1. Governing the Security Sector in a Democratising Polity: The Nigerian Case
by
J. ‘Kayode Fayemi
Centre for Democracy & Development (Lagos & London)
Introduction
After fifteen years of military/authoritarian rule, great expectation accompanied the
resumption of civilian rule in Nigeria in May 1999. For a country that had suffered a severe
deterioration in its economy and politics in thirty years of military involvement in the politics,
the assumption that civilian rule will herald a dawn of peace and a deepening of democratic
values and norms in society after a particularly venal military government was
understandable. However, it took very little account of the deep-seated nature of the
centrifugal fissures inherent in Nigeria’s body politic, which were not the products of military
rule even if years of military rule exacerbated them.
Two and half years into civilian rule, the scale, spread and intensity of conflict reflects the
exaggerated link between military disengagement from politics and the demilitarisation of
the Nigerian society. As Table 1 below shows, societal violence has clearly been on the
increase from the day the civilian government came into office. Although there are several
reasons for this increase in societal and state violence not least the expanded space
provided by democratic governance, the fact that public perception still casts doubt on the
state’s capacity for domestic crisis management and security of life and property
(Consultation with the Poor in Nigeria, The World Bank, 2000) underscores why governance
in the security sector is as critical as other issues in overall public sector reform agenda.
As Nigeria drifts down the path of violent conflict on a rising scale even with its record of
relative success in managing post-civil-war reconciliation and reconstruction agenda, the key
challenges to the democratising polity remain that of establishing effective and accountable
security agencies ‘in pursuit of individual and community security in tandem with state
security’ (Obasanjo, 2001), and, on the other, that of establishing effective governance of
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2. the security sector through the empowerment of civilian oversight mechanisms.
Yet, these structural challenges could only be addressed within a historical context. Equally,
to understand the nature of the challenges and proffer solutions to them, an assessment of
Nigeria’s political environment is critical. To what extent, for example has the question of
the nation been settled? What do the Constitution and other laws say about the control of
the security forces; what is the mission, purpose and nature of the security forces; what is
the interaction between the composition of security forces and the composition of society as
a whole; Does the mission derived from the security threat correspond to the size,
composition and equipment of the security forces; Are resources used to fulfil the identified
mission of the security forces, or are they misused in various ways including for rent-seeking
purposes; what is the role of non-state security actors – positive and negative and how
effectively do the key oversight agencies – legislature, civilian bureaucracy, civil society –
function in general.
This chapter seeks to assess the issues and options for security sector restructuring in
Nigeria from a nuanced investigation of the cross-cutting issues highlighted above by
examining:
(a) The manifold legacies of Nigeria's authoritarian past and the effect of the
culture of militarism on public discourse, consolidation of civil politics and
democratic governance;
(b) The nature of political reform, governance and the democratisation agenda;
(c) Policy prescriptions introduced for transforming security structure and the
extent to which the policy prescriptions guarantee institutionalised democratic
control without undermining internal autonomy and military professionalism;
(d) The International & Regional Dimension of security restructuring; and,
(e) Prospects for Reform and policy coherence.
A. Legacies of Nigeria’s Military/authoritarian past
When the Nigerian military first intervened in politics in January 1966, their action was
acclaimed as a nation-building/transformation project aimed at eradicating corruption and
reordering the State. Six months after, the Nigerian army had become the catalyst for
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3. national disintegration as it broke up into ethnic and regional factions and exacerbated pre-
existing primordial cleavages, which had earlier undermined its professionalism, eventually
leading to the three-year civil war. The civil war was however significant in helping the
military regain a level of legitimacy after the war ended. Strengthened by the favourable
aftermath of a Nigerian civil war, the Head of State, General Yakubu Gowon utilised the
legitimacy provided by the favourable ‘resolution’ of the civil war to project the military as
the vanguard of the nation-building project. Consequently, the civil war which albeit
fragmented the military as an institution now provided it with the best opportunity to
redeem its image, albeit not necessarily on account of its sterling performance in the
prosecution of the war. While the civil war per se is not the focus of this paper, it is
important to highlight the degree to which it influenced the actions of the military regime,
especially its claim to a pride of place in a nation-building project.
The post civil war agenda of rehabilitation, reconstruction and reconciliation, which was to
culminate in political disengagement in 1976, elicited a high level of consensus from within
the military and the political society, yet it meant more of continuity of the old order than
change. The support the military leadership’s agenda gained from civil and political society
derived from its underlying acceptance that power belonged to the people and this was
demonstrated by General Gowon’s specific announcement of a timetable for military
disengagement from politics. Although it was evident that the military had now become
politicised, General Gowon was able to involve credible politicians in the work of the
administration by keeping within their purview a political order to be soon controlled by
them. Even those who had concerns about the growing concentration of power at the
centre saw the benefits possible from wielding power at the centre. What destroyed this
overwhelming support from both the military and political constituencies was the inability of
the Gowon administration to consolidate the nation-building project, in the aftermath of the
civil war in spite of the opportunity provided by the expanded oil-fuelled economy.
While State power was enhanced by the civil war, the improvement in the country's
economy through oil wealth sharpened the predatory instincts of the military ruling elite and
their allies in the civilian bureaucracy and business sector and this greatly undermined the
institutional capacity for proper governance and, in turn the nation-building project. Even
though corruption was rampant during the civil war, it was the rapacity of regime
functionaries in the aftermath of the war that lay the basis for the level of corruption to be
witnessed in subsequent years.
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4. Second, while state military power was potentially enhanced by the post civil war "no victor,
no vanquished" reconciliation policy, the Gowon administration failed to concentrate on
reorganising the internal workings of the military institution. Although military planners
sought to improve service co-ordination and came up with suggestions for demobilising and
mechanising a military which was now spending 90% of its budget on salaries for the
250,000 strong force (from a pre-war strength of 10,000), there were no doctrinal principles
that guided defence management. Indeed, as General Gowon’s official biographer noted, ‘as
Gowon settled to issues of state governance after the war, his contacts with the military
gradually decreased as his relationship with the civilian bureaucracy grew’1. More than any
other factor, the failure to seize the opportunity provided at the end of the civil war to re-
organise the military institution lay the basis for the progressive decline of the entire security
structure in the latter years.
In its place, what became evident in thirty years of military involvement in politics is the
degree of sectional loyalties that existed within the military hierarchy. It is sobering to see
over the years the way this has been used to advance the ruling elite's prebendal
proclivities. While the political military consistently maintained the façade of a professional
and accommodational strategy that kept it in power for those three decades, the collegial
nature of that strategy would appear to have assumed a far more segmental edge after
Nigeria’s second republic. At this stage, professional camaraderie and institutional cohesion
seemed relatively less important in the alliance used to sustain the military in power. On the
one hand, it was possible for successive military regimes to retain power with some measure
of authority in areas where the personal projects of the military ruling elite coincided with
the institution’s corporate interests. On the other, especially in areas where the rulers made
no attempt to respect institutional interest, military rulers hung unto power on the strength
of their coercive capabilities and co-optation strategies which depended on alternative
power centres outside the military - in the civilian bureaucracy, in intelligence units, business
sector and intellectual circles, all of which helped in the rupturing and de-institutionalisation
of the military structure. To varying degrees, successive military regimes adopted this
strategy – from General Yakubu Gowon to the recently departed General Abdulsalami
Abubakar, however the regimes of Generals Ibrahim Babangida and Sani Abacha
represented two extremes in the continuum.
To understand the impact of the inability of the post-war military regime to maximise its
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5. post war legitimacy that it gained, it would be useful to examine the legacies in greater
depth, especially in areas such as: (i) the politicisation and de-institutionalisation of the
armed forces; (ii) the personalisation of power and quest for the creation of a military party;
(iii) the weakening of accountability and control mechanisms and the growth of the
intelligence agencies; (iv) business-civilian bureaucracy-military links and corruption; (v) the
emergence of the ethnic-regional factor in the armed forces and (vi) societal militarisation,
crime and political violence.
(i) The Legacy of a Politicised and De-institutionalised Military
Most observers of the Nigerian military in its thirty years of involvement in politics agree that
the institution was riven by a variety of corporate, ethnic and personal grievances developed
over time in the prolonged years of the military in government.(Ihonvbere, 1997;
Adejumobi, 1999) Although the negative impact on professionalism and the operational
effectiveness of the military had become noticeable – especially in the aftermath of the civil
war – given the confusion and lack of direction that attended the professional direction of
the post-war military. Unfortunately, the euphoria of federal victory and the immediate
pressures of rehabilitation, reconciliation and reconstruction of the political terrain fostered the
creeping organisational inertia in which the armed forces had become embroiled. Military
planners and battle commanders were uncertain that the war was won by effective
organisation of the military2, and honest enough to admit that peacetime deterrence will be
harder to achieve if renewed attention was not paid to professional/organisational issues
around mission/role, doctrine, force posture, force levels, combat operational command,
resource allocation and weapon procurement3.
In spite of this recognition, Nigeria's immediate post war defence organisation did not depart
markedly from what existed in pre-war circumstances, mainly because the preference for
incremental, rather than radical change was overwhelming. Indeed, a wide gap existed
between defence organisation and strategic purpose, in terms of the relationship between the
mission derived from threat assessment and force design, posture, weapons procurement
procedures, resource allocation and combat operational command. Although a few cosmetic
attempts were made in restructuring the defence organisation (Fayemi, 1994), subordinating
the service viewpoint became the main problem in the promotion of the defence view. Service
interests, service needs and service power continued to dominate the Nigerian military
structure, frustrating all efforts to establish a rational system of strategic planning, force
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6. development, resource allocation and collective military co-ordination throughout the period of
military rule. The limited attempt made towards central coordination during civilian rule
between 1979 – 84 was hobbled by the combination of civilian inexperience and military’s
continued inter-service rivalry.
The implications of military involvement in politics however went beyond defective defence
organisation and management. One aspect that deserves a particular examination is the
impact of military coups on corporate professionalism. By their very nature, coups are high-
risk ventures, which in their success or abortion almost always result in the loss of
perpetrators or their targets, or both. The persistence of coups and the decimation of the
officer corps had a negative impact on the profession and invariably, national security. For
example, the 1966 coups saw the loss of at least two thirds of the officer corps; the abortive
1976 coups led to the execution of 116 military men, police officers and civilians; the 1986
abortive coup resulted in the deaths of some of the country's best pilots, and this in part led
to the near total decimation of the air-force under General Babangida, a situation which
further resulted in the avoidable deaths of 150 military officers in a defective C-130
Transport plane crash in 1991. The April 1990 coup led to the deaths of at least fifty military
officers. Altogether no fewer than 400 officers lost their lives in or as a result of coup
d'etats. In addition to the loss occasioned via executions was the scale and intensity of
premature retirements, unexpected dismissals and rank inflation that resulted from abortive
or successful coups. Ordinarily, retirements and promotions in the military establishment is a
routine thing. Yet despite the surface plausibility of “routine exercise”, “natural attrition” or
“declining productivity”, that accompanied the dismissals and promotions of this period, the
overwhelming consensus was one of an exercise overtly politically motivated.
By the time General Abacha died in June 1998, the military institution had suffered seriously
from this blatant disregard of its structure and procedures and no fewer than 300 members
of the officer corps had lost their commission in the course of these haphazard retirements
and dismissals. The flip side of the above situation was the excessively rapid promotions
that accompanied them which tended to create false expectations through rank inflation and
this had other implications for the country's security as commanders kept changing and not
enough time was given for familiarization in command and staff posts, the overall
consequences of which was acute disorientation and organizational dysfunction among the
rank and file. At another level, the political careerism resulting from successful coups also
engendered resentment, rivalry and disunity amongst military officers. Thus, organizational
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7. dysfunction in the Nigerian military organization resulted primarily from this political
involvement. Both played a mutually reinforcing role in their impact on professionalism and
institutional cohesion. In the end, the political military failed to govern directly and/or
effectively without losing its professional attributes and without ceasing to be an army.
ii) The Personalisation of Power and the Quest for a Military Party
In the move from the collegial and institutional agenda of the military to the personalisation
of political and military power, a variety of measures were utilised in turning the erstwhile
group project to the personal wishes of the individual ruler. In the early days of military
rule, extensive consultation and regular feedbacks within the military constituency was the
rule rather than the exception and the institutions established for the decision-making
processes did not function as mere rubber stamps for the whims and caprices of the military
junta’s head. Although the sheer force of personality and charisma of the leader influenced
the way his personal agenda cohered with the institutional project, the institutional agenda
prevailed for much of the period preceding the Babangida regime in 1985. Right from the
way he chose to be addressed as ‘President’ hitherto restricted to elected leaders, rather
than the low key and traditional ‘Head of State’ to the regime’s political economy project, it
became evident early on that the institutional project had lost out.
This breakdown in institutional cohesion and espirit de corps in the context of the
personalised nature of rule, especially under Generals Babangida and Abacha also had
another strategy ingrained in it. Unlike in the past when it was anathema for serving officers
to stake a claim to permanent political participation, many began to raise the stakes for
constitutionalising military involvement in politics in an institutional sense. Various
institutional designs were discussed, implemented and discarded for furthering this political
project, the most prominent being the establishment of an Armed Forces Consultative
Council, comprising of officers from the rank of Colonels and above as a General Assembly
of military officers that fed into the ruling Armed Forces Ruling Council-the pre-eminent
decision making body.
Another design was that of establishing a military party. Military officers and civilian
intellectuals were assigned the task of studying a variety of institutionalised military political
party projects. Prominent models that attracted the regime’s attention included the
Nasserist/Baathist models in Egypt, Syria and Iraq as well as the foundational regimes in
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8. Latin America and South East Asia.7 Although it was General Babangida who put in motion
the idea of constructing a military party, it was his military successor, General Abacha who
eventually implemented the blueprint and through the brazen creation of artificial political
parties. At the time of his death, all the five parties in his democratic transition project had
"unanimously" adopted General Abacha as the presidential candidate. Although there was
strong opposition to this phoney democratisation project in civil society, it is no exaggeration
that General Abacha had the presidency within sights even if his ascension might have
resulted in a far more pernicious state.
While it is arguable that these personal political projects did not succeed in the manner
envisaged, the legacy of constitutional/institutional engineering from above bequeathed by
the military is partly responsible for the stunted growth of the political party structure to
date. Indeed, the limited success achieved by Generals Babangida and Abacha in the
creation of political parties by military fiat with imposed but quite pedestrian ideological toga
– ‘a little to the left and a little to the right’ as General Babangida described the two party
arrangement he willed into existence underscores why the present political parties are still
controlled by the praetorian guard of erstwhile military era in an age of neo-militarism. The
fact that very little differentiates these political parties as platforms for change explains the
disillusionment with mainstream politics and the popularity of ethnic and religious
constituencies as a way of providing security and safety.
(iii) The Weakening of accountability and the growth of the intelligence agencies
One of the most deleterious consequences of the de-institutionalisation of the military was
its loss of monopoly over the means of coercion and management of violence in the
Nigerian state. One critical factor this loss could be traced to is the gradual and quite
surreptitious disengagement of other security agencies that were hitherto subsumed within
the military hierarchy – especially as the military moved to a more personalised form of rule.
For example, the rise in influence of military intelligence and associated bodies became
directly proportional to the loss of influence by the ‘constitutional’ military as a corporate
institution and the Defence Ministry as the bureaucratic institution responsible for
accountability, leading to the development of an alternative power-centre around the
security/intelligence networks and used by successive rulers to undermine the military
institution in order to remain in power. What suffered most in the process was the
weakening of accountability and absence of transparent security sector governance. To
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9. understand the depth of the crisis though, it is useful to trace the changes to the security
and intelligence sector of the Nigerian security structure over the last three decades.
Consistent with the position of every post independence sovereign country in Anglophone
Africa, Nigeria’s intelligence activities were largely conducted under the auspices of the
Special Branch of the Nigeria Police Force, except for military related intelligence work –
which was also coordinated with the Special Branch activities. The Special Branch, which was
responsible for domestic security intelligence lost its pre-eminent role in the collection, collation,
evaluation, analysis, integration and interpretation of information and intelligence after the 1976
abortive coup d'etat in which the Head of State, General Mohammed was assassinated. The
new Head of State not only set up a new intelligence outfit – named the Nigerian Security
Organisation (NSO), he also chose a military officer to head the body. Hence it took the
security of the individual heading the government for the institution to come to the realisation
that something had to be done about the intelligence aspect of national security. This became
the rule subsequently as every change to the intelligence services reflected more a concern
about regime security rather than any rationally ordered need for institutional development.
With every change however, the intelligence services grew in influence and relevance to the
ruler in particular. Indeed, by the time General Babangida faced down the bloody military coup
that nearly toppled his regime in 1990, the intelligence service had become the most powerful
entity in the institutional hierarchy of national security policy making – almost an alternative
powercentre, with the military institution consistently playing a second fiddle to it. The growth
in influence of security agencies that are directly accountable to the Head of State also gave
the military leaders more room to manoeuvre and helped seal their distaste for institutional
arrangements that could mediate excesses of the Head of Government and make the ruler
more accountable.
This overwhelming influence however developed a non-institutional side especially under the
Babangida and Abacha regimes, which turned out to be more pernicious. With the
ascendancy of the security/intelligence units, the associational and corporatist character of
the regimes at inception assumed an authoritarian regimen for power consolidation as the
leader’s dependence on the security and intelligence network grew. Whilst this practice had
started with the creation of NSO in 1976, it was institutionalised under General Babangida
when he set up a plethora of security networks culminating in the creation of the alternative
para-military service - National Guard – to undercut the military institution. By this time, the
role of private military companies in the activities of the intelligence services and in the
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10. overall management of the regime security had become a source of concern within the
military as an institution.4 Equally, a regime that had come into office espousing respect for
fundamental freedoms and human rights had lost credibility with civil society and societal
violence against the state had increased exponentially by 1989. Through its responsibility for
discovering and nipping ‘forces of destabilization’ in the bud, the role expansion of the
security services guaranteed it an autonomy and influence not hitherto accorded security
and intelligence services in Nigeria. At the same time, the measure of accountability
expected of the service within an institutional set-up equally disappeared.
This growth in influence however took on more insidious dimensions under the late General
Abacha with the formation of the Libyan and Korean trained Special BodyGuard Services for
the personal protection of the Head of State as well as the Strike Force and K Squad –
responsible for carrying out state sponsored assassinations of political enemies at a time
that the military-controlled Presidential Brigade of Guards was no longer trust-worthy. That
this alternative power bloc around General Abacha completely made a nonsense of the
military institution and destroyed the hierarchy that is so central to the institution, is evident
from recent revelations at the Human Rights Violations Investigations Commission’s hearings
and in the trials of the junior officers who ran these alternative security outfits.5
(iv) The Business elite-military links and Corruption-fuelled Institutional Designs
The origin of what we have referred to elsewhere as Nigeria's "bureaucratic-
economic militariat" (Fayemi, 1999) could indeed be traced back to the central role of the
military in the control and management of Nigeria's post civil war oil wealth, especially after
the promulgation of the Indigenisation Decrees of 1972 and 1977.6 If one traced the
personal, political and financial links of business individuals associated with the military prior
to their exit from government and in the immediate aftermath of civilian politics in 1979, the
emerging trend of a network comprising the military, the civilian bureaucracy and the
business elite became immediately apparent.7 At this stage though, it would appear that the
acquisition by the military personnel involved was largely in pursuit of personal wealth as an
increasing number of retired senior military officers ... combine chairmanships/directorships
of their own private businesses, with part-time appointments to key governmental posts and
parastatals relating to agriculture, commerce, and industry, in addition to interlocking
directorships of many foreign companies incorporated in Nigeria.8 In no time though, this
pursuit of individual wealth set the tone for a conscious institutional programme of wielding
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11. political influence.9
With the arrival of General Babangida at the helm of affairs in 1985, the legacy of militarism
had been spread wide. One of the first measures that he adopted in a widely populist move
purported to have led to the rejection of the IMF strictures on Nigeria was the policy of
Structural Adjustment. As the country became sucked into the vortex of structural
adjustment programme under General Babangida, the elevation of finance over industrial
capital became the most significant feature of the period. Short term monetarist policies of
exchange rate devaluation, removal of subsidies, sale of state enterprises, freeing of prices
and generalised deflationary policies took precedence over structural reform of that
debilitating economy which was the favoured national consensus for addressing the problem
at the time. Deregulation ensured that the financial sector became the only growth sector
with interest rates determined by speculators and the military controlling a large share of
finance capital. At the same time, agriculture, manufacturing and industry experienced
severe distress due to low capacity utilisation.
Equally, the extra funds gained from the increased oil sales during the Gulf War in 1990/91
fuelled corruption as this extra income was regarded as discretionary and it went on a
massive spending binge that diverted revenues into corruption funded patronage, sharply
expanded extra-budgetary expenditure and bloated an already inflation ridden economy.
Indeed, an official inquiry into the finances of the Central Bank of Nigeria, between
September 1988 and 30 June 1994 concluded that, “US$12.2 billion of the $12.4billion (in
the dedicated and special accounts) was liquidated in less than six years... spent on what
could neither be adjudged genuine high priority nor truly regenerative investment; neither
the President nor the Central Bank Governor accounted to anyone for these massive extra-
budgetary expenditures…that these disbursements were clandestinely undertaken while the
country was openly reeling with a crushing external debt overhang.'10
Little wonder then that the economic reform programme started by the military regime in
1986 (under Genera Babangida) finally collapsed under the weight of the 1993 annulled
election and the massive capital flight that followed. By 1993, Nigeria, according to the
World Bank, was among the 20 poorest countries in the world. The situation has since
worsened under the present regime; GNP grew only 2.8 percent in 1994, inflation ran at
over 60 percent just as the country experienced exponential unemployment growth rate and
the Nigerian naira virtually collapsed. As one commentator of that period noted, "virtually all
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12. pretense of professional economic management was abandoned, and the government
cynically allowed the economy to become completely predatory in nature." As a result, the
country stopped servicing interest payments on much of its $30 billion foreign debt, and the
more than $7 billion in arrears on its debt to the Paris Club of Western creditors. Yet, in
spite of this dismal record, a high number of retired military officers or fronts of serving
officers were heavily involved in the finance/banking sectors. Not only did many of them
lack any knowledge of the industry, they possessed little aptitude to apply themselves to the
huge responsibilities their involvement demanded of them.
But it was not just the economy that suffered in this ‘private good, public bad’ State
retrenchment legacy of the era. The prospects for democratisation and meaningful politics
also dimmed. Given the diffused level of autonomy exercised by the military institution that
resulted from the parcelling out of the state to private military interests, the class and group
project engendered by previous military rule was exchanged with the rule of the 'benevolent
dictator' since many officers close to power had become beholden to the personal ruler as
direct beneficiaries of the financial incentives he distributed.
In the larger society, privatisation exacerbated the prebendal politics with its
attendant pressure on ethnic relations as many who lost out in the scheme of things
concluded that the overwhelming power of the centre was responsible for their fate. But if
these tendencies were simply limited to the government, it would be less disturbing. By
institutionalising favouritism and corruption as legitimate instruments of governance, the
military regime headed by Babangida succeeded in breeding a myriad of anti-democratic
practices reproduced regularly in the world view of the ordinary Nigerian, either in the form
of a common belief that everyone had a price, or in the disappearance of loyalty to the State
as militarism became embedded in the psyche of the average individual.
The restructuring of the economy along monetarist lines could be said to have
represented an ambitious attempt by the 'techno-military' authoritarian state under General
Babangida to generate a new hegemonic bloc and this was carried out on two broad levels -
economic and political. First, as a result of the government's privatisation agenda, several of
the state-owned industrial and commercial ventures were sold directly to ex-military
generals or to conglomerates linked to them.4 In addition, the new merchant banks that
emerged to take advantage of the liberalisation of the financial sector featured several
retired military officers on their boards. Indeed, many military generals were prominent
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13. beneficiaries of the bad loans allocated by these failed banks.11
Second, General Babangida went beyond the personal pecuniary motives of erstwhile
military rulers by ensuring that the stratification of the military from the rest of society did
not just exist at the level of personal arrangements, but also at an institutional level. Hence,
by adopting a practice common to Latin American and some South East Asian military
institutions, he announced the formation of an Army Bank (which never took off!), an
industrial armament city - (which also did not happen) and the Nigerian Army Welfare
Insurance Scheme (NAWIS). To ensure that every military officer saw the stratification
project as an institutional agenda, the government spent N550 million ($60 million in 1992)
advertised to a hapless public as loans to purchase cars for military officers of and above the
rank of Captains. This was later extended to the non-commissioned officers in the form of
motorcycles and the rank and file got bicycles. Whilst this provided additional respite to the
military dictatorship, it ultimately failed in providing the platform for the elevation of General
Babangida to the civilian political space.
If the political manipulation under General Abacha was unapologetically blatant; the
Nigerian economy became a personal fiefdom. The diminution of any official pretence of a
collegial facade which military rulers always projected was total by the time General Abacha
died in June 1997. Unlike General Babangida who parcelled out the State to friends and
mentors within the military and political society with a view to consolidating his political
base, General Abacha kept the spoils of office for himself and his family, a coterie of his
security apparatus – mostly from his ethnic base, thus leading many to see a link between
his economic and political project and that of his ethnic base amongst Hausa-Fulani-Kanuri
political elite. The context of his plundering of the national wealth in which the presumed
winner of the 1993 election and several other political and civil society leaders were still
being held in detention further fuelled this perception that the agenda was to use a
complete control of the economy to ensure a firm grip on the political terrain. The fact that
he made a conscious effort of ignoring the military institution12, which ordinarily ought to
have provided the cover for his political project, strengthened the notion that he had the
aim of destroying the military as an institution, exacerbate ethnic tensions and shut out the
international community from the country in other to consolidate the state decomposition
project.
(v) The emergence of the ethnic-regional factor in the armed forces
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14. In discussing the emergence of the ethnic-regional factor in the Nigerian security structure,
it is important to start by underscoring the fact that representativeness was not overly
critical in the establishment and recruitment process into the colonial army. Hence, a
division of labour emerged in the colonial army in which the bulk of the rank and file soldiers
came from so-called martial race, mostly from northern minority ethnic groups, whilst the
officer corps in which the forces needed fairly well educated men, was dominated by
southern ethnic groups.13 This early pattern of recruitment was replicated in the post-
independence armed forces. Clearly, the political elite of the immediate post-independence
era was very sensitive to the fact that two-thirds of the officers by 1962 were from the
South (and mainly Ibo), hence the 1962 quota policy was aimed at redressing the imbalance
already dominant in the officer ranks.14 Events surrounding the political crisis that
culminated in the civil war in 1967 exacerbated the ethnic-regional feature of the Nigerian
military, even at a time when it was the best example of a national institution in the
unfinished nation-building project. In particular, the loss of at least two thirds of the officer
corps from the East contributed largely to the secessionist plans of Lt Colonel Ojukwu,
especially after the assassination of General Ironsi, the Supreme Commander of the Nigerian
Armed Forces at the time.
The end of the civil war in 1970 offered the opportunity to redress perceived imbalance and
the subsequent introduction of ‘federal character’ in recruitment that guaranteed equality of
opportunity into military institutions helped in this regard. However, the involvement of the
military in politics continued to strengthen the unitary characteristics of Nigeria’s federal
structure and seriously weakened the very basis of Nigeria’s federalism. From the creation
of twelve states out of the erstwhile four regions in 1967as a way strengthening the federal
centre in the wake of the civil war, by the time the military left government in 1999, the
country had thirty-six states – mostly weak and inevitably dependent on the strong centre
for its survival – thus defeating the agenda of autonomy that the states were also meant to
serve. This led to the growing campaign for the deconcentration of power at the centre as
the politics of identity gained more legitimacy in the wake of a failed citizenship and
nationalist project. The fact that the power-wielders at the Centre also lacked legitimacy
contributed to the perception of the military as a fake national institution used to promote
particular ethnic, religious and political interests. The fact that there had been no clear
resolution of the national question made the perception of ethnic/regional tension more
palpable. Indeed, while the military rulers continued to project a nationalist outlook, the
14

