•POLITICIANS INCITED MOST OF NIGERIA’S PREVIOUS COUPS

By Olakunle Olafioye

After the initial panic generated by the coup alert raised by the Chief of Army Staff, Lt.-Gen. Tukur  Buratai, the Defence Headquarters, in what has been interpreted as part of spirited attempts to defuse the tension in the country, dismissed the coup alert as rumour. The Director, Defence Information, Maj.-Gen. John Enenche, allayed the fear at a news conference last Wednesday. In this interview, Lt. Col. Michael Adebayo Ajayi, one of the victims of 1995 phantom coup, gives an insight to the rationale behind the coup alert.

The Defence Headquarters has dismissed the coup alert making the rounds in the last few days as rumour. What do you make of this?
I don’t think the Chief of Army Staff said there was a coup. He was just giving the usual warning that there are some officers who are fraternizing with some disgruntled politicians. He was only warning them to be careful. Normally those in the military do get themselves involved with some politicians who will visit them in the officers’ mess or at home. Some of them may come and start to condemn the current government, trying to incite and showing their displeasure for the government in power. Military officers are not supposed to be involved in such interactions. I think that is the situation the Chief of Army Staff was trying to warn the officers against. I don’t think he said a coup was taking place.

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Yes, that is exactly what he said but what is your view on the insinuation that something in that direction was in the offing, especially against the background that an unconfirmed report claimed that some officers might have been interrogated on the same issue?
In as much as the person who mooted the idea has not said that people have been arrested and there was no intelligence that suggested before the alarm was raised, it is only the story of the man who raised it that should be believed now.  it is just a routine warning and we should just take it as the normal warning except they come forward again to say they have caught those involved or arrested them.
There is a feeling that the alarm was prompted by the current situation in the country and to warn officers against the idea. Now the question is this: is the situation in the country so dicey that we should begin to entertain fear of military intervention?
Any military officer that contemplates such an idea is not learned, not disciplined or he does not know what is going on in the world because to say that you want to stage a coup in Nigeria now is going to be very unpopular not only among the citizenry but also among the comity of nations. Everybody will stand up against it. So I don’t think that it is because of the situation on ground. No! People may be disgruntled. That doesn’t make coup a popular option. Even when people start reading meanings to officers being redeployed, posting is just one of the routine exercises. Some people were posted a few months ago, like the theatre commander of Lafia Dole. When people in top echelon move, others will also move. Some people are retiring and once they move people will start shifting. I don’t think people should start to panic because of these things. They are routine exercises.
The alarm actually generated panic among military officers because it was interpreted in some quarters as a prelude to an attempt to deal with some officers from a particular section. What is your view on this?
I believe that is the exact reason why the spokespersons of the Nigeria Army and that of the government have come out to say there was nothing to be worried about. Normally people get jittery when such alarm is raised but as time goes by people will recover. But usually at the first mention of such thing everybody will feel concerned. It is normal to be jittery but that is why more explanations are being provided. It is just for officers to be reminded about the need to be careful with the association they keep.

I have spoken with some retired officers who, like you, equally exuded the confidence that coup cannot take place in Nigeria. What would you say informs this level of confidence? Does it really mean that things have changed in the military from what it used to be in the past? 
It is an issue like when you say a 20- year-old man will not attempt to put his hand inside the fire. Of course, the man knows that the fire would burn him. Any reasonable officer, any officer that is trained, if he is not deluded or having psychological problem, will not say this is the time to attempt to stage a coup. Whoever tries that is going to face a lot of hurdles because there are no governments that will give sanctuary and the people also are not going to hail you. You can only talk about coup when you see people supporting you. So any disciplined officer will first of all try to see the people agitating, people that will sponsor him. These people that are disgruntled, people that are only interested in seizing power and when they seize the power after some days the same set of people will come to you to say we give you three months to get out of that place. That is why I said it is uncalled for that any reasonable officer will want to contemplate.
Should we then take it to mean that civilians were the people who instigated most of the coups that were staged in the past?
Most politicians who hobnob with the military are the ones who incite the military to stage coups. During the days of NPN, UPN it was those who were outside the power that suggested that the baby should be thrown away together with the water. They didn’t care if the whole house would fall on everybody because they knew that they had lost out. Like now that the war against corruption is going on, most of these people are not comfortable to be out of power and are struggling to come back to power.
There is nothing you say that will make them to support the government of the day. They don’t want the country to be sanitized. They just want things to remain as usual. In the past it’s the civilians that always mooted the idea of coup. That’s why when the military took over you would find out that in a whole state it was always only one person that was a military officer, the rest were civilians. Even at the national level, civilians have always been major beneficiaries of military rule. It is the politicians that incited coup because they wanted to be appointed ministers. Although there are military officers that can be easily used, to me, the civilians are always the brain behind every coup.

Then can say that the Chief of Army Staff was right to have raised the alarm because it was possible that the interaction being noticed between the politicians and some officers was assuming worrisome dimensions?
That is exactly what I am saying. He has probably seen that the enemies of the present administration are trying to stage an attack. Like I said, the current administration is fighting anti-corruption war, which has seen many of these corrupt people getting locked up, their property being seized. Definitely, this category of politicians will have no good news to tell about the present government. So if there is any avenue, their own is to condemn and seek ways to change the government. So intelligence report may have shown to the Chief of Army Staff that politicians were now associating with military officers for such selfish reasons. That could be the reason he issued that warning.

Is it safe to say that the Chief of Army Staff, by virtue of that alarm, has preempted politicians who may be nursing such self ambition?
Yes, that is the essence. If you see smoke coming from a place and you don’t want it to turn to fire you need to do everything possible to put it out immediately because when it turns to fire it may engulf everywhere and wreak serious havoc. From the information available to him there could be intelligence that politicians were relating with officers more than necessary and he saw the traffic himself. So he has a reason to issue that warning.