AN EVALUATIVE STUDY OF MILITARY RULE IN NIGERIA: A STUDY OF IBRAHIM BABANGIDA MILITARY ADMINISTRATION

Abstract
This paper investigates a recurring factor of military dominance in Nigeria politics. It explores the role of the
military in Nigeria which captures the safeguarding of the territorial integrity and sovereignty of state. It goes
beyond to probe into the nature of leadership Nigeria has been subjected to since the intervention of military in
the politics of the state. This kind of leadership is one where after a protracted domination of the polity through
forceful emergence; stages a comeback in a civilian form seeking to recapture power in a most bizarre manner
with its attendant militocracy. It is against that backdrop that the study employs class theory as its framework to
capture the formative influence that provoked the spirit of metamorphosis from military to civilian. This finds
expression in their kleptocratic appetite to suffocate the economic endowments of the state. It therefore,
discovers that as a result of their involvement in politics couple with military orientation that has not been
diluted in any form, it has continued to heat up the polity and elicits unending desire to reverse the state to the
stone-age where the employment of force betrays democratic values. It thus, calls on all sectors of the state to
rise in defence of democracy and the promotion of good governance in Nigeria.
Keywords: Military Rule, Militocracy, Psycho-logicism, Leadership, Gerontocracy.
1.1 Introduction
The history of Leadership in Nigeria is one marked by extreme domination and continuous struggles for the
maintenance and sustenance of power. This has really permeated into the political lives of Nigerian that politics
is today perceived as a do-or-die affair that an exit from power is considered as a terrible condition that its
outcome remains unknown. This has drawn so many into embarking on multiple variations of political arithmetic
while in office to sponsor policies that will provide them with a toga of protection when they are out for possible
come back. This has to a large extent reduced the character of the state to a mere rumble and created an air of
confusion within the system. Once you are in, you are in and there is nothing worse than practical exit from
power. No retirement, no room for younger generations, instead a prevalence and extension of the poverty of the
masses is advanced and sustained within the polity.
Right from the era of nationalism through independence and military dictatorship with civilian punctuations, the
people of Nigeria have not for one day heaved a sigh of relief in terms of good leadership (Okafor and Okafor,
2015). Worse still is the protracted military ruler-ship which started since first military coup of 1966 headed by
Major Kaduna Nzeogwu. Its purpose could not be fulfilled and chains abuses and interventions of the military
into politics complicated the process of development. Their involvement in national politics has thrown the
system into a quasi-comatose that every remedial attempts end up becoming a new quagmire for the system. This
explains why they pride in the prevailing reversals of democracy within the regions of Africa and West Africa in
particular. This could be attributed to weighty and gross inhuman treatment meted on the system in the colonial
days and extended in the military era. It has deeply created structural weakness, inefficiency of political
institutions and lack of national integrity.
Subsequently, the desire for a change in the style of administration emerged and was lauded by the evolving
process of globalization which preaches liberal democracy with its attendant capitalist paraphernalia. This made
military rule anachronistic and the desire to extend political relevance became paramount within the military
circle. Thus, it became the harbinger of military metamorphosis in Africa politics. In Nigeria, General Abacha
was the first military head of state that conceived the idea, nurtured it with the then five existing political parties
in Nigeria lauding their trumpets for his sole emergence (Momodu, 1997). He could not live to have his brain
child ideology snowball him into reality. Since 1999, democratic appetite started driving Nigeria with its own
character and political formation. It evolved a brand of leadership that propelled all the retired soldiers to stage a
comeback to politics. This time, it is the contest of the elders flooding the political space with looted state
treasuries meant for development of which they systematically avoided. It became a deviation from military rule
to gerontocracy with its prevailing military mentality otherwise known as militocracy. In our recent experience,
President Buhari is up to keep the process going of which other past heads of state and some retired military and
para-military officers are all out to partake in