PERSPECTIVE

Balarabe Musa and the return of the generals

By

Mohammed Haruna

kudugana@yahoo.com

Not surprisingly, the recent call by Alhaji Balarabe Musa, radical politician and former governor of Kaduna State that generals Muhammadu Buhari and Ibrahim Babangida, former heads of state must be stopped from returning to power has received considerate media attention.  The call was the highlight of his speech at a seminar organised by Tell Communications Limited, in Abuja. 

The Comet (November 7), reported Alhaji Balarabe as saying it was a most shameful thing for anyone to be campaigning for the return of former military rulers like General Buhari and Babangida, describing such campaigns as moves to return the country to fascism.  The Saturday Punch (November 9), which actually led with the story, quoted the former governor as saying in an interview with its correspondent, that “The implication of Buhari and Babangida returning to power is terrible.  It means we will, by our own action, return to fascism, because everybody knows their records.  Who has any doubt about their record?”

The paper went on to quote Alhaji Balarabe as saying he was opposed, not just to the return of Buhari or Babangida to power, but also to the return “of any other retired officer until after 12 years when we the politicians would have been on our own and would have brought about a functional political system.” The paper, however, also reported Alhaji Balarabe as saying almost in the same breadth, that no one can stop Obasanjo from securing a second term if it is the wish of Nigerians.

“They (Northern Oligarchy),” Saturday Punch quoted him as saying, “will be deceiving themselves if they think they can stop him.  If he is qualified for it they cannot stop him.” The only way they can stop him, the Punch quoted Alhaji Balarabe as saying, is if they collaborated with other forces in the country.  However, beyond his criticisms of Obasanjo’s dismal record, the former governor did not say whether or not it was desirable to stop Obasanjo, like he said Buhari and Babangida should be stopped.

Alhaji Balarabe is not the only politician that has expressed his disapproval of the return of military officers to power in civilian guise.  Alhaji Umaru Shinkafi, a former police and intelligence chief and a perennial presidential candidate, had expressed similar sentiments.  Last May, for example, he told the Weekly Trust (May 31), that it did not make sense for retired military officers to want to return to power.

“There is,” he said, “a verdict that our rather poor showing as a nation is attributable to the past in which the military dominated.  To now suggest that we must end up again in the hands of this class of leadership is illogical, and doesn’t make sense.  It is not enough to say that its their fundamental rights.  I think in addition to rights, there are also duties.  And where right deserves to be waived for the sake of duty, it ought to be waived.”

This position had actually been articulated by the Nigeria Tribune long before Alhaji Balarabe and Shinkafi.  In a very well argued editorial on November 10, 1998, in the midst of General Abdulsalami Abubakar transition programme, the paper said in an editorial it titled “Return of the Generals,” that it was opposed to General Obasanjo’s declaration of his bid for the PDP’s ticket and to the possibility that General Babangida also intended to do so.

“These two related cases,” said Tribune, “underscore the critical political situation in Nigeria whereby a highly political section of the military establishment is locked in perpetual combat with the civil political class for the control of state powers.  This development constitutes the greatest obstacle to a successful transition in Nigeria to democratic civil rule.”

Flowing from this, said the paper, there were at least four reasons for which “these generals have to be discouraged from their new adventures.” First, said the paper, General Abubakar, having once served under Obasanjo and Babangida, could not be trusted to conduct “a transparently free and fair election.” Second, said the paper, the generals trying then to return to power, had once committed treason  by staging or participating in the overthrow of elected governments and it was therefore “immoral” that they should insist on exploiting the political clout they had gained from such coups.

Third, as well as the political clout they had gained, they had also built enormous financial empires, said Tribune.  It would, continued the paper, be anti-democratic to allow the generals to “deploy their ill-gotten wealth” to once again take over power.  Fourth, but most importantly, said the paper, Nigeria simply needed a clean break from a past which had been dominated by the military.

“For an environment conducive to rebuilding Nigeria,” concluded the paper, “men with new patriotic instincts, socio-political orientational, integrity, talents, and the right temperament for a democratic civil  order are required.  Not self-recycling Generals.”

