A military coup is not a benign political intervention; it is an act of mutiny against the armed forces and of treason against the nation. It involves the declaration of war by a section of the military against the rest of its country. It is a regression from the lofty claims of equality offered by democracy and the return of an old, simple rule: They who kill best, rule.
Sani Abacha captured that idea in his speech announcing the third successful pronunciamento in Nigerian history. He said, ‘People are warned in their own interest to be law abiding and to give the Federal Military Government maximum cooperation. Anyone caught disturbing public order will be summarily dealt with’.
In Soldiers of Fortune: A History of Nigeria (1983-1993), Max Siollun, the historian, continues where he left off in his earlier book, Oil, Politics and Violence. It is not a definitive history of Nigeria between January 1, 1984, and August 27, 1993. There are too few Nigerians featured in the book for it to be that. Neither is it even a definitive history of military rule in that era. Other than the facts of their appointment, military rule in the states is not examined. The status of the military’s professional wing is mentioned only in the context of its political wing. And although the economy gets examined briefly, it is done cursorily.
Taken on its terms, as a history of high-level politics within the military regimes that ruled Nigeria from 1983 to 1993, it is the best examination that I know. It was delightful to read. Even in places where I am knowledgeable, it offered new insights. In the many areas where I was ignorant, and in those places where my earlier knowledge was wrong, I now know better. My biggest revelation is that what is normally referred to as the ‘Orkar coup’ is better thought of as the Mukoro/Ogburu coup.
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My one complaint about the book is the comparatively shallow treatment of the Buhari regime. Everything underwhelming about that section evaporates when Ibrahim Badamosi Babangida and Sani Abacha come into their own more fully in its pages. Just as Nigeria in its current iteration is their country, so too is this book theirs.
The 14 chapters of this book are a tragedy in the classical sense. Our protagonists are invariably undone by the very strengths that made them. This is seen most clearly in the person of MKO Abiola. His doomed struggle for the mandate of governance granted him by the Nigerian people in 1993 has turned him into a secular saint, in present-day Nigeria. We know how his story ends; in this book, we see it unfolding. Thus it is clear that the fierce-mindedness and independent streak that made him the military friends who he helped topple governments while they helped expand his fortune also made him the many enemies who eventually sealed his doom. His trust of those very same friends to act in his interests was also proven to be fool’s gold.
As Nigerians were forced outside the political arena, politics came to be dominated by cliques revolving around certain elements in the military. These networks were either ethnic-based or, as in the case of the IBB boys, based on sheer charisma alone. These cliques, with their latent threat of a coup if their interests got threatened, were essentially feudal structures.
The major events in the book are bookended by the three great friendships of IBB with Vatsa and Abacha, and with a civilian, Abiola. He acquiesced to the execution of Vatsa because he threatened his power and sanctioned the theft of Abiola’s mandate because it threatened his life. He was eternally grateful to Abacha because he saved his life. Later, that gratitude morphed into terror when he realised that Abacha had suborned parts of his network.
The men who ruled Nigeria between 1983 and 1993 made this country. They normalised the infliction of State terror on civilians, entrenched corruption, shut the door on an earlier era of free political expression, became rogue actors abroad, destroyed student activism, created the current governing structure, ignored the initial flares of our security crises, undermined rival security apparatuses out of paranoia and destroyed the collegial ideals of collective governance inherited from the British. They replaced that with an overweening Executive office whose occupant ruled as a despot. They and members of their network rule us still. We all live in their country.
Mr Siollun has done a national service by penning what is often a magnificent book. Read it and learn.
Emmanuel-Francis Nwaolisa Ogomegbunam is a Nigerian by conviction
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