15. alliance used in sustaining the military in power looked increasingly regional or even ethnic
to the casual observer.
This failure to resolve the nationality question in an inclusive manner is evident in the varied
responses across country to conflicts over identity, nationality, self-determination and
autonomy. The introduction of Sharia in many of the Northern states (and the recent
killings in Jos), the rising tide of ethno-nationalism (the OPC and Egbesu Boys uprisings),
and arguments over the control of state and federal resources (particularly in the Niger
Delta) are all examples of demands for “genuine federalism.” This increasing privatisation
of violence in the country represents one of the main challenges to the reform of the
military institution and the eventual transformation of the security structure. While most
Nigerians still in favour of a federal nation, it is clear that the nation-state as it is constituted
is a source of violent conflict. The failure of the various institutional mechanisms adopted to
manage diversity and difference – federal character principle, quota system, rotational
presidency and political zoning, to mention just a few – is an indication of a lack of social
contract between the governors and the people with a view to devising politically legitimate
and inclusive mechanisms that are consensus-driven. Many Nigerians now question the
country’s future, especially if left in the hands of a centralised State. The challenge
identified by the variety of conflicts across the country, especially since the exit of the
military, is however not a negation of the need for institutional processes to address this
drift from nationalism to balkanisation, but a call for the search for that process to be
bottom-up, rather than simply imposed by military fiat..
Yet even as one acknowledges the clear perception that the national question remains
unresolved thus fuelling a regional-ethnic military outlook, it is important to make a
distinction between the character of the military in government and the military as an
institution. While the military in government clearly looked ‘regional’ and ‘ethnic’, the
military continued to show evidence of even-handedness in recruitment as an institution.
However, it is the perception that the national military is not there to serve the interests of
all Nigerians that underscores the prevalence of private armies and militias, mostly formed
along ethnic and regional lines in defence of particular interests. It is to this last legacy of
military rule, and perhaps the most worrying due to the growth in societal and structural
violence that we now turn.
(vi) The Legacy of Societal militarisation and Violence.
15

