General Abdulsalami Abubakar
So it is not only the civil society that incurred losses during the long stretch of military rule in Nigeria! The military itself is a poor victim. This may not be a new revelation to you, but coming from the head of state himself, it elicits in one a deep sense of rumination. It was in an interview in the current issue of West Africa that General Abdulsalami Abubakar admitted that the hallowed concept of professionalism in the Nigerian military has been almost eroded as a result of long army rule in the country. He told the London-based magazine that brilliant army officers that would have developed the institution have had to be posted to political assignments, adding, “One therefore finds that professionalism is diminishing.”
Identifying the military as a victim of its own actions, General Abubakar stated: ”It is my belief that the military is the organ that suffers most in that it shies away from doing what it should do for itself.” This postulation, which may appear ordinary on the surface, is by implication a serious indictment of the military institution which has obviously not only failed to heal its weaknesses but imposed foibles on the rest of the society.
Long military rule did not only undermine professionalism, but it also imposed on the institution a self-denigrating culture which could only lead to an implosion. Instead of growing as a bulwark of the nation, an organ concerned solely with protecting the nation from aggression, the army has veered into other areas that were ordinarily no-go ones. General Abubakar himelf has identified one of those areas, i.e. politics.
No doubt, venturing into politics and practising it for 28 years has robbed the army of many things and substituted some of its values with ones that should have been in the domain of the civil society. The result has been disastrous for both the army and the civilians. For one, the military-civilian relationship has been strained by mutual distrust. Both segments now view each other with suspicion, seeing each other as brigands or looters eager to hoard power for solely selfish ends.
The military said it came to stop the evils supposedly perpetrated by civilians: corruption, nepotism, tribalism, indiscipline, threat of disintegration, lawlessness, etc. About three decades of military rule, with a break of only four years in-between, have however failed to eradicate these vices. Indeed, it’s ironic that these evils have even thrived the more under the military. The fact that today, soldiers and ex-soldiers are some of — if not the — wealthiest people in the country puts a question on their redemptive incursion into politics. It isn’t as if some of them made their money entirely through legitimate means.
The military guys have become fond of washing their dirty linen in public, through interviews in the press by their retired colleagues, and through the noisy coup-plot detections and trials, as well as through rumours circulated by those aiming at making political profits. Someone once said that the Nigerian army has become more adept or more political than the politicians. They know all the tricks in the trade and actually do apply them much too often.
Since Abacha’s sudden death on June 8, the society has become wiser about the military. The terrible exposes in the media about whirlwind corruption, treachery, set-ups and high-stake intrigues have shown the army as a bunch of egoists concerned only with maximising power for self-aggrandisement. This is an unfortunate view of the army which only the army itself can correct.
As stated above, the question of the army losing its professionalism is not a new one. Successive regimes have lamented this cankerworm and worried about a solution. Even Abacha — certainly the most dramatic of all Nigerian heads of state — touched on this a week before he collapsed and died. It was at the end of activities marking this year’s Nigerian Navy Week that the then head of state advised the military to thenceforce be prepared to subordinate itself to the civilian political class.
As argued in this column on June 6, 1998, the military’s subordination to the political class is the first step towards retrieving its glory, respect and professionalism. Abacha’s demise — and subsequent events since then — has led to a rethink of the army’s role, but the real test is that which Abacha himself enunciated, i.e. the establishment of a democratic system in which only those elected, or those appointed by those we elected, could rule over the rest of the people. That is a sure way of building a military institution which has the interest of the nation at heart first and foremost, an army that we can be proud of, not one that we would detest or dismiss with the wave of the hand.
* Published in my column, Melting Pot, in the New Nigerian Weekly today
