Transcription

1 Page 1 of 10! SHOULD THEY BE WELCOME? (1-5) WHY NOT? By Professor Omo Omoruyi Research Fellow, African Studies Center, Boston University POLITICIANS OF CIVILIAN AND MILITARY ORIGIN? I recall sometime immediately after independence there was some influx of young northerners coming to Lagos as young officers in the Federal Civil Service and there was a banner headline in one of the Lagos newspapers describing what they saw in the following words: The Mallams are coming! To which an answer was provided thus: The Mallams are Welcome. That was the right thing to do. Their manner of dress was different. They stuck to themselves. Now to the subject of this essay, what shall Nigeria do with the Generals who are Coming into politics in large number? Should these Generals be welcome? If not, why not? And how can we stop them, if we want to stop them legitimately? I M RISKING BEING MISUNDERSTOOD I am taking on an issue I had wanted to avoid lest I be misunderstood, as making a case for someone everyone knows is my friend. There is no way I can avoid talking about the matter sooner than later, because the question has been thrown to me many times in any lecture I give on Nigeria. The coming of General Ibrahim Babangida has become the hot news in Nigeria and among Nigerians abroad. I have been trying to dodge this issue for personal reasons. I can no longer dodge it. Why not just face it now? There have been many fingers pointing already as a result of my recent essay on General Victor Malu, Admiral Augustus Aikhomu and General Ike Nwachukwu on different contexts and it would appear that I was indirectly answering the question. I shall start this essay by responding to some of the issues in the paper by one Rudolf Okonkwo who wants me to divide the Nigerian politicians into those with military background and those with no military background and support the latter. I am referring to his column in the

2 Page 2 of 10 Nigeriaworld.com of May 16, 2001 with a headline, In Search of Ethics in Omoruyi s Papers. Quite frankly my first inclination when I saw the article was to ignore it, as the content had no relevance to the issues in my papers. This was what I did to other articles of his in the past. In the past just as he did this time he never takes the totality of the paper before his comments. He selects portions and engages in misrepresentations. In the past he misrepresented facts in a party called for me by the Edo people to launch my book at Boston University and called me and the Edo people under whose auspices he was there all kinds of names. What I did then was to simply call his attention in a private letter. In fairness to him he apologized for the error. Unfortunately he never went back to the same web to correct himself. I am not going to write him a private letter this time because I want to use this opportunity not to respond to him but to say other things about the Generals are Coming into Nigerian politics. I am aware that this is agitating the mind of many Nigerians. What should be the attitude of Nigerians to the fact of their coming? RETIRED MILITARY OFFICERS ARE ALL PERVASIVE IN NIGERIA Mr. Okonkwo would have to tell me who these Nigerian politicians are with no connection with the military in the past thirty years or so. Sometime we tend to forget that the military in Nigerian political life is over thirty years. It commenced in January 1966 in my second year in the Graduate School at Buffalo, NY. I met the military well-entrenched in Nigerian politics when I came back to Nigeria in June 1970 as a lecturer of political science at Ibadan in I do not know how old Mr. Okonkwo is and where he was during this period. Maybe he is one of many Nigerians under fifty years that know nothing other than military rule in Nigeria. Those who want to discuss the influx of many retired military officers into the Nigerian political arena should appreciate that there is a military class in all communities in Nigeria. There is no village or street in major towns in Nigeria where you do not find one retired this or that. In the north, retired military officers are now becoming Emirs. The present Emir of Zuru is a retired General, General Sami Sani; the former ADC to General Muhammadu Buhari when he was the military Head of State, Major Jokolo is the Emir of Gwandu; a retired General was one of the pretenders to the throne of the Sultan of Sokoto in One only needs to read the names of board members of major Banks and industrial concerns in Nigeria. They are there. You can also count a good number as legal practitioners. General Ibrahim Haruna and General David Jemibewon had a distinguished military career and held many command and political positions in many military administrations. Of course, they have over 15 years at the bar and can qualify as Justices of the Supreme Court. If they can qualify as Justices of the Supreme Court, why can they not qualify to be President of Nigeria?

