There is no denying that the democracy we practice in Nigeria came through military fiat. Writing in his latest book, The House My Father Built, Adewale Maja-Pearce has the following words on the subject: “Things reached a head on Saturday, 29 May 1999. I remember the date because I was watching the parade at Eagle Square in which a soldier in uniform handed power to a soldier in Agbada in the name of democracy, what Fela called ‘army arrangement’. I had some friends round and we were laughing at the absurdity of an event that could only have happened in Nigeria…”
In effect democracy was manufactured by the military to only be handled by their retired generals. The idle civilians can only mess things up, in the thinking of the military fixers. Little wonder that the General of Generals who initially inherited power from his military subordinates has now torn up to pieces his party card of democracy before the eyes of the watching world. As things stand, only when another retired general takes over power will the old warlord look for another party card.
To give the military brass-hats their due, some of the serving generals had actually made a case for power to be truly transferred to a complete civilian back in 1999 so that the military can be saved the shame of taking civil power by other means. These generals who argued for proper democratic practices lost out to the powers-that-be who insisted that the retired general was the proper master to shepherd the civilians along the path of democracy. Nigeria thus degenerated to do-or-die politics of garrison commanders and brutal godfathers. Whole communities such as Odi and Zaki-Biam were razed in orgies of blood and fire in tandem with the force of army-propelled democracy. Now the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) are being routed at will.
Some of the civil politicians with balls distrust the military politicos and deride the wretched matter of their debasing democracy with military jackboots and violence. The relationship between the military types and the civilians can be likened to the Snake-and-Toad story retold by Chinua Achebe in the inaugural Nigerian National Award Lecture the late novelist gave at Sokoto on August 23, 1986. The story goes thus:
“One day a snake was riding his horse coiled up, as was his fashion, in the saddle. As he came down the road he met the toad walking by the roadside. ‘Excuse me, sir,’ said the toad, ‘but that’s not the way to ride a horse.’ ‘Really? Can you show me the right way, then?’ asked the snake. ‘With pleasure, if you will be good enough to step down a moment.’ The snake slid down the side of his horse and the toad jumped with alacrity into the saddle, sat bold upright and galloped most elegantly up and down the road. ‘That’s how to ride a horse,’ he said at the end of his excellent demonstration. ‘Very good,’ said the snake, ‘very good indeed; you may now come down.’ The toad jumped down and the snake slid up the side of his horse back into the saddle and coiled himself up as before. Then he said to the toad, ‘Knowing is good, but having is better. What good does fine horsemanship do to a fellow without a horse?’ And then he rode away in his accustomed manner.”
The retired generals have it all, and they can ride their horse in their habitual fashion. Now any politician who aims to survive in the general scheme of things must perforce toady up to the retired general. This way, so-called progressives, expired Marxists, ill-assorted activists, tribal jingoists and ethnic irredentists are now prostrating on all fours to be accommodated by the retired general. It is all so pathetic. Retroactive death sentences are being given the perfume of anti-corruption saintliness. Our politicians have turned into “Otimkpu”, that is, praise-singer of the retired general.
In Nigeria things change only to remain the same. The selfsame constant in the issue of change in Nigeria is the retired general. It has been ordained from on high, and the masses cannot but be made to capitulate through the foot soldiers of the retired generals in the shape and size of the enclave civilian political leaders. The old retired general was lionized as the navigator armed with the occult powers to bequeath the power of change by way of yet another recycled retired general. We have since come full circle. It is so much akin to the last day of 1983 when the civilian regime of the Second Republic was sacked by the selfsame general. The people are back to looking for essential commodities (Essenco)!
The coffle of retired generals would always remind Nigerians of who’s-who that fought to keep Nigeria one. It is thus incumbent on these retired generals to look at some Nigerians with Biafran eyes in the power equation game. They have been enormously endowed with crude oil allocations that have put them in the special class of super-rich Nigerians. Not so long ago, one of the lot screamed that he would go on exile from Nigeria if his fellow retired general failed in the bid to rule Nigeria. In the recycling and repackaging acts of the retired generals, we have come full circle with the current global flier in super-duper presidential jets despite the much-ballyhooed Spartan life of poverty! Like Chichidodo, the Ghanaian bird that hates shit but only eats worms that live only on shit, as limned by novelist Ayi Kwei Armah in The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born, our retired general of change hates corruption with all his heart but revels only in the company of the henchmen of corruption in Nigeria.
The retired generals are so powerful that they can make Nigeria ungovernable, and only they can make the country governable when they are eternally in power. Why don’t we then enshrine it in the constitution that only retired generals are qualified to be president? This way, we can save this benighted country all its troubles. Welcome to the Federal Republic of Retired Generals (FRRG)!
By Uzor Maxim Uzoatu