Well, nearly four years after that well argued editorial,  annexed to which, for good measure, was a hilarious cartoon of a bare-footed Obasanjo, the chicken farmer, a hoe slung across his right shoulder, chasing after a balloon  marked “President 99” with his chickens behind him protesting their being abandoned, the Tribune appears to have changed its mind about the desirability of retired generals wanting to return to power.  At least this is the impression one gets from the rather lengthy editorials the paper published on February 5 (“The South, Obasanjo and 2003”) and on February 14 (“Saving Obasanjo from himself”).  Between these two editorials, the paper argued in effect that, warts and all, Obasanjo had the right to bid for a second term.  The paper appeared to have forgotten its argument of November 10, 1998, that the exercise of such rights constituted “the greatest obstacle to a successful transition in Nigeria to democratic civil rule.”

At first glance, the sentiments against the bids of retired military returning to power as articulated by Alhaji Balarabe Musa, Shinkafi and the Nigeria Tribune, seem unassailable.  A more careful examination of the sentiments, however, exposes a large measure of ambiguity, possibly inconsistency, which makes their positions difficult to sustain.  This ambiguity apart, the sentiments also barely disguise a large measure of laziness on the part of the civilian political class to engage in the hard work required to build true democracy.  Specifically the ambiguity barely disguises an almost total lack of commitment to prudence, transparency and accountability which are necessary for building genuine democracy.

To begin with the issue ambiguity on the part of the civilian political class.  As we have seen from Alhaji Balarabe’s interview with Saturday Punch, the same Alhaji Balarabe who says he is dead against Buhari and Babangida making any bids for power as retired generals, does not seem to see anything wrong with General Obasanjo exercising his right for seeking a second term as president.  Similarly, we have just seen how the Nigerian Tribune has since made a complete U-turn from its position four years ago that all retired generals should be discouraged from seeking power.

One cause – or is it the effect? — of this ambiguity on the part of the civilian political class about its relationship with “political soldiers” is their (civilians) lazy approach to the building of democracy.  Alhaji Balarabe and the Tribune (at least previously) want retired generals stopped from returning to power, but would not say how or by who.  Shinkafi apparently believes the retired generals should do so by themselves by allowing their sense of duty to over-ride their rights to seek for power.  As a police and intelligence chief, Shinkafi should obviously know better than to think moral suassion is enough to discourage anyone from asserting his rights, especially in the absence of a unanimity of public opinion that such an assertion of ones rights can harm the public good.

The fact is that if “political soldier” seem on the ascendency in the struggle for power vis-a-vis the civilian political class, the letter must have itself to blame.  It is not enough to argue that in an age when money seems to be the only legal tender in our politics, the well-heeled “political soldiers” are bound to have an upper hand.  In the first place, “political soldiers” are not the only ones who have done very well for themselves, while holding public office.  Civilians too have and you cannot blame the soldiers if the civilians chose to invest their “ill-gotten wealth,” to use Tribune’s phrase, in non-political ventures.  Second, all appearances notwithstanding, money is not the only legal tender in politics.  Honest-to-God hardwork and organisational skills too are possibly even more important, at least in the long run.

Unfortunate, the civilian political class does not seem to want to work hard at building the leadership traits necessary for prudence, transparency and accountability in government, traits which are necessary at building democracy.  Anyone who doubts this needs to only look at what has happened in the last three years of civil rule at the state and local government levels where, with very few exceptions, all the dramatis personae are all civilians.  As we all know, comparatively speaking, the political chicanery and corruption that have gone on at those levels, are for worse than what has happened at the centre.  At least the National Assembly, in spite of its imperfections, has played a useful role in limiting the excesses of the executive at the centre.  Nothing close to that has happened at the state or the local government levels where the chief executives seem to have minted for themselves the license to do as they wished.

With due respect to Alhaji Balarabe, Shinkafi and Tribune, if our “political soldiers” remain in political ascendancy, in spite of all the damages, real and imagined, that the military’s incursion in to politics may have done to the country, we should admit that the civilian political class are largely to blame, because it did not do, and even now has not done, what will discourage the “political soldiers” from getting in to the fray.