3 Page 3 of 10 What I am trying to emphasize in the foregoing is obvious. There is a military aspect in all walks of Nigerian life, which must be confronted and not denigrated. The Nigerian Defence Academy became a degree awarding institution some years ago like the US West Point. Is it the denigration of the military class that Mr. Okonkwo wants to pursue as an ethical preoccupation? I wish him luck! And he wants me to join him in this fruitless exercise, no Mr. Okonkwo; I am too old for that. Will he succeed in his crusade to rid Nigeria of the military aspects of her life? He will have to start with his village. Mr. Okonkwo said that politics is about ethics and political science for that matter is about the study of moral philosophy or about the ethical basis of the state. Does he want me to debate this with him? It should not be under this forum. We can do that in another forum. IS IT A HUMAN RIGHTS ISSUE OR AN ETHICAL OR MORAL ONE? How relevant is the debate on ethics to the issue of the Generals are Coming? I do not see the Generals are Coming as an ethical question except Mr. Okonkwo is sharing President Obasanjo s caricature of his former military colleagues who are doing and planning to do what he did in Let me remind readers including Mr. Okonkwo of President Obasanjo s caricature of General Yakubu Gowon in 1993 that he was going for the brief case he left in the State House when he announced his intention to run for office. Is it not amazing that President Obasanjo has extended his caricature of General Gowon in 1993 now to other retired military officers for showing interest in politics of guilty of height of insensitivity for wanting to rule Nigeria, which they ruled before? Maybe Mr. Okonkwo would forgive President Obasanjo for calling a kettle black and for pointing one finger at other retired military officers for showing interest in politics. What about President Obasanjo himself when he himself did not acknowledge his display of the height of insensitivity for abandoning the issues in the annulment of the June 12 since 1999 and for calling May 29 Democracy Day? And I do not see the basis of name calling or of attacking my professional competence and calling me the self-professed this or that as a way of contributing to the discussion. This is his style and I cannot correct him. Good luck to him! But I know if he were to send his papers to serious journals, he would be reminded that the double word self-professed would not be used for a man whose credentials are not questionable. What I want Mr. Okonkwo to appreciate is that he does not have the basis for judging my claims. The claims in my resume are genuine and acknowledged internationally. They are not selfprofessed; they are earned. Mr. Okonkwo, please check them out in Nigeria, in six countries in southern Africa, in East Africa, in Turkey, in the Caribbean, in UK, in Japan to name a few where I had had occasion to use my professional competence for the betterment of people. Mr. Okonkwo, you took advantage of the web to insult me and denigrate my professional competence for

4 Page 4 of 10 reasons, which I do not know. Much as I would have liked reading Mr. Okonkwo s essays on the web, there is too much insults and denigration to other people s positions except his. This is what he thought I should have done in my book on the June 12. This is not my style from my upbringing and professional training. I dwell on issues and not on persons. Where I had to dwell with names in the book it was not in isolation but along with a discussion of the issues in the annulment. I have not been too happy that in the discussion of the Nigerian crisis, there has been too much over-personalization and less discussion of the critical issues in Nigerian politics. Mr. Okonkwo, moral education should be left to Churches and Mosque and the homes. Let individual decide how they are going to apply their morality to their politics within the laws and the Constitution. In my public life and in my teaching career, I do not impose my morality on others. All the assertions in the paper by Mr. Okonkwo on what my moral responsibility should be is not the business of Mr. Okonkwo. Telling me what I should do as a Professor of Political Science is arrant nonsense. I have been associated with Political Science as a student, a teacher and a researcher since Mr. Okonkwo should not teach me my responsibility in any of these roles. Quite except that he wants to tell his readers the book he has been reading, I do not see the relevance of his paper to my essay on the US-Nigeria military cooperation. NATIONAL SECURITY IMPLICATION WAS MY ARGUMENT On the threat to the Nigerian national security, which I raised about the military pact between the US and Nigeria, Mr. Okonkwo, failed to address this serious issue. Maybe he did see the US military involvement in Nigeria as a threat to the national security of Nigeria. Instead, Mr. Okonkwo took me on, on a matter, which was tangential to the main issue in my essay. I still want to repeat that no self-respecting nation calls another country to design its national strategic and tactical doctrine and I am glad the only Admiral in the nation s history, Admiral Augustus Aikhomu shared this position independently. This was the position shared by two major newspapers the Guardian and the Vanguard in their thoughtful editorials. We may not like the whistle blower in General Malu. In our national security interest, the alarm he raised was not a false alarm, that ones friend today could be ones enemy tomorrow in military matters. We are too preoccupied with the moment and the errors of the past military administration and forget that at the end of the day, the Nigerian State is more than Oil, Peacekeeping and Obasanjo, which are the main issues in the US military bases in Nigeria. Who would protect the Nigerian State from foreign power? The design of the Nigerian strategic and tactical doctrine is what we are asking the US to do for Nigeria, because we do not like the military as it is presently composed and run. If we do not like what we call the Nigerian army, a position, which I took long ago, we should disband it and start another one from scratch. My advocacy from my experience was to disband and start another army. This was what the Allied Powers insisted on after the World War 11 in Germany and Japan. The German officers who were