16. From the foregoing analysis, years of military rule imposed enormous costs on the Nigerian
people. But perhaps the most enduring of all the legacies bequeathed is the level of
militarism and societal violence that has become rife in civil society. In spite of the various
steps embarked upon by the civilian government since it assumed power, the intensity of
conflict in the country in the last two years underscore why military restructuring can only
take its proper place within the context of institutionalised national restructuring. (See Table
1 above)
Without a doubt, military disengagement from politics represents an important first step
towards democratic control, even if it does not equate with or immediately translate to
civilian, democratic control. From the evidence available in Nigeria so far, formal military
disengagement has widened the space within which concrete democratic reform is possible
and sustainable but it has also thrown up various centrifugal fissures, reopened old wounds
hitherto festering under the surface and generated new forms of conflicts in the country.
Some of the conflicts have antecedents in old native-settler animosities, but many are
resource-driven, spurred by perceptions of unequal distribution of government resources.
Equally, incidents of aggression, impatience, and competition arise in domestic violence and
other family disputes, over petrol queues, in the conduct of motorists, and in the behaviour
of the armed forces and police in dealing with ordinary people.15 While the immediate
causes of increased violence and crime reside in a perception of inequality in society, at root
however is the loss of a culture of compromise and accommodation in the resolution and
management of conflicts. This point cannot be overemphasised: Nigerians lost their culture
of dialogue in a period when militarization and the primacy of force had become state policy
and it will require a return to consensus based, rather than the current adversarial character
of politics, to regain that culture of dialogue.
Even so, the context within which politics takes place also affect the likelihood of a dialogue
and consensus driven process. In a country where the political leadership automatically
foreclose certain issues as ‘non-negotiable’ or in Nigeria’s local parlance – as ‘no-go areas’,
it becomes difficult for those who want those options to be discussed, negotiated and
bargained for, to regard imposed constitutional principles as legitimate – especially where
these principles are not derived from agreed societal values and norms, but simply imposed
by those who have the means to gain access to political power at the centre. Having broken
free of years of repression and control under military rule, it is no surprise therefore that
16

