Preventing Coups in Nigeria* (Part 1)

By Dr. Nowa Omoigui

[SOUTH CAROLINA, U.S.A.]

nowa_o@yahoo.com

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A coup is a usually sudden, often forceful, illegal, typically decisive political change (or overthrow) of an established order of individuals who hold levers of power or control at any level in any context.  The term is most commonly used in reference to the overthrow of a government by a small group of persons but can be loosely employed in other situations, even in war when a decisive final stroke of an operation or campaign is applied in a coup de main.  When the specific term 'coup d'Etat' is used it means (in French)  "a blow to the state".  A 'creeping coup' is one that is not sudden, like the Ethiopian military coup against Emperor Selassie in 1974. A counter-coup is a coup against a government or authority structure that came to power by a coup, like the July 29, 1966 coup in Nigeria and other coups against unelected governments.

These days, we like to think the "coup syndrome" is indigenous to Nigeria and Africa.  However, it has afflicted many countries, large and small, developed and underdeveloped.    They range from the "banana" republics of Central and South America (as exemplified by Guatemala from 1920 to 1944) to the "pepper-soup" states of Africa.   But the list also includes countries as diverse as Russia, Greece, Turkey, South Korea, Indonesia, Portugal, France and Pakistan (among others). Even in Britain, Oliver Cromwell led a coup against the monarchy in1647/48.  Furthermore, the possibility of a coup (against Harold Wilson) reached discussion stage more recently in the late sixties. The only two continents that did not experience a coup d'Etat in the 20th century are Australia and North America (ie Canada and the USA).  There was a coup in Mexico in February 1913.  In Africa we have witnessed much more recent coups or coup attempts in the Comoros, Central African Republic, etc.  At an international level, recent events in Venezuela captured our attention.

Although the conventional wisdom is that a "good" government is the best insurance against coups, not all coup attempts (unsuccessful or successful) have been planned and/or carried out against "bad" governments.  Like beauty, the "goodness" or "badness" of a government is in the eye of the beholder.   To design a prevention and treatment program for a disease, one has to understand its causes, natural history, system of transmission and manifestations. Likewise, preventing a successful coup d'Etat requires a complex and detailed understanding of interrelated political, military, security and intelligence issues that go into planning and staging one. In Nigeria, this is a very serious matter that should command the attention of all Nigerians. Some countries have dealt with the problem by appearing to keep the military as far away from politics as possible. Costa Rica disbanded its Army, while Kenya dissolved its AirForce. Others (particularly communist nations) have used adjunctive tools such as the deployment of political commissars in military units to foster ruling party membership, particularly at key command and staff levels, while some have actually allocated seats in parliament to the military. In others (like Egypt) the military has simply been "civilianised" .

The system we need to set up to deal with coups needs to be able to respond at three levels: before one happens, as one is happening and after one has happened. But this is a far from easy task. Merely writing a "coup clause" in the Constitution does not guarantee much unless accompanied by a variety of other measures. The reason for this is twofold.

First, even though the constitution declares itself "supreme", there is a wide gulf between policy and culture in Nigeria. Official policy is regularly flouted with no backlash from the society, opening a window of opportunity for those who might dare. In the psyche of most Nigerians, notwithstanding regular exhortations of commitment to democracy, there is simply no moral power of legitimacy of elective government. Tucked away deep in the background are two competing "shadow" governments-in-waiting, - the Military (which can act independently) and the Traditional establishment (which can't).

Secondly, seizure of power is intrinsically a political crime, subject to the same vagaries of time, circumstance, and era, which affect public attitudes to political issues. Hugo Chavez, a former paratrooper who was jailed for failing to seize power from Carlos Andres Perez in 1992 was later elected President of Venezuela. Since his assumption of office curious expressions of tension with the Venezuelan military have recently emerged - including the recent drama of a coup against him followed by his reinstatement in 48 hours after popular backlash.

This ambiguity is what makes the rigging of elections (for example) such an attractive excuse for the timing of military take-overs. Under such circumstances, the ruling party actually acts as a role model for forceful seizure of power in the polity, which is then "welcomed" by disenfranchised voters (and politicians) who naively view the military as neutral umpires.