5 Page 5 of 10 prosecuted were formally charged. The way some see the Nigerian army is as if we are equating the former military officers in the Nigerian military with the officers in the Nazi army. This is what the likes of Mr. Okonkwo would want me to accept. RESTRUCTURING SHOULD HAVE BEEN PART OF TRANSITION The members of the political class failed from day one when they failed to insist on the fundamental restructuring of the armed forces as part of the transition program. From what I knew of the politics of the armed forces, I insisted on this in my various writings. This can also be found in the concluding Chapter of my book. This is not the task of the US retired military officers who are alien to the environment, composition and the attitude of the Nigerian soldiers. The US retired army officers cannot change these factors; only the Nigerian politicians can. VOTER IS THE KING Mr. Okonkwo failed to accord a status to the democratic creed that vote is the voice of the people. This is how we can make our democracy acknowledge the voter as the king. If we begin to interject our preferences into the voters preferences and if we fail to allow the voters to decide, we shall be acting anti-democratically. This is my response to Mr. Okonkwo. We should not dismiss Nigerians with a military background as a class with out allowing them to come forward individually as Nigerians with their vision and compete with other Nigerians for the support of our people. This is the number one question a candidate has to answer when he wants to enter a political race. Why do I want to run for this or that office? They should be able to come up with a minimum of five reasons. Those reasons are the factors that would enable people to judge them. If they do not say it, Nigerians would eventually ask them. I recall how the former civilian Governor of Lagos State, Alhaji LK Jakande, a popular person with links to the Awo political organization was beaten in the Presidential primaries by a retired army officer from Katsina, General Shehu Yar Adua in I knew what happened and I knew the political machine of the retired General, which was so national and formidable that today it is a factor in Nigerian politics. It is one national political machine that is still intact today despite the fact that the founder is no more. Is Mr. Okonkwo surprised that the political machine of the late Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe crumbled after the civil war? I was a witness as the Protem National Secretary of the NPP to the attempt the old man tried to make to rally his former followers in the NCNC to come to the NPP. This episode is part of my forthcoming book, Beyond the Tripod in Nigerian Politics. Of course, that of Chief Awolowo crumbled after his death. It is only that of the late Sardauna of Sokoto under the auspices of the Northern Elders Forum and now the Arewa Consultative Forum that is still alive and rival the political machine of General Yar Adua in the north. Yar Adua s political machine is not just northern bound; it is a national political machine and to that extent, it is still in competition with that of the late Sir Ahmadu Bello for support in the south. It is still a factor in the various political formations in the country today.

