Of course, you cannot but agree that, for us, these are not the best of days. Yet, after all the logistics are streamlined, they do end up with the accolade of being the type that often has a man thinking like Socrates. When, indeed, solutions to long-standing problems are often unearthed. Guess what then? Often lured into deep intervals of introspection on its account, I’ve come up with a hypothesis worth expounding. Namely: that more than anything else, we were boxed into the corner we are presently in by our uncanny national pastime of apotheosising outright felons.
I needn’t waste time regarding how we all line up to worship cheap thieves who have made it big following one successful heist or the other. These otherwise despicable nonentities then turn into overnight philanthropists, visiting largesse on all and sundry. They end up majorly becoming either monarchs or kingmakers, or even politicians, where possible. Otherwise, they end up bankrolling the campaigns of as many of them as is possible. Just to subsequently have even government officials at the beck and call of their nefarious whims and caprices.
So, I’d rather I minded the ogas at the top of the pantheon. Those who have from relative obscurity – like Okigbo would pen – aimed for the jugulars of the state. Much unlike the former who are too many to be numbered, the latter are few and far between. That is, discounting the many nationalists who had risked their lives defending our patrimony. Thusly, we are left with only those whose statuses were raised for wilfully trying – with or without success – to topple governments put in place by either military fiat or democratic consensus.
The first in this roll of infamy has to be Pa Obafemi Awolowo who was jailed by a court of competent jurisdiction on the 11th of September, 1963 for treasonable felony. His ten-years-with-hard-labour sentence was first unduly mitigated by the outbreak of hostilities that led to the 1967-70 civil war. Then consequent upon his state pardon and release, he became the federal finance commissioner and de facto deputy head of the then Federal Military Government led by General Yakubu Gowon.
Same with the nation’s first civilian revolutionary Isaac Adaka Boro. When the revolution he launched with the Niger Delta Volunteer Force to free his people from oppression in the then Eastern Region failed, he was promptly imprisoned for treason. However, he was to be granted amnesty by Gowon, again, in another war effort. A self-made guerrilla, he was promptly commissioned as a major into the federal forces. Sadly, he was to lose his life in the war.
Then there was the case of those five majors who all had to be of Igbo extraction because the man they ended up enthroning was from that tribe. Rather coincidentally too, they appeared to have also tipped off their tribesman who was ceremonial Head-of-State. When they struck in 1966, they were, well, initially hailed as revolutionists. Till it turned out they ended up installing the extant Supreme Commander of the Armed Forces instead of the aforementioned jailed leader of opposition as pre-planned. When the new man, perhaps in recompense, started treating them with kid gloves – as is our national wont – he was summarily made to pay the supreme sacrifice in a swift countercoup.
Next came the civil war. Like it turned out, Col Ojukwu as military governor in the Eastern Region refused to take orders from the new generalissimos in Lagos on account of some unexplained actions following the putsch. One thing led to the other, and yet another, foisting that 30-month war on us. The war, of course, ended with Ojukwu scampering into exile. He was to return a hero when he was pardoned by ex-President Shagari in the Second Republic. And as though nothing happened, he was to immediately contest for a seat in the Upper Chamber of the National Assembly in the next election. An ante he upped in the subsequent republic by contesting for the highest political office in the land on two occasions. Nigeria, we hail thee!
Anyway, in betwixt, Gowon the war hero par excellence was to get his own comeuppance. First he was alleged to have blessed the dawn-to-dusk Dimka coup that ended up abortive. Sentenced in absentia as he was then running a doctorate in Warwick University in England, he was – not unlike those ahead of him in infamy – to be pardoned by a later government. He has since returned and assumed his heirloom, leading the nation in prayers of recovery.
Like we do know, though, he was toppled by his high command as he went for an Organisation of African Unity (OAU) summit. Muritala Mohammed who took over from him ended up assassinated for Olusegun Obasanjo his next-in-command to take over much against his personal wish and desire. The latter it was who – much to the glory of country and continent – handed over power to the civilians in 1979. This was to play a major part in the decision of his compatriots to – about two decades later – elect him to head the nation once more, this time as a bloody civilian.
Given that to this day the leader of the five-major coalition is still in doubt, all those on the card since Ironsi toppled Balewa had been paying military regimes back in their own coins. If this kind of makes their inclusion here equivocal, a major shift on the threshold was to occur once more when the Second Republic was toppled by the military on the eve of 1983. While not implying that it was for treating Ojukwu with kid gloves, it has to be pointed out that the high command that handed over to Shagari were still in charge. And they did not like organisers of putsches – save themselves, of course.
Be that as may, one of them – a certain General Buhari – was to take over on the ashes of the defunct republic. For reasons best known to his subordinates, his reign was truncated before it could make a berth. In his stead General Babangida, the acclaimed Maradona of our military/political space took the mantle in another military over military coup. Later forced to step aside following reactions to the June 12, 1993 elections that he unilaterally annulled, he left us an interim government.
The Chief Ernest Sonekan-led contraption was to be shoved aside by General Sani Abacha who was, in turn, ousted in what has been called a heavenly coup for General Abdulsalam Abubakar to take over. Gentleman to the core – like I heard – he was to spearhead a return of power to the civilians once more. But unlike Obasanjo before him, he was not to be compensated with a civilian presidency. True to character, the honour was given to the man who truncated the Second Republic.
The man’s name? Please check thoroughly above. But suffice it to note that if these supposed enemies of state had been put in their proper places in due time, we could never have ended up in the stew we in the South East are presently embedded. The more so, by a rank upstart after the glory accorded his predecessors by our nation.