17. constituencies and communities have taken to heart the lesson of military rule – the use of
force as the bargaining chip for forcing negotiations of foreclosed agenda. Without seeking
to justify these responses, it is important to understand the context within which they occur.
Yet for the country to attain stable civil-military relations, a critical task in consolidating
Nigeria's fragile democracy and rebuilding stable civil-military relations in the polity is
reclaiming the militarised mind, which has been fed by a deep-seated feeling of social
exclusion under military rule. Given the prevailing political culture - bred by three decades of
militarism and authoritarian control, the current political transition only represents a
reconfiguration of the political, economic and military elite, rather than an opening up of the
political system and broadening of participation. Indeed, what we have witnessed is the
creation of "shadow military and security hierarchy” in a certain sense.
The greatest challenge to addressing the scourge of political militarism therefore is
addressing the psychology of militarism that has become reified in the context of Nigeria’s
politics of exclusion. Herein lie the paradox of democratisation and demilitarisation not just
in Nigeria, but the rest of post-cold war Africa. How attainable is a complete overhaul of
politics from its military roots, especially in a body politic that has become so atomised and,
in which the symbols, values, and ethos of the military are replicated in large sections of the
civil-society.
In themselves, these manifold legacies of military politics constitute major challenges that
need to be grappled with by Nigerians, but it is their impact on the post-military political
reform project, especially its impact on the capacity for governance given the fact that the
country’s escape from the grip of a damaging military rule was more of a lucky escape than
a well ordered exit, that is critical to our understanding. The capacity of the succeeding
administration to address the negative impact of the legacies highlighted above is key to
arresting the drift to violent conflict in the country.
B. The Nature of political reform, governance and the democratisation
agenda
The nature of General Abacha's exit and the arrival of General Abubakar on the
scene arguably determined the outcome of the democratisation project in 1999. However
one may view the eventual outcome of the rushed transition programme, the fact that the
17