6 Page 6 of 10 Mark you, he was a retired General! Where are the civilian politicians? Mr. Okonkwo would want me to reject General Yar Adua in 1992, the person chosen by the voters and support Alhaji Jakande, the one rejected by the voters. Is this what Mr. Okonkwo calls ethics? Mr. Okonkwo s ethical consideration would dictate that the former as a retired military officer could not benefit from the voters in an election. We either abide by the tenets of democracy or we do not.! I shall now take on the issue, which is agitating my mind and I am sure, the mind of many Nigerians. Should the retired military officers be excluded from politics because of their former role as military administrators? What would be the basis for doing this? What would be our response to the alarm! Should we run? Should we accept them? My response is that we should empower our people to judge for themselves. Our people can judge for themselves with a proper education as to whom would be able to lead them. Nigerians were not given this opportunity after the death of General Sani Abacha. How and why Dr Alex Ekwueme lost out in the PDP was done in spite of what the Nigerian people would have wished. How and why Chief Olu Falae s election was frustrated had nothing to do with what the voters wanted. How and why General Olusegun Obasanjo was made the President as recounted by Generals TY Danjuma and Ishaya Bamaiye had nothing to do with the wishes of the Nigerian people. General Obasanjo never went to the Nigerian people with his vision, because he had none then and still does not have one today. Who is to blame? Do we blame his failure today on his military background or on his inability to be a politician who believes in the people and who would want to act on what the Nigerian people want? President Obasanjo s contempt for process and preference for unilateralism is legendary. He runs away from his party partly because he hates party politics and partly because he hates politicians pathologically. His Cabinet is like an overflowing classroom of over Minister. It is made up of those who he lectures and who cannot even question his views in a Cabinet meeting out of fear that he would accept their resignation letter, which they all signed on the day they were sworn in as Ministers. Do the foregoing have anything to do with his military training or with his inability to be a politician? He needed the US Under-Secretary of State Mr. Thomas Pickering and the former US President Jimmy Carter to educate him on how to behave as an elected President with co-equal power with the National Assembly. But no one has been able to educate him that the political parties have a role under our democracy.

7 Page 7 of 10 TRIBUTE TO SOME MILITARY OFFICERS NOT AN ENDORSEMENT I am on record as paying tribute to these retired military officers named above for the role they played in different contexts, which I happen to know. It was not an endorsement of any of them or of any candidate for that matter. I was not asking Nigerians to vote for them. In the case of General Ike Nwachukwu and Admiral Augustus Aikhomu, I even raised questions, which I would want them to address, if they have the highest office in the land in mind. This was in response to questions from Nigerians who sent me s that either General Nwachukwu or Admiral Aikhomu would be ideal successor to General Obasanjo after his one term according to the pact he entered with his sponsors in This was in the paper, After Obasanjo: Who/what?.already in circulation. On General Malu and Admiral Aikhomu in my most recent essay, I was just flying a kite that if they want to run for office, they could cite their patriotic defense of the Nigerian national security interest as their platform. This was in the context of another paper on the US-Nigeria Military Pact. Of course it is the Nigerian voters who would have to rank them and their platform along with other candidates at the appropriate time not what Omo Omoruyi said or did. This is what democracy is about. This should be the goal of all Nigerians to make our voters the deciding factor. The two instances formed the basis of Mr. Okonkwo s attack on me as if I do not have the freedom as a human being to pass judgment based on my knowledge of these retired military officers. NATIONAL INSTITUTE NOT AN ISSUE My National Institute connection was also an issue in Mr. Okonkwo s paper. One of the attributes of the National Institute in Nigeria like the Royal College of Defense Studies in UK and the various War Colleges in the US is to breakdown the barriers in the communications between the various upper segments in society. But for the events of the past few years, I would say that the National Institute ought to have been one of the integrative mechanisms in Nigeria. Mr. Okonkwo, I have no apology if I say that General Babangida and I were course mates at the National Institute, because you tended to make an issue of this. Yes, we were course mates at the National Institute in 1979/80. This is a matter of record and I cannot erase that from my biography and resume. And so what! Maybe Mr. Okonkwo would also want to know that General Ike Nwachukwu and I are both Members of the National Institute (mni) sarcastically referred to by some Nigerians including General Joe Garba current Director General of the Institute as the Mafia Nigeria Incorporated (mni).

