A CRITICAL APPRAISAL ON CIVIL-MILITARY RELATIONS IN NIGERIA, 1966-1999

Introductione

military foundation of most societies would be dicult to dispute. History books are oen lled with people illustration of invasions and conquest of weak communities by powerful forces. e military as an institution existed even in pre-colonial times especially in those ancient kingdom of all such as the Benin Empire, the Oyo Kingdom, Dahomey Kingdom, Borno Empire, etc. At this time, the military was primarily assigned the responsibility of defending the territorial integrity of these sates. Although, they were regularly consulted even on political matters, they had no direct control over the aairs of state. Essentially, they remained subordinated to the political authorities [1]. Even in ancient Rome, the military was not known to directly involved in governance until the point in time when the Roman Army “went beyond. Its brief to takeover power from the Roman senate and henceforth chose who the Emperor was going to be. is abbreviation became known as PRAETORIANISM i.e. the direct intervention of the military in politics. Consequently, the military that was initially regarded as the protector of the Emperor or the praetorian guards suddenly took over power. From this moment onward military praetorians became associated with the overthrow of legitimate ‘and elected government [2].Although, the military institution is an important institution in the society that could assist in the maintenance of stability through protection of the territorial integrity of the state concerned. e unusual happens when this institution chooses to abandon its traditional responsibility and then decides to embrace the option of taking over the state power. e issue therefore, is how we keep the military permanently in the barracks in order for it to perform its traditional role as well as disengage them from politics.is paper is structured into ve parts. In section two, the conceptual clarication of the terms used in the write up was elucidated, Military intervention in politics was brought to light in Africa with particularly focus on Nigeria, the concept of democracy, democratization [3] and the military are critically examined and the fourth section deals with the imperative of enhancing,, an enduring and lasting civil — military relation in the fourth Republic and beyond. e conclusion is contained in the Fih section. Conceptual clarication and literature reviewA. Democratization: if we take democracy as being on a continuum with low democracy, medium democracy and high democracy as the closet to the democratic dead and, then in reference to Nigeria we can only speak of democratization; which is a form of low democracy tending toward medium with democratic consolidation still for fetched. B. e military: this is one of the institution of the state assigned with the responsibility of defending the territorial integrity of the state to ward o aggression from other independent state C. Civil-military relation: this notion connote the idea of engendering civilian control of the military as well as keeping the military in the barrack to perform their constitutional/ traditional role. D. Fourth republic: this is the period that begin from the time the Abubakar regime disengage from oce and hand —over to an elected civilian government that is, from May 29th 1999. E. Consolidation: this is dened as the process of achieving broad and deep legitimating such that all political actors, at both the elite and mass levels, believe that, the democratic regime is better for their society than any other realistic alternative they can imagine. Military intervention in Africa politics During the days of colonialism, the colonial powers needed to use military force to pacify and capture the conquered territories of Africa in the course of the arbitrary rule perspective by colonialism, military came in handy (as a useful instrument) and all through the period of colonial rule the military related to the people without civility and they were accustomed to