18. military elite was not responding to a full defeat by the population could hardly be
discounted in understanding the pacted nature of the transition and the push for a graceful
exit for the military through a political machine closest and more sympathetic to its
hierarchy. The dominance of the party hierarchy by the retired military and civilians closely
connected to the military elite set the tone for party formation that paid little attention to
ideology.
This compromised political settlement was therefore perceived in several sectors,
especially in the civilian polity as a reason why military disengagement ought to be viewed
with a great deal of scepticism and not a sine-qua non of demilitarisation of the polity. While
it is true that General Abacha failed to achieve his personal objective of transforming himself
into a civilian leader, the fact that military influence still played a huge part in the choice of
president - albeit in a less blatant form - was regarded as an indication of the huge
challenge the country faces in the post-military era. For civilians, the overriding fact that the
Nigerian military has become entrenched in all facets of Nigeria's social and economic life
was seen as a major limitation on the ability of the new government to undertake any
fundamental transformation of an institution widely perceived as unaccountable. It was
against this background of widespread scepticism that the government was inaugurated.
Indeed for many, the secretive nature of the transition, which saw a government
elected with no public access to the fundamental law of the land in the form of a
constitution, was seen as a major problem. At a time when the constitution is no longer
seen as a mere set of rules and laws regulating the state and society, but a social contract,
an expression of the general will of the nation and that single document under which
diverse and even ideologically opposed groups unite in defence of democracy, many
objected to an imposed constitution and predicted that this eventual document was bound
to contain booby traps for the new democracy.
Hanging like a pall over the transition programme were the unresolved issues
surrounding the annulled 1993 election and the regionalist questions triggered by that
particular election. Although the 1993 election itself was not free from accusations of elite-
pacting since it did not really emerge from a broad based popular demand, but a largely
predetermined transition programme in which political parties were even formed and largely
funded by the military, the brazen and inexplicable manner with which the election results
had been annulled galvanised the opposition of the broad civil society and labour movement
against the military. For civil society and pro-democracy forces in particular, who had
suffered severe repression on account of their opposition to that annulment, what the
18

19. country needed was not an election that will just reproduce status-quo, but a clean slate
that could only be brought about by an interim government and an interim constitution with
the task of organising a national conference to produce a consensus document which will
now be the basis of governance in the country. In propagating this approach, they drew
inspiration from the National Conference arrangements in Franco-phone Africa, especially in
neighbouring Benin republic and the CODESA arrangement in South Africa. The fact that the
main symbol of the annulled election – Chief M.K.O.Abiola - died in detention in rather
mysterious circumstances elicited various claims about the role of external forces whose
interest was mainly stability, rather than democracy, in influencing the shape of Nigeria’s
future with relatively little input from the citizens.
In spite of the vociferous campaign for an open debate on the constitution, the idea
of a people driven governance arrangement was largely ignored by the military. Instead,
the Abubakar government established a Constitutional Debate Co-ordinating Committee
(CDCC) to collate public comments on the draft 1995 Constitution, which was produced by
General Abacha. However, the CDCC had only two months to conduct this exercise and in
spite of its members’ determination to do a good job, they were already hobbled by some of
the central principles that guided their work – lack of transparency, openness and credibility
to mention the most critical. More importantly, even when they managed to produce a draft
of the views gathered, they later discovered that many of their recommendations had been
ignored by the ruling military elite, which was intent on its own agenda and wanted to avoid
any issue that might come back to haunt them after their exit. The lackadaisical attitude of
politicians eager to gain access to office gave the impression of a tacit understanding
between some politicians and the departing military elite. This seemed plausible given the
political elite’s non-challance and lack of interest in what the constitutional provisions were
on sensitive issues like the role and mission of the armed forces, oversight responsibility of
the legislature and government, accountability of the military institutions to the state;
relationship between levels of government, to mention just a few issues.
This led to the eventual marginalisation of the civil society voices that cautioned
against a rushed transition programme and an exclusive focus on electoralism. It also
paved the way for the low quality of the elected representatives, majority of whom emerged
from the shadows of the military parties created during General Abacha’s period in office.
Since many of the protagonists of those parties controlled resources through various rent
seeking activities perpetrated while in office, they were able to transfer these resources into
the newly registered parties. The fact that the political parties were cobbled together with
19

20. no clear vision and relatively little distinction in their manifestoes gave an indication of what
to expect in the new political dispensation. In a sense, whatever the present government is
experiencing in terms of challenges to consolidating this fragile democracy could very well
be partly traced to the origins of the political transition that produced the government. This
is evident from the policy prescriptions that the government has adopted which basically
oscillate between simplistic tinkering of the traditional agenda for reform and total re-
imposition of the old order. It would not be wrong to describe the governance arrangement
as one of incremental change amid a huge dose of continuity. It is useful to examine the
policy prescriptions in the area of security sector restructuring to establish why we think this
is the case.
(C) Governance in the Security Sector: Policy Prescriptions under the
Obasanjo administration
Given the above context of military hangover, the election of an ex-military General with
significant support from the military constituency, was seen in civil society as an extension
of continued military rule of sorts. His initial moves however surprised many and he was
able to turn the limited expectation of change and the perceived lack of room for manoeuvre
to an advantage. His first move - the appointment of service chiefs the day he came into
office - gave a strong impression of a government committed to military professionalism and
determined to ensure civilian supremacy. It was also a careful balancing act in ethnic and
regional juggling by ensuring that all the senior service chiefs came from minority ethnic
groups in the north and south. Yet, apart from a wish list of what the President wants to
focus on in restructuring the security sector in his inaugural speech to the nation, there was
no clear articulation of the new administration’s agenda until July, 1999. The president
articulated the government's stand on civilian supremacy in his first major speech to the
military establishment when he addressed the graduating Course Seven of the National War
College on July 24, 1999. In the speech, he highlighted the following principles:
• Acceptance of the elected civilian President as Commander-in-Chief of the
Armed Forces, and the supremacy of elected officials of state over
appointed officers at all levels;
• Acceptance of civilian headship of the Ministry of Defence (MoD) and
other strategic establishments;
• That decisions regarding the goals and conduct of military operations
20

21. must serve the political and strategic goals established by the civil
authority;
• Acceptance of the application of the civilised principles to all military
investigations and trials, and
• The right of Civil (Supreme Court) authority to review any actions or
decisions taken by military judicial officers.
In line with the above, the administration's agenda for military professionalisation has
followed the traditional pattern embraced in countries moving from prolonged
military/authoritarian state structures to civilian, democratic structures. The focus has
therefore been on the (i) the De-politicisation and Subordination of the Military to Civil
Authority; (ii) Constitutionalising Security Sector Reform; (iii) Reorientation and Re-
professionalisation Policy; (iv) Demilitarisation of Public Order and Increasing relevance of
Civil Policing; and (v) Balancing the demands of Defence with the needs for Development.
Let us briefly look at what has been done in these areas.
(i) De-politicisation and Subordination of the Military
As indicated above, the incoming administration gained the confidence of sceptics by
tackling the immediate challenge in the choice of military chiefs to lead the military
restructuring/reprofessionalisation project. The next move by the administration was even
more popular when "politicised" military officers were retired on June 10, 1999 - two weeks
after the government was sworn in. The retirement exercise saw the exit of 93 officers in
total (53 from the army5 20 from the Navy, 16 from the air-force and 4 from the police). The
third move which also elicited the support of the civil society was the government's
announcement of an anti-corruption crusade that saw the immediate termination of several
contracts awarded by the erstwhile military administration (many awarded to companies
associated with the outgoing military hierarchy) as well as the setting up of a judicial
commission to investigate human rights violations under the military.
Popular as the measures taken were, the government’s attention still appeared to have
focussed on the dominant model of civil-military relations, which assumes a level playing
field in which ‘autonomous military professionalism’ can be predicated on ‘objective civilian
control’, one that encourages an ‘independent military sphere’ that does not ‘interfere in
political matters’. In reality though, this perspective treats civilian control as an event, a fact
21

22. of political life, not a process that has to be negotiated within a continuum, especially in
states emerging from prolonged authoritarian rule. In our view, civilian control should not be
seen as a set of technical and administrative arrangements that automatically flow from
every post military transition, but part of complex political processes, which must address
the root causes of militarism in society, beyond the formal removal of the military from
political power or the retirement of politically tainted officers. There is a need to redefine our
notion of the a-political military - a notion that has been central to the discourse of the
dominant civil military relations literature. In Nigeria where the military has become
entrenched in all facets of civic and economic life and where politics has just featured a
reconfiguration rather than a transformation of power as argued above, anchoring the need
for an objective civilian control to the notion of an a-political military underestimates the
seriousness of the issues at stake. While formal mechanisms for control are not in
themselves wrong, the reality underpinning Nigeria's crisis of governance underscores the
fact that subordination of the armed forces to civil control can only be achieved when civil
control is seen as part of complex democratic struggle that goes beyond elections and
beyond subordination to the presidency, but also other oversight institutions. (Williams,
1998; Fayemi, 1998). These processes are expressions of institutional relationships that are
inherently political, subjective, and psychological.13 and it is only when the political and
psychological issues arising out of military involvement in politics are grasped that we can
begin to look at objective control mechanisms. One innovative way of integrating both
objective control mechanisms and subjective political and psychological issues into a vision
of change that is transformatory is the use to which the constitution is put in the quest for
governance in the security sector. The fact that many of these steps are taken with no
discussion as to the precise nature of security that the citizens desire underscore the need
to locate improvements within a constitutional framework.
(ii) Utilising the Constitution to Clarify and entrench the role of the security sector
If the objective of creating efficient and effective professional armed forces is to be
achieved, particular attention must be paid to the principle of accountability to the people
and their elected representatives. The location of the military in terms of its accountability
to the executive, the legislature and the wider society must be clarified in constitutional
terms. This is important for a number of reasons. First, accountability, transparency and
openness have become fundamental constitutional tenets and the Obasanjo administration
is leading the way in this respect. Second, as a national institution, the military relies on the
22