8 Page 8 of 10 I worked with Ike in the past on the Nigerian Project as members of the Alumni Association of the National Institute. I can vouch for him as an all-round man and a Nigerian at heart and that if given the opportunity, he would do better than any politician with no military background. General Nwachukwu would have been too glad to lay out his vision in 1999, if he were the candidate. I am sure he would have been too glad to debate the candidate of the other party unlike General Obasanjo who abandoned a nationally televised debate with Chief Olu Falae. Sometime Nigerians forget that General Obasanjo as the Presidential candidate of the PDP refused to come out of his Hotel room at the appointed time for the debate. RMO SHOULD BE WELCOME IN POLITICS Retired Military Officers (RMO) like other Nigerians should be welcome if they want to take to political career. I will be too glad to offer my services as a campaign consultant to any candidate that is committed to the fundamental restructuring of the armed forces, federalism, resource control, depoliticization of religion. This is my irreducible minimum in my decision to offer service to any candidate. In fact, no candidate would enlist the counsel of a consultant whose political views are incompatible with his. This is an elementary requirement. My offer to assist candidates applies to those with or without military background. For democracy to take root in Nigeria, we should do everything to make Nigerian candidates adopt sound campaign practice and make candidates to play according to rules instead of hijacking a political party as was done by the retired military officers from the north for General Obasanjo in General Obasanjo did not need to adopt a sound campaign method because he had already won the election even before the nomination started within the PDP. General Abdusalami Abubakar worked from the answer when he made Chief Olu Falae to adopt a sound campaign method for a sham election, which was meant to work from the answer. I agree with my friend, a fellow Member of the National Institute (mni) and the former Military Governor of my State, the Bendel State and now a Senator of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, General Tunde Ogbeha that military profession should be seen as another profession. (See the Sunday Vanguard May 13, 2001). Someone like Mr. Okonkwo would want them to be put in the zoo or be tagged as untouchables. How do you do that in a democracy and for what reasons? How do we explain this within the requirements of human rights, which guarantee certain freedoms? I can claim to know a lot about the Nigerian military and its orientation to politics. I cannot run away from my background in partisan politics. I cannot also run away from my training in political science and my public service background. A combination of these would not make me join Mr. Okonkwo in building a wall between the politicians with military background and politicians with no military background. It will be unrealistic for anyone to do so. If Mr. Okonkwo wants to do this, I just cannot encourage him in this anti-democratic venture.

9 Page 9 of 10 After all, in my partisan political life, I served in various committees with General Benjamin Adekunle and the late Col. Tony Ochefu in the Nigerian Peoples Party (NPP) in 1978/79. My relationship with them was not as one between retired military officers and a civilian but one among Nigerian politicians in quest of power and committed to our collective desire to make sure the Presidential candidate of our party (Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe) won election. It should be noted that the situation where retired military officers initiate the formation of political parties started with General Shehu Musa Yar Adua of blessed memory. He did not relate with those he worked with as one between a retired military officer and civilians. I saw his machine at work in Katsina his home and in Benin my home. He did not surround himself with other retired military officers but with Nigerians with no military background. I asked him why there were no retired military officers in his team, his answer was that they could be a distraction and unhelpful. He learnt a lot from civilian colleagues and I am sure they too learnt a lot from him. He was a progressive and successfully neutralized the conservatives in the north. Unfortunately the retired military officers masquerading as political leader in the Arewa Consultative Forum today are arch conservatives and would have been neutralized by General Yar Adua. But the situation where retired military officers hijack a political party as we observed in 1998 was new and was used by the retired military officers from the north to make General Obasanjo President in This is what we should work to stop in future. The practice that started with the PDP in 1998/9 should not be allowed to repeat itself in future. One solution is for the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) to register new parties. The practice of the military hijacking a party is a new phenomenon and it is very disturbing. It could repeat itself from the way the various factions and formations are developing today. President Obasanjo, the beneficiary of the military hijack in 1998/9 cannot mow stop the process, his emotional outburst in the US notwithstanding. In the next essay I shall attempt a review of the views of three retired Generals, Obasanjo, Ogbeha and Williams. Nigerians should join in this discussion devoid of name-calling. Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5

10 Page 10 of 10