MAGAZINE
Nigerian politics is all about power play by military men
President Goodluck Jonathan at a military parade; President Jonathan is considered the frontrunner.
By Sae-Brown and Gitau Warigi (email the author)
Posted Monday, November 15 2010 at 19:02
Posted Monday, November 15 2010 at 19:02
The “To Let” sign is very soon going up on the gates of Nigeria’s seat of power — Aso Rock in Abuja. And as was to be expected, this is already causing a scramble by would-be tenants.
By far the most interesting are a trio of ex-generals who will be taking on the putative frontrunner, President Goodluck Ebele Jonathan.
Of the ex-generals, Nigeria’s media and commentariat have quickly picked on Gen Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida, 69, from Minna in Niger state, as the one who is most likely to threaten Jonathan’s continued tenancy.
He was the country’s military ruler from 1985 to 1993 — the second longest tenure in Nigeria’s history — and the first military man to unashamedly use the title of president.
He also happened to be the first official tenant of Aso Rock when it was first occupied in 1991, during his presidency.
Then there is Gen Muhammadu Buhari, 68, from Katsina state, and a former military overlord himself. It was Buhari who overthrew the civilian administration of Shehu Shagari in 1983 before he in turn was kicked out by Babangida in 1985.
The third ex-general keen to move into Aso Rock is Aliyu Gusau, 67, from Zamfara state. He may be less visible than the other two, but he has been a long-serving kingpin of successive Nigerian regimes, both civilian and military, as intelligence chief.
Plotting against Shagari
The most obvious thing these ex-generals have in common is that they are Muslims who come from what Nigerians generically call the North. But more importantly, they have been intimately tied in the past with Nigeria’s multiple coups, at least from the time the plotting against Shagari started.
The common narrative in the South and especially amongst Jonathan’s core supporters is that the North is determined to marshal all its forces (and not necessarily in the benign sense of using its vote) to deny the incumbent, or any other Southern candidate for that matter, continued tenancy at Aso Rock.
It is true that one of the compelling arguments circulating in the North is that Jonathan is a wrongful claimant to the throne since, according to an unwritten memorandum of understanding within the ruling Peoples’ Democractic Party (PDP), a Northern candidate was supposed to have completed the full tenure of the late President Umaru Yar’Adua which was cut off prematurely by the illness that led to his death in may this year.
That is the argument being quietly pushed by supporters of Gen Babangida and Gen Gusau, as well as by a slew of Northern civilians like Atiku Abubakar, a former vice-president, all of whom are fighting for the PDP’s coveted nomination.
Gen Buhari is the exception, as he is running on the ticket of a different party, the Congress for Progressive Change.
In the South, the roster of three powerful ex-generals who symbolise the North’s history of military hegemony over Nigeria has raised the spectre of a creeping coup d’etat clothed in civilian-cum-democratic garb.
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