23. public for support and sustenance in order to fulfil its constitutional mandate. Third, the idea
that security matters reside exclusively in the realm of military constituency is one that is
increasingly challenged by the broadened and inclusive meaning of security to society.
Hence, the view that issues relating to the armed forces and security services must be
subjected to public discourse is becoming acceptable. Therefore, if the state must resolve
the problems of accountability and address the current lacunae arising from the character of
the postcolonial security structures as a result of prolonged military dictatorship, popular
participation and organisational coherence, not exclusivity, are the crucial things needed to
ensure democratic control and widen national security perspectives.16
Unfortunately, previous constitutions have tended to be nearly silent about the armed forces
and its role in Society. Although Section 217(1) of the 1979 constitution which stipulates the
role and broad functions of the Armed Forces: namely, defending Nigeria from external
aggression, maintaining its territorial integrity and securing its borders from violations on
land, sea or air; acting in aid of civil authorities to help keep public order and internal
security as may be prescribed by an Act of the National Assembly; and performing such
other functions as may be prescribed by an Act of the National Assembly, was repeated
verbatim in the 1999 constitution, there was no attempt to even reflect on the problems that
arose from prolonged military rule in the intervening two decades. While it is arguable that
this broad depiction of the roles of the security forces gives the political authority enough
flexibility to define what it seeks, this lack of clarity can also be a problem. This is more so in
circumstances where civilians frequently lack knowledge and understanding of military
affairs, and the apportioning of civilian and military responsibilities often depend on the
military itself, or on a small coterie of elected civilian officials close to the President. In the
case of Nigeria, this has led to a further lack of accountability and the assumption of an all-
knowing President. Given the burden of its authoritarian past and the loss of credibility by
the military, it was thought that elected civilians will be allowed to play a key role in military
restructuring and redefinition of roles and missions. Yet, there is a conflict between a
section of the populace who feel that legislative oversight should be central to democratic
control and others who are of the opinion that the President and his Defence Minister, as
ex-military leaders, should have the freedom to restructure the military without adequate or
necessary recourse to other checks and balances within the system simply because "they
know what they are doing".
As a result, the legislature has largely functioned as a rubber-stamp national assembly as far
23

24. as military matters are concerned. Not only are they often unaware of developments, even
the role of the legislature in terms of determining policy on the size and character of the
armed forces, overseeing the armed forces' activities and approving actions taken by the
executive branch, have been short-changed by an overbearing executive branch.' There has
been widespread agitation in civil society about the need to constitutionalise in a
comprehensive manner the role of the military in internal security issues, the use of
emergency powers and the limits of emergency powers vis-à-vis the citizens’ non-derogable
rights, the place of international law in the practice and professionalism of the military as
well as the debate over the composition of the military. It is expected that the current
review of the country's constitution would provide an opportunity to re-examine the
constitutional dimension of military matters and a clarification of the role of the executive,
legislative branch and wider society in ensuring a stable civil-military relations.
Even on an issue that has become the most contentious with the Nigerian public – the quest
for an anti-coup strategy – the current Nigerian constitution is severely muted in its content.
A clause that is most worrying to many observers on the constitution is the rather unlimited
powers it places on the legality of the security agency to ovethrow the constitution which is
the supreme law of the land. Section 315 (5)c of the 1999 constitution states that the
National Security Act (a body of principles, policies and procedures on the operation of the
security agencies) remains in law and cannot be overridden by the constitution unless the
legislature can muster two-thirds of its members to override it both at the national as well
as state assemblies. Opponents claim that for an Act that came into being via a military
decree to still have this imposed legitimacy makes a mockery of the democratisation process
and exposes the country to the whims and caprices of security agencies which operate
largely in the dark.
As if to complicate matters, the "anti-coup" clause contained in Section 1(2) of the 1999
constitution stipulating that "The Federal Republic of Nigeria shall not be governed, nor shall
any person or group of persons take control of the Government of Nigeria or any part
thereof, except in accordance with the provisions of this Constitution. Yet, as stated above,
the National Security Act can override the same constitution, in which case an interpretation
of the above clause could very well be that anyone who successfully removes a
constitutional government via the provisions of the National Security Act is acting in a
constitutional, or at least in a legal manner.
24

25. Compare this section of the Nigerian constitution with Section 3 (1) of the Ghanaian
constitution which states that "Any person who (a) by himself or in concert with others by
any violent or other unlawful means, suspends or overthrows or abrogates this constitution
or any part of it, or attempts to do any such act" or (b) "aids and abets in any manner any
person referred to in paragraph (a) of this clause; commits the offence of high treason and
shall upon conviction be sentenced to suffer death". In subsection 4 (a), the same
constitution states that "All citizens of Ghana have the responsibility and duty at all times" to
(a)defend this constitution and in particular, to resist any person or group of persons
seeking to commit any of the acts defined to in Clause 3 of this article". The constitution
goes further to declare that any person who participates in resisting such attempts or acts of
suspending or abrogating it commits "no offence". Subsequent sections award "adequate
compensation which shall be charged to the Consolidated Fund in respect of any suffering
incurred as a result of punishment' in resisting the abrogation of the Constitution. Of course
skeptics will argue that this in itself will not stop the occurrence of illegal intervention, but
the moral force invested in these clauses cannot be compared to the tepid anti-coup clause
in Section 2 (1) of the Nigerian constitution. Similar clauses such as Ghana's appear in the
Ugandan and South African constitutions and the Ethiopian constitution even goes as far as
stipulating that a civilian must be the Defence Minister at all times. These statements of
intent go a long way in revealing the people's concern for the rule of law.
Finally, beyond the focus on an anti-coup strategy – which is understandable because of the
country’s history, attempts to redefine the role and mission of the security forces most see
security in a wider context and reflect a perspective that sees security and stability as the
flip side of development. There is evidence to suggest that the current administration
17
understands the link but this thinking must be translated into policy.
(iii) Reorientation and Re-professionalisation of the Military
Although the government has strenuously avoided the use of military restructuring,
preferring the more neutral reorientation and reprofessionalisation of the military, the thrust
of its programme indicates that a reorganisation agenda is on course. Taking a cue from the
speech made at the National War College in July, the Vice President, Atiku Abubakar also
promised a "comprehensive transformation of the Armed Forces into an institution able to
prove its worth" when he addressed the Inauguration of the Course Eight at the National
25

26. War College, Abuja in September 10, 1999. This transformation will include:
• Continuation of rationalisation, downsizing, and right-sizing to allow the military shed
its "dead-woods" as well as discard obsolete equipment.
• Re-equipping the services and upgrading soldiers' welfare, albeit within limits of
budgetary allocation;
• Reversing the harm inflicted on military-civilian relations by years of military rule
through measures to subordinate the military to the democratically constituted
authority;
• Building, rehabilitating and strengthening the relationship between the Nigerian
military and the rest of the world, especially African countries, following years of
diplomatic isolation and sanctions.
Although the word "demobilisation" was avoided, it was clear that euphemisms like "down-
sizing" and "right-sizing" meant precisely that and there was no doubt that years of military
involvement in politics had impacted negatively on military professionalism. Indeed - the
Defence Minister, Lt.General TY Danjuma was less diplomatic and actually stated that
military be pruned by at least 30,000 men from current strength.(Daily Times, July 29,
1999), although the President was more diplomatic when he said the government was yet to
make up its mind on questions of demobilisation and that the military was always shedding
"dead wood", hence there was nothing significant about it. Again, because the desire for
demobilisation and or rationalisation was not based on any informed analysis, the military
was able to argue for maintenance of current force strength. Indeed, by December 2000,
the Defence Minister had turned full circle and acknowledged that the government had
decided against demobilisation because of the ‘multifarious commitments of the military…the
Armed Forces even have commitments for the maintenance of law and order in this
country.’18
It would appear that this shift in the official position has been informed partly by the
perennial concerns over recruitment and representativeness in the armed forces, hence the
wariness in government circles to confront it openly. The strong perception of a
26

