The Tragedy of the Nigerian 1966 Coup and Counter-Coup.

The evil of the Nigerian 1966 coup and counter-coup is alive and well. Until it is overthrown and discredited, Nigeria will not know peace or move forward. The problem I had with President Jonathan was that he had all the opportunity in the world to dismantle it and permanently retire all the major players in that military era, but he failed. 2023 is around the corner; it is either we supplant them and dismantle their vast political empire and economic interests beyond redemption, or we will dismantle "us" permanently.

Our democratic values, electoral process, and strategic national interests have been crudely compromised. A few days ago, an eight-year-old boy shot and killed a Christian in cold blood - execution-style, too gruesome to watch. The same week, the Boko Haram sect executed a Christian Cleric also in cold blood, despite the fact that about Fifty Million Naira was offered to them to spare his life.

President Buhari came into office on the strength of being a no-nonsense Northern Fulani retired Military General, and a close ally or sympathizer of the Boko Haram sect. Indeed, he had a base - a solid base - to work from and put an end to the bloodshed. Sadly, the President and his handlers, despite populating the leadership of our security apparatus with his own people whom he claimed he trusted, sectarian violence and religion-related killings are on the rise.

He has been in the office now for five years. And the last statement credited to him on surmounting the security challenges in Nigeria was that he is going to revisit the civil war approaches. In his own words, "If we were capable of fighting a 30-month civil war and reorganized our country, I wonder why people are thinking Nigeria cannot do it."

That's preposterous, to put it mildly. No one is saying we cannot do it, Mr. President, you're. By your pronouncements pre-2015 Presidential election and your actions post your inauguration there are millions of reasons to doubt your honesty of purpose in annihilating the Boko Haram sect.

(1) The Sambisa Forest is not larger than the Eastern Region.

(2) The Civil War that was fought in the Eastern Region between the Nigerian Armed Forces and the Biafran Forces was over in three years.

(3) The civil war was not between the Northern Region and the Eastern Region (Biafra), it was between Nigeria and the Eastern Region (Biafra).

And (4), some of the notable names who were at the frontline, fighting and strategizing were Benjamin Adekunle, a Yoruba dude, popularly known as the Black Scorpion, David Ejoor, Olusegun Obasanjo, Alani Akinrinade, Samuel Ogbemudia, and George Agbazika Innih, etc. These valiant warriors were not all "Mohhamed" or "Abubakar" of the Northern Region. They were Yoruba and they were Bendelites of the Southern Region.

That was how the civil war was fought. And Chief Obafemi Awolowo who was in charge of the Finance Ministry did not borrow a dime to execute the war. Where are we today? Our President just couldn't trust any of us to advise him or strategize with him on security matters. The writer of that speech should tell his boss to do the right thing and to remind him that the Black Scorpion of the Nigerian civil war was not a Mohammed or an Abubakar. He was just, a Nigerian.

Boko Haram is alive and well because the President and his trusted men would rather our finest men and women in uniform are butchered in the line of fire than members of the Boko Haram sect are killed or suffer harm or injury. When a Ndigbo military officer headed the Military Command fighting the sect a few years ago, some prominent Northerners like the current President and the current Governor of Kaduna State, openly threatened the guy with war crime indictment at the Hague.

Where are we today? You want to adopt the Civil War approach? When you have already infiltrated the ranks and files of the Nigerian Armed Forces by conscripting the so-called emancipated captured Boko Haram sect into the army? How can you fight and win a war when those charges with combat missions cannot vouch or ascertain the loyalty of the men under their command? The outdated culture of "North against the rest of us" or "North first before the geographical expression called Nigeria" is enjoying unparalleled momentum under the administration headed by President Buhari.

By his actions and pronouncements, he made us understand that he did not trust the rest of us on security matters. Yet his men are busy smiling around him, lacking the audacity to remind the old man that the narrative he is pushing is not for the moment, to wit, Nigeria is once country; therefore, the best in the field of global security in modern time should be given a chance. No, they are relating to a democratically elected Head of States as an Emperor.

