all is fair in a bush war!
In the political history of the country, coups are no novelty. Nearly five decades of our national life have been spent under dispensations brought into power by military coups. We have seen it all. We have seen bloody coups, bloodless coups, gentleman radio and television coups, palace coups etc. We have witnessed soldiers hijack popular grievances and emerge as champions of phantom half baked revolutions and messiahs of futile salvations. Our coups have created widows, orphans and deserted homes. In the process, instant billionaires have emerged from the ashes of fallen citadels of power. Therefore, norumours or prospects of coups can frighten us. None can excite us either. None can imbue us with hope in this hopeless land. A place so used to perennial anguish and extreme desperation cannot look forward to any more messiahs in uniform.
Coups have had immense and far-reaching impact on the society, economics and political configuration of the country. Paupers have come into immense fortunes from the proceeds of power acquired through coups. Due process and dialogue have been replaced for some time by commands, edicts, decrees, fiat and public flogging. The received structure of the country handed down by the colonialists and our founding fathers have been replaced by numerous states, geopolitical zones and regional power blocs all of which have not made the country any more united.
At some point, most African countries were under military dictatorships. They suspended constitutions, sacked parliaments, jailed or killed elected politicians and crushed people under jackboots. But in more recent times, a wave of democracy swept the continent, leading to the emergence of democratic administrations that tempted the world to begin thinking of Africa as a viable destination for democratic evolution. In recent years, threats from Sahelian Jihadists and economic hardship have led to the return of the coup as an instrument of political change. Guinea, Mali, Chad, Burkina Faso andSudan have all succumbed to the resurgence of military dictatorship.
Whatever has made coups attractive to some African states in recent times cannot appeal to Nigerians. We have developed a coup fatigue. Violence and death are too widespread among us for the prospect of killings to frighten or excite us. People are killed by bandits, terrorists and casual killers on such an industrial scale that the prospect of coups that target a few politicians for assassination cannot shock us.
In addition, we are inherently and intensely democratic because we are diverse, often chaotic and perennially seeking consensus on virtually every issue. Nothing is taken for granted because of our diversity. The best way to strike a consensus and move forward in Nigeria is through dialogue and consultation which only democracy guarantees. A society that is perennially in search of order and compromise is the best candidate for democratic governance. This is perhaps the reason why every military government that came into power in Nigeria had to quickly put forward a political transition programme to restore democracy as quickly as possible. That was the best way to engineer legitimacy and keep the people in calm anticipation of an early return to civil governance.
Nigerians have lived under diverse military authoritarianisms as well as an assortment of democratic governments. We know the difference now. We have tasted the decrees, the jackboots, the horsewhips, the intemperate language and often thoughtless reforms and regimental economic tinkering. Of course, democracy has yielded us lavish political oligarchs and their promises of paradise that never comes.
The atmosphere for racketeering in military coups no longer exists in Nigeria. For the new coup engineers, if the attraction is to shoot your way into prominence and instant wealth, forget it. Anyone who seeks public recognition and big money, you had better work hard, study hard, think deep and try to outdo the Dangotes, Elumelus, Otedolas and Adenugas either in enterprise, trickery, knowledge or smartness in some area.
In the alternative, those who seek prominence and prosperity through political office had better enroll in the political industry. Join one of these Alibaba parties or form your own private party and give it a public name. Proceed to outsmart your peers in political abracadabra by contesting and buying an election victory from INEC merchants and coming to power. Once you achieve that, the political system will surround you with the instruments of power: huge SUVs, a battery of state-funded hooligans as security, squads of praise singers in search of pocket change and myriads of contractors in search of ‘sweetheart’ contracts that convert paupers into billionaires overnight. In this political casino, coup plotting is too risky and expensive for any averagely smart Nigerian.
In the end, it all comes down to our overwhelming preference for democracy as the only means of achieving legitimate power, visibility and the influence that brings some prosperity and popular notice.
Therefore, those who seek power and wealth among us should dig into the deep mine of opportunities made available by free enterprise and a democratic polity. Army officers who are too impatient to rise through professional advancement and seek instant wealth and visibility should resign their commission, open a social media account and become influencers, TikTok clowns. Or, better still, turn into a microwave musician with no talent and just become a nuisance at city nightclubs. Sooner than later, they are likely to run into a trove of cash.
In this atmosphere, disturbing the peace of the nation through unproductive coup plots ought to attract even more serious punishments as it amounts to wasting the nation’s time and resources instead of exploiting other peaceful avenues of socio-economic advancement in the context of democratic advancement.
Our democracy may not yet be perfect. Our elections are still cooked-up street bazaar affairs in many places. Rascals and glorified thugs get to contest elections and most times win and come into power. Our parties are still crude joint stock companies presided over by half-educated crooks, oligarchs and all manner of barons and opportunists.
People’s rights still occupy the back stage in the priority list of our political class. Our emphasis is still on power and the skeletal framework of democracy, not on development or the welfare of the people. We pay lavish perks and provide too many creature comforts for those thrown up by ‘democracy’. Little resource is spared for infrastructure and the social services that make people in a democracy happy and proud to be free. But a bad democracy is far better than the best military despotism. Despite all the deficits and frailties of our democracy, we know enough to detest coups and other undemocratic forms of power quest and acquisition. We gave our military political adventurers every opportunity to make our lives better. Their best efforts returned a deficit, a landscape of misery, confusion and anguish.
More importantly, we have reached that point where our military establishment has to keep our officers and men busy in professional engagements to make our citizens safer and our nation protected. A nation with our size and consolidation of military tradition ought by now to take internal security for granted. For a military defense and security apparatus that gobbles up a huge percentage of the national budget to still be busy chasing bandits and hoodlums around our ungoverned spaces with gun trucks and pickup vans is degrading in 2026.
Our military should by now be sufficiently engaged in the foreign policy preoccupations of successive administrations to bolster Nigeria’s strategic presence — not just in Africa but in the global south. Our military establishment ought to by now be engaged in the cutting-edge research and development of the weapons they use to protect us. By now, our military ought to have outgrown the nursing of coups and the breeding of unconstitutional schemes.
Let there be no more doubt. Coup stories and tales no longer interest our public. Plotting to topple an elected government is no longer a show of heroism; It is shameful cowardice and reckless opportunism. Civilians who collude with lazy soldiers to support or fund coups are traitors of the cause of democracy. It is the height of “419” to make money from political office and seek to reinvest it in coup financing. That is worse than terrorism financing and should attract a more severe penalty.
Let us hope that the experts can quickly conclude this long-drawn and troubling coup trial and close the chapter of coups finally in our history. Enough is enough!
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