27. disproportionate recruitment of 'Northerners' into the Nigerian military in spite of the
rigorous operation of the federal quota system in military recruitment is one that previous
regimes had had to deal with. The retirement of "political" officers by the Obasanjo
government was immediately perceived in affected circles as a response to the demand to
"right-size" the ethno-religious dimension of the military institution.
Yet the question of an appropriate size for the military, especially at a time of declining
national resources, must be seen in an institutionally open and transparent manner and
through a process of confidence building and conflict management based on objective threat
assessment. For example, if the military mission is primarily coastal - protection of offshore
economic interests, and external - peacekeeping duties, the question must be asked: is the
personnel currently emphasised in the armed forces order of battle suitable for the types of
missions the military will be called to respond to? Are the manpower levels cost-effective,
and most importantly, does the institutional recruitment process procure individuals that are
wholly dedicated to their military duties, in a reliable and efficient manner? Put more
graphically, if an objective threat assessment reveals that internal threats are the dominant
threats to the country, should the armed forces be the answer to this or a properly
equipped, well trained, civil policing arrangement.
If the questions of demobilisation can be resolved along these lines, central to the issue of
military recruitment in terms of military professionalism are then three key questions:
Should the Nigerian armed forces in a democratic dispensation be an equal opportunities
institution? Should it be a combat effective, battle ready force recruited from the most able
in the most rigorous and competitive manner? Should the manner of recruitment matter - if
the training is standardised and geared towards bringing out the best in every recruit?
Although the above are the rational questions to which answers must be found, there is no
evidence to suggest that you cannot have an equal opportunities military that is
professionally competent and up to the task of defending the territorial integrity of the
nation whilst satisfying the ethno-religious balance necessary in a diverse democratising
polity.
Critical to the re-professionalisation of the armed forces as far as the military was concerned
is the ability of the State to provide efficient and well functioning institutions and
infrastructures and an enabling environment for their constitutional tasks to be
accomplished. The former Chief of Army Staff, General Victor Malu aptly captured the
27

28. feeling of the military constituency in an interview:
“Having come out of very many years of neglect because of our mismanagement, we
expected that the civilian government was going to address issues…Unfortunately,
from June 1999 to date, we haven’t got anything meaningful to assist us in the
process of professionalisation. Our training institutions have not improved, the
training aids with which we conduct the training to reprofessionalise have not been
provided; the situation in the barracks has not changed; as a matter of fact, it has
deteriorated…we did not get anything done last year by way of capital projects and
we thought these were the things we were supposed to do if we are going to
improve on our well being to keep busy in the act of re-professionalising…”
While General Malu’s views above reflect the feeling of despondency both within the military
hierarchy and the rank and file, it is hardly fair to blame the civilian government for the
years of neglect in the military; even less so to expect the President and his team to change
this anomaly in two years. What the political leadership can be blamed for is the lack of
shared understanding about the problem and the lack of ownership of the re-
professionalisation process even by the elected representatives of the people. The feeling is
rife within the military as it is in civil society that the life of the average Nigerian has not
improved in the last two years of civilian governance. Unlike in civil society however, where
these things are expressed daily in the public domain, they have simmered underneath the
surface in the military, partly due to the nature of the institution but mainly due to the
military’s credibility deficit with the Nigerian people who blame all soldiers for the mess the
country is in.
The need to negotiate a process of reconciliation or restitution between the military and the
civil society that takes into account what is in the long term best interests of human rights
and fundamental freedoms in consolidating democracy without generating new conflicts is
more crucial than ever and the government seems to recognise this. Given the military's
chequered history of political intervention and inherent fears in political circles that some
might use the immense economic clout acquired over the years to undermine the gains of
the democratic dispensation, the government's careful approach to this issue is
understandable. Yet in a consolidating democracy, the government was correct to recognise
that a blanket declaration of amnesty or refusal to revisit past misdeeds poses a serious
challenge to the strengthening of stable civil-military relations. Indeed, revisiting the past
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29. misdeeds is necessary cathartic exercise, located within the context of sustainable, civil-
military relations. In its establishment of a ‘truth commission’ investigate past violations
however, the right balance must be sought between restitution and reconciliation, between
the search for immediate justice and the need for long term democratic stability. The key
therefore is to ensure an institutional strategy that will streamline and ensure proper
accountability and legislative oversight over security actors. There is no evidence to suggest
that this has happened.
(iv) Demilitarising Public Order and the Role of Civilian Policing
Given the threats posed by internal security by the militarised (dis) order since the new
government assumed office, the role of policing has been a subject of widespread debate in
the country, especially against the backdrop of opposition to the use of military power in
“aid of civil authority", the rise of "ethnic militias" in the country, public perception of police
inefficiency and collusion with ‘agents of crime and insecurity’. On the one hand, the
statutory duties and responsibilities of the Nigeria Police Force are clearly spelt out in
Section 4 of the Police Act of 1956 as follows:” prevention and detection of crime;
apprehension of offenders; preservation of law and order; protection of life and property;
due enforcement of all laws and regulations which they are directly charged; and
performance of such military duties within and without Nigeria as may be required of them
under the authority of the Police Act.” With 37 State Commands, 106 Area Commands, 925
Police Divisions, 2,190 Police Stations throughout the country and 120,000 police officers,
the force clearly an acute manpower shortage. Whilst the UN stipulates a police-citizens
ration of 1:400, the ration is currently 1:1,000 in Nigeria. Added to the gross personnel
shortage is inadequate accommodation and transportation, poor communication network;
poorly funded training institutions; and insufficient crime intelligence gathering capacity.19
There is no doubt that the Nigerian Police Force has witnessed a serious deterioration in the
quality of the service it provides the average citizens under military rule. Yet, the only
period it enjoyed attention from government and occupied a pride of place in the scheme of
things during the civilian administration of 1979-1983, the police management became
embroiled in partisan politics. Besides the politicisation of the police in the second republic
however, the Nigeria Police Force’ reputation for brutality, corruption and arbitrariness
created poor community relations. Consequently, while the civil populace is usually opposed
to military involvement in internal security matters, doubts persist about the efficacy of the
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30. police authority in confronting public order issues in the post-military transition period.
On its part therefore, the new government has shown the determination to:
1. Restructure and 'demilitarise' responsibility for internal security by giving police
sole responsibility for maintaining internal security and public order;
2. Strengthen the efficiency of the police force by reforming its doctrines, codify
procedures, improve training and standards especially to prevent human rights
abuse recurrence, increase the resources available to it, reduce the dead woods in its
rank, expand its role in intelligence and security information gathering and injecting
new blood into the force,
3. Increasing the size of the police and pay of its operatives thus improving its estimation
in the eyes of the public.
In spite of the government's declared commitment to the above, there is evidence to
suggest that it still has serious doubts about excluding the military completely from internal
security issues - given the recurrence of situations where the police have found it difficult to
cope with incidences of internal dissension. Although the President announced the
withdrawal of the military from joint security patrols with the police on coming to office - a
feature used to intimidate and abuse ordinary Nigerians in the previous dispensation, public
clamour about the inability of the police to cope with the dramatic increase in crime,
especially in the urban areas encouraged a return to these joint patrols in places like Lagos,
Abuja, Kaduna and Port Harcourt. Even if it were to receive the most appropriate support
from the government, correcting the flaws of the past can only take place within a particular
political, socioeconomic and historical context. The evidence of the first year in office is that
the current ad-hoc reforms have not addressed the post-military internal security conditions
in the country. This is understandable even if not excusable for a number of reasons:
• First, the serious economic problems that has led to massive unemployment,
including the highest graduate unemployment in the continent requires an integrated
strategy, not an exclusive focus on law and order;
• Second, the nature of the political problems in the country which is directly linked to
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31. the rise of ethnic militias and the campaign for State/regional police accountable to
State Governors;
• Third, the proliferation of arms in the country (sometimes of more superior quality
than the weapons carried by the Police);
• The continuing tension between the military and other security agencies in terms of
role clarification encouraged by the rampant crime rates which has overwhelmed the
capacity of the reforming police force;
• Five, the psyche of militarism that is all-pervasive in society and that has broken
down dialogue and consensus driven resolutions of problems.
The above factors definitely pose immense challenges to any successful reform of the
civilian police sector in the internal security reform agenda. Having said this, the question of
engaging civil policing for democratic governance is central to the issue of exorcising
militarism from the body politic as it is relevant to the issue of returning security to the
community, ensuring democratic accountability and revisiting the structure of federalism in
the country. The question as to whether to decentralise the police organisation, structure
and operations has been particularly central to this discourse given the problems that have
attended the centralised control of the police force and the use it had been put to under
previous regimes. To create a service culture, and not a regimented force arrangement,
accountability must be central to public order and the police cannot be trusted within the
community if it retains a structure that is only accountable to the centre and not the
communities they seek to serve. Although concerns have been expressed about the negative
use to which decentralised policing could be put, given the nature of the inter-ethnic
squabbles and community clashes that are prevalent in the country today.
Yet, emboldened by citizens’ campaign for security, many states are responding to the
citizens' clamour by employing the services of ethnic militias for internal security duties. In
Anambra, Rivers, Enugu, Oyo, Osun, and Lagos States, "Bakassi Boys" and Odua Peoples
Congress' operatives have now taken full charge of traffic management, confronting armed
robbers with the approval of the State executives and tacit endorsement of the Federal
police authorities. As a result of these evident problems of performance and credibility that
the Federal Police now encounters, the president recently announced his endorsement of a
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32. decentralisation package which ensures accountability to the elected State authority in
addition to their accountability to the Central government, although without the mechanism
to enforce that principle.
Yet the problems of policing cannot be seen in isolation of the criminal justice system since
the police is an implementing agent of the criminal justice system Reforms to the judicial
system have been much slower to be adopted by the current judicial hierarchy than reforms
to the military and the police, but until there is a comprehensive approach to access to
justice and law enforcement, even the resolution of the resource deficit will not bring
change.
(v) Balancing the demands of defence with the needs of development
The concomittant effect of the reorientation has been the challenge posed on the sectoral
reform by the management of security expenditure "within limits of budgetary allocation" as
the Vice President put it. Yet the process of reform need not be antagonistic or adversarial
to the management of the military expenditure even as the debate about how much is
enough to maintain defence remains a realistic issue on the agenda. In this regard, it is
commendable that the government recognises that strengthening the military professionally
without corresponding provision of adequate resources and political support may simply lead
to frustration and possibly, unfulfilled and exaggerated expectations. On the other hand, it is
important for government to realise that downsizing, right-sizing and sectoral reform may
actually lead to an increase in military expenditure, not a decrease at least in the interim.
This is why planning and the building of mutual confidence and transparency remain at the
heart of organisational effectiveness and security sector transformation. Hence, adopting a
single-minded approach that defence spending must be reduced from the outset serve as a
disincentive, especially for security actors but ignoring concerns about the need to attend to
social and developmental spending is threatening to the overall goal of stability, security and
democratic consolidation.
For this reason, there is a growing clamour for broadening the definition of security in the
military reform agenda. This broader conception seeks to articulate security in a manner
that the individual, the group as well as the state may relate to its fundamental objectives of
promoting and ensuring the right to life and livelihood. While the government recognises the
need to strike the right balance and understand the dangers that might accompany too
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33. broad a conception of security which altogether dismisses the legitimate need for the
military - as is already evident in the carte blanche demand for the reduction of military
expenditure in some civil society circles - the government is not doing enough in developing
a consensus in society around this broader definition of security.
(D.) International & Regional Dimensions of Security Sector Transformation
While the reform of the military is a wholly internal project, the Nigerian nation-state is
caught between the Scylla of ethno-nationalism and the charybdis of globalisation and she
can only ignore them at its own peril. It is not surprising therefore that the Vice-President
referred to the specific need to ‘build, rehabilitate and strengthen the relationship between
the Nigerian military and the rest of the world, especially African countries, following years
of diplomatic isolation and sanctions”. That the international community does have a role to
play is not contested. The issue is how to determine the process of engaging the
international community in the security sector transformation project. The litmus test for this
hovered around the decision to involve foreign advisers in the re-professionalisation
programme of the military.
a) Foreign advisers and the military re-professionalisation programme: In seeking to
understand the involvement of foreign military advisers in the reprofessionalisation
programme, it is important to state that the Nigerian military is not new to bi-lateral military
cooperation agreements. As a product of a colonial army, the British helped set up the
Army and the Navy, the Germans set up the air force and the premier training institution,
Nigerian Defence Academy was established with the assistance of the Indians.
Although there were various options open to the administration on coming to power, the
administration in its wisdom decided to engage the services of a foreign private concern of
retired military officers known to have close connections to the government of the United
States in the re-professionalisation programme. The organization, Military Professionals
Resources Incorporated (MPRI), describes itself as a "professional Services Company that
provides private sector leader development and training and military-related contracting and
consulting in the US and international defense markets". It has been involved in military
training, weapons procurement and advisory services in Croatia, Saudi Arabia and Angola
before winning the US government supported contract to be involved in Nigeria. In 1999,
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34. MPRI undertook on behalf of the US Department of Defense and USAID Office of Transition
Initiatives an 8 - person, 120 day assessment mission aimed at developing "an action plan
to integrate a reformed military establishment into a new civilian contexf”. In the course of
the assessment mission in the country, it also ran a series of workshops on civil military
relations for senior military officers, civilians and various armed formations across the
country. Since completing the initial assessment, it has signed a new contract "The
Transition-Civil Military Program for Nigeria" which focuses on three key areas - a) Military
reform; b) Creation and development of new civilian institutions for civil-military affairs; and,
(c) Support for de-militarisation of society.
No doubt, all of the above constitute areas in which support can be rendered to the Nigerian
military, as long as local ownership is not jeopardised and this involvement is under the
purview of the legislature and the professional military, not just the president and the
Minister of Defence. Unfortunately, this has not been the case. MPRI has become a
permanent fixture in the Ministry of Defence with an office and full complement of staff.
Apart from the undisguised opposition of the military professionals to MPRI’s unrestricted
access, MPRI’s belief that models of civil military relations from a different social-cultural
context can be transferred into another context wholesale is seen to be more problematic.
Since this is also a pattern that Nigerians have become familiar with in other fields of
government – the seeming dependency on foreigners for assistance even where local
expertise will do - General Malu’s public criticism of the need to “protect our nation” struck
the right chord with even people such as Gani Fawehinmi and others not known for their
endorsement of anything coming from the military. General Malu went to great lengths in
his interview with Tempo to explain his opposition to the involvement of MPRI and the Ford
Bragg team:
We are a sovereign nation and we should protect our national interest. I
don’t think it’s the duty of any foreign country to tell us what our defence policy or
what our strategic policy or those things that can only be determined by Nigerians
should be…
…Part of the misunderstanding we had with the Americans coming to train us was
that they wanted to train us in the rudimentary art of soldiering. We objected to
that because we are an army of well-trained soldiers and seasoned officers that lack
logistics…20
34