In a similar vein, the corruption that enveloped the last Primaries of the President's own political party (APC) was the worst of its kind in Nigeria's Electoral process and constitutional democracy. And the perpetrators of that massive fraud remain an influential part of all the President's men.
Just a few days ago, a gubernatorial candidate who is massively indebted to the Nigerian taxpayers for a multi-million dollar contract windfall that he didn't execute, was declared the winner in the election that he got the least vote counts.

You guys at Abuja should be ashamed of yourselves. The blood eating away our fertile landscape is real. You have the oil, you have the money, you have all the security positions and a gullible and subservient NASS to boot. What else can an administration ask for? Now you know the evil of 1966 - idea deficit. And that's what the attached essay is about.

Centre For Integrity In Leadership Advocacy Of Nigeria CILAN

January 22 at 7:00 AM ·

Wrong Demographic in Charge of Nigeria.

On page 393 of his book “From Third World to First: The Singapore Story,” legendary leader Lee Kuan Yew, Singaporean former independence prime minister spoke about his 1966 encounter with one of our first republics top politician Chief. Festus Okotie-Eboh, Nigeria’s finance minister, describing how it went, he said:

“Raja and I were seated opposite a hefty Nigerian, Festus, their finance minister. The conversation is still fresh in my mind. He was going to retire soon, he said; he had done enough for his country and now had to looks after his business, what was the business? A shoe factory. As then finance minister, he had imposed a tax on imported shoes so that Nigeria could make its own shoes. Raja and I were incredulously surprised that a nation's finance policy trust could be hinged on the personal interest of an official of Government. Festus Okorie-Eboh had a good appetite that showed in his rotund figure, elegantly camouflaged in colorful Nigerian robes with gold ornamentation and a splendid cap. I went to bed that night convinced that they were different people playing to a different set of rules in Nigeria."

Lee Kuan Yew continued; Chief Festus never got to see the fruit of his state-backed business strategy as he was assassinated a few days later in the military coup that effectively killed off Nigeria’s chance of achieving industrialization in the 20th century. Five decades after his death, however, the sort of half-baked, paternalistic reasoning that saw him push through a subpar policy to benefit his Omimi rubber and canvas plantations and shoe factory still remains a firm fixture in Nigeria’s political and economic highly extractive policy arena. Ironically, it is the same people who killed him and subsequently executed series of coups and counter-coups are the ones who hold on most tenaciously to his type of reasoning then as young military Turks of 1966 are the ones still in power in Nigeria 54 years later.

The most visible symbol of Nigeria’s failure to retire its class of ’66 is a key figure in the events of that year who now holds the highest office in the country. Along with dozens of his contemporaries in and around Nigeria’s Defense and Security establishment found themselves thrust into series of political offices that they were not trained, prepared or qualified for bringing to each office the same archaic knowledge of “Chief Festus” and his likes.

The outdated body of knowledge from 1966 has among its tenets, the idea that political problems can be solved by shooting physical bullets at them; that the economy should be subject to the whims of the state; and that state distortion of the economy to benefit private interests is a legitimate policy to benefit people in and around power. Most dangerously of all, the ideas of 1966 by virtue of their post-independence cold war era origins do not accept the possibility that they can be wrong or in need of updates.

These disastrous economic and political ideas have wrecked clear and undeniable havoc on Nigeria over the past half-century, but they have never been challenged because the demographic that believes most fervently in them has retained absolute control over Nigeria’s political state in that period. President Muhammadu Buhari for example, who was trained to be an infantry soldier – and nothing but a soldier – has found himself since the 70s occupying various offices including Governor, Petroleum minister, Head of State, PTF chairman, and now president of Nigeria.

His penchant for holding on to discredited ideas from a different time no matter how demonstrably they have failed knows no bound, same way hundreds of individuals and political gladiators from Nigeria’s class of ’66 have gone through life being rewarded for non-achievement. This demographic of people who found themselves in political leadership circles in their 20s and 30s get to constantly fill upward one important position to the other from 1966 till date, seemingly destined to forever live at the public expense while expecting (and often receiving) applause for their successive regime failures by a weak and senseless youth class of Nigeria proletariat.