In a round-about way, therefore, a potent "anti-coup" mechanism in our  constitution may be to limit executive civilian office holders to one term of office. In a country that often verbalizes impatience and irritation with 'old politicians', similar term limits may be appropriate for the legislature. Having made this preliminary observation, however, let us examine some ways to make our society less coup-prone.

Basic Requirements

The most fundamental prerequisite is to expand domestic political participation and give people a sense of control over their destiny. Conduct of the affairs of State should be collective. It is crucial to educate large segments of the population such that they become invested in the legitimacy of the system and process and thus see it as inseparable from the very basis of their sense of well-being. This will be assisted to a great extent by enforcing the rule of law and basic principles of fairness in a predictable and consistent manner.   Complementary to the nurturing of a fanatically loyal segment of the electorate, such a belief system helps to set the stage for a spontaneous act of sustained civil disobedience in the event of a coup attempt (as has happened in Serbia, Cote d'Ivoire and Venezuela).  Such politicization can render would-be coup-plotters at a psychological disadvantage. Since non-commissioned officers and other ranks of the military are a product of society, illegal orders may be harder to enforce.  

We need to accept the fact that the village is the unit of political action in most pre-colonial African societies and remains so to this day. Most "urban" Nigerian elite think in "village" terms and remain so organised in social terms. The "formal" three-tier Federal-State-Local government structure, therefore, needs to be expanded to include a municipal or village level, in which pre-colonial systems of administration and social sanction should be respected and enshrined into the constitution. This should include a mechanism for those systems to be changed if it is the wish of the said village or villages. This is only one of several ways to bridge the gulf between pre-colonial society and the modern state system in a manner that allows us to regulate the behaviour of public officials and make our primordial heritage "part of the system".

Even then, it is important that there be moral fortitude among, and excellent communication between major segments of the Nigerian polity.  This includes the press and organized labor, to prevent emerging coup leaders from manipulating individual greed, ethnic and religious differences, and geographic distance to their advantage as they seek to consolidate. The experience of "June 12" 1993 is a classic example. The "mandate" of late Moshood Abiola, who apparently gained a majority of votes across the entire country, ended up becoming the private "property" of the foreign-based liberal element of one ethnic group, while everyone else watched from the sidelines. Another example dates back to 1978 during the "Ali must go" students' crisis. The government cleverly manipulated communication difficulties between northern and southern based institutions of higher learning. Along with national TV and radio network news black-outs, regional editions of newspapers often failed to report events going on in other parts of the country. The student leaders of the uprising were forced to roam about the country using rickety and sometimes dangerous public transportation, just to be able to let each other know what was going on.  More recently, General Abacha's initial reluctance to allow the Internet in Nigeria may have been related to such calculations.

Secondly, (with safeguards to assure communication) the sources of political power and legitimacy in the country need to be decentralized. This follows naturally from the first premise above, but is important also from the technical standpoint of coup-plotting. [I shall say more on the matter of military reorganisation below, but what I am focusing on at this point is political]

Thirdly, without surrendering internal leverage, the state security infrastructure needs to be somehow integrated into the international system, so that taking it over internally becomes practically impossible without a major international angle. As an example, in retrospect, if Balewa's unpopular attempt to sign an Anglo-Nigerian Defence pact had succeeded, it may have prevented the January 1966 coup. But the active Nigerian public (sensitive to its colonial history) has always had vague notions of "foreign-inspired" plots to subvert the state. Such discomfort cannot be entirely dismissed, given well known examples from other countries, such as the CIA-inspired Pinochet coup that brought down Allende of Chile in the early seventies or the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1980. But they do need to be placed in perspective.  

A defence pact could be useful if it assists in establishing constitutional and legal frameworks that legitimize a trusting relationship between the executive, legislature and the military.  It may also help codify the roles of the defence ministry and service chiefs in budgeting and policy, while providing a way to nurture an appropriate military culture, ensuring a non disruptive role for paramilitary forces and non-state actors. During a transition phase an external ally can also help provide security.   