35. What seems clear is that the involvement of MPRI has been more donor driven than would
ordinarily have been the case and it is important that partnerships between donors and
national governments must be on an equal footing if it is to produce the right results.
Approaches that allow supporters to assist in the military reform process without seeking to
drive them and without placing more premium on ownership and claiming credit ought to be
the pivot of such relationships. This will inevitably require a determination to seek
engagement over a long term, greater transparency and willingness to engage in a more
open and sustained dialogue with government, parliament, civil society and the security
actors (not just the president and the defence minister) whilst treating security sector
reform as a complementary, rather than a separate part of the whole development and
institutional reform process. For now, while the rhetoric is one of relief that Nigeria is under
a democratic dispensation, a careful deconstruction of the actions of the mature
democracies eager to support the process will reveal an unprecedented bias towards a
particular outcome in the democratisation project, an outcome which promotes "stability"
and "security", without seeing them as mutual reinforcing elements alongside equity and
consensus driven concerns for the social and political transformation of Nigeria's sordid past.
International involvement in police and judicial reform has taken a more cautious and
inclusive approach and elicited more support even though not much has happened by way
of international assistance in this area.
b) Nigeria within the West African region: Caught between the politics of globalisation
and the sub-nationalism of local politics which has been exacerbated by the politics of
ethnicity, the Nigerian state seemed to have concluded in favour of a regionalist project in
its security sector transformation. Given the intertwined nature of many of the conflicts in
the region, the government takes as departure point the fact that any prospect for
demilitarisation can only occur as part of a concerted effort by the ECOWAS Community.
Consequently, the Nigerian government has been pivotal to the renewed vigour experienced
by the regional body, ECOWAS seeing regional security within the context of national and
sub-national problems. For example, the Nigerian government links the proliferation of
weapons that has fuelled the latent internal conflicts in the country, in part to the flow of
small arms within the region, not unconnected to the various wars. Hence, the
commitment, which hitherto has been predicated on the largeness of heart, is now being
tied to unresolved political issues at home, rather than when the concentration on regional
issues merely provided an escape route to avoid dealing with the crisis generated internally.
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36. The government’s commitment to integration of the economy and pursuit of the dual-track
monetary policy arrangement underscores the understanding on the part of the Nigerian
state that there is a need to go beyond pro-forma creation of peacekeeping force. To be an
effective antidote to globalisation and ethnnicisation – there is now a firm recognition that
regionalism must permeate the nation-state and its citizens in a more deep-rooted manner.
c) International Peacekeeping Commitment: To a large extent, the government’s
continued focus on peacekeeping is also tied to this twin-strategy of using opportunities
presented abroad to address some of the problems faced at home. In this regard,
peacekeeping has been the main mechanism for maintaining professionalism in the military
in the three decades of military involvement in politics and it now seems that the
government is interested in institutionalising this role and carving a niche for the military
and other security outfits in preventive diplomacy and peace-keeping.
Conclusion: Prospects for reform and Lessons for the future
Overall, the government has shown fidelity and commitment to the issue of security sector
reform, but has concentrated largely on military reform in the two years that it has been in
office. Yet, militarism and militarisation still pose a major problem for the Nigerian state. In
suggesting the structural mechanisms highlighted above for de-emphasising the place of
force in the resolution of conflicts in the polity, the emphasis is on recognising that security
sector transformation is part of overall national restructuring and it is for this reason that the
single most important need is now a consensus based, security sector review exercise which
takes into account the places of all the security actors and oversight institutions, both public
and