As we know only too well from our bitter experience, regardless of Lee Kuan Yew’s conviction, we are not actually different people playing by a different set of rules. Nigeria has paid and is paying the huge human cost of running a huge, multi-ethnic country in the 21st using ideas that even Prime Minister Yew found preposterous in 1966.

The ideas from the class of '66 turned one of the world’s biggest energy exporters into the global headquarters of extreme poverty. Their ruinous ideas and policies turned a country that was once a global education and research hub into a nation with the largest population of out-of-school children, 13.5 million of its population in northern Nigeria alone. They turned a thriving and diverse economy primed for a global breakout into a quivering mess dependent on oil revenue diaspora remittance, foreign loans - government borrowing, with a 70 percent debt service-to-revenue ratio. Their ideas have failed woefully and they need to go and give way to more cerebral and progressive inclusive policy leaders who are propelled by vision and patriotism with a generational shift in leadership.

It’s not a battle of the ages but…

Permit me to make my point clear by these summations as we are indeed presented with a great problem.

• What do you do with people who know not that they know not?

• How do you go about changing the minds of those whose opinions are based on indoctrination in mid-20th century beliefs- nomadic cattle rearing across regions for instance as acceptable state policy?

• How do you fix a mindset that believes that a certain way of doing things must be adhered to, even if scientific evidence says the exact opposite?

The short answer – you can’t, and you probably shouldn’t even try.

According to the CIA World Factbook, approximately 62% of Nigerians are between the ages of 0 and 24. A further 30% falls between 24 and 54, which means that the overwhelming majority of Nigerians were not born anywhere within the neighborhood of 1966. Our population is heavily dominated by an extremely young demographic, which poses a challenge and an opportunity.

The challenge is that based on the most basic principles of democratic representation, Nigeria’s leaders – drawn majorly from the ’66 era – simply do not represent Nigerian people. I certainly do not feel represented by President Buhari and his geriatric co-travelers – we have practically nothing in common in terms of worldview, economic ideology, intellectual capacity, technological awareness, political consciousness, and even linguistic patterns, but somehow, he is my president nonetheless.

The opportunity this weird situation presents is that since the class of ’66 have not drunk from the fountain of eternal youths as far as we know, they will have to leave the scene at some point in the not-too-distant future. When they step aside voluntarily or otherwise, the huge generational disconnect between them and everyone born after 1970 gives us the chance to effect a clean and absolute break from the political and economic ideas that have plagued Nigeria’s governance for half a century.

We are the generation that sees the rest of the world as a contemporary to interact and compete with, not a mysterious “other” to hide from inside a prison of inferiority complexes, going cap in hands for investments, loans, grants, subsidies and import bans advice, etc.

We are the ones who have the capacity and imagination to build multimillion-dollar businesses using knowledge, innovation, and creativity- the Andela's and Flutterwave, IrokoTV of our nation as against politically-weighted government assistance. We are the generation of genuine entrepreneurs offering local and international value and not government tenderpreneurs who survive at the mercy of who is in political office.

We are the people who had the vision and ability to create a multibillion-dollar international entertainment industry from scratch without assistance, while the Class of ’66 – limited as they are in thought and conception – can only talk about pencil manufacturing and fractional distillation of petroleum as if such things are rocket science. We are the ones who understand that mixing church and state is a fool’s errand. We are the generation that contains the human capital resources that can recalibrate any hope of driving Nigeria forward.

Once our ‘heroes past’ have finally had their day and they mercifully stop their labor, we will have the chance to take everything we have learned over the past 50 years and use it to thoroughly deconstruct the failed system they have left behind. No doubt the task before us are enormous and we don't intend to take it lightly, there will be a lot of work, a painful one at that with such a time-consuming process. On the other hand, a popular saying has it that a society becomes great when its people plant trees whose shade, they know they will not enjoy. While Lee Kuan Yew planted trees, Nigeria spent decades enacting ideas of extractive policy nature sharing and squandering her resource from oil to benefit a tiny few elites in the political class and their cronies paying leap service to infrastructure development.

It is time to move on, and move on we will and must.

At this point, it is only a matter of time.

This article was curled Online and written by DAVID HUNDEYIN.