Some people have proposed a regional military pact in the context of a West African Defence Force (WADF). This concept needs to clearly spell out the role and expectations of the Nigerian State because there are examples where defence pacts and the presence of foreign troops did not protect the host country from coup attempts. The most recent (in our environment) is the failure of Nigerian troops in Banjul (Gambia) to prevent the Yayah Jammeh coup against Dauda Jawara. In addition to their basic impotency (from the standpoint of firepower), they took the "neutralist" view of not interfering in the internal affairs of the country once the coup succeeded. It created an embarrassing situation in which the Nigerian unit was even unfairly suspected of complicity on the take-over!

More remotely, the presence of French troops in Cameroun and nearby Central African Republic did not necessarily stop an unsuccessful coup attempt against Paul Biya on April 20, 1984. On the other extreme is the Sierra Leonean example, earlier this year, of an "after the fact" intervention by the Economic Community Monitoring Group (ECOMOG) to restore the democratic regime of Tejan Kabbah. Back in April 1964, Nigeria's 3rd Battalion flew into Tanzania to prop up Julius Nyerere after a mutiny. [Interestingly, many years later, Nyerere himself sent in the Tanzanian Army to remove Idi Amin from power]. Situations in which a neighboring country intervened directly to successfully pre-empt or crush a coup also include the mobilisation of the South African Army to stabilize Transkei, the recent Libyan intervention in the Central African Republic and the Senegalese intervention to crush the police coup against Dauda Jawara during the royal wedding of Charles and Diana.

However, things do not always work out between sponsor and client. After regaining control, Jawara initially proposed a Senegambian confederation to solve his security problems. This arrangement later broke down, leading him to establish a small Gambian Army from scratch. Paradoxically, this army eventually removed him from power! More recently, in Kabila's Congo, we have seen the spectacle of a client-regime brought into power by foreign elements relying on other foreign elements to keep it there. Another variant on the theme is to "contract" with a private foreign corporate military entity, such as the powerful South African based mercenary group "Executive Solutions". Whether such an arrangement will be popular or provocative in a country like Nigeria remains to be seen. But it is instructive that when India's parliament was attacked by a terrorist team last year, the Nigerian National Assembly mooted the idea of contracting security out to an Israeli outfit.

A more modest objective in Nigeria may be to seek consensus on security threats and issues among and within civil and military sections of society, on the basis of which the military's role in the country is redefined while civil-military relations are improved. Subregional, regional and global security and defence protocols can then be built on this framework. Regional force reduction treaties may assist in building confidence among neighboring states but will not necessarily ensure internal control of the military. One issue Africa will have to confront squarely is the "sovereignty" argument which prevents "less politically incorrect" regional forces from immediate and direct intervention if and when constitutional order is overthrown. In the setting of post cold war western reluctance to send troops, or domestic sensitivity to the presence of foreign troops, a powerful non African external guarantor could be encouraged to take a different approach. It can classify coup-plotting as an act of terrorism, use its prestige and networks to convince others to prospectively enter into firm agreements not to recognize governments that come to power by force, and back this lack of recognition by negotiating automatic protocols that would declare coupists (whether successful or unsuccessful) wanted by international police agencies.

They should also refuse asylum to coup plotters, enforce genuine targeted economic sanctions including refusal to purchase foreign exchange earning products that serve to keep such regimes in power, block coup leaders from international travel, and freeze the international banking assets of illegal regimes once they come to power. Such assets can then be made available abroad to pre-positioned elements of the constitutional chain of command who are not physically within the country (as occurred with the Aristide government of Haiti in 1991). However, having agreed to share sovereignty in dealing with coup plotters the same Nigerian leaders should not invoke absolute sovereignty when their conduct in office violates either their own presumably accepted constitutions or international norms of civilized constitutional behavior. Any implications from this paper that the direct or indirect use of an external guarantor is appropriate exists only to the extent that it buys time for the emergence of legitimacy within.

....to be continued....

next week - CHAIN OF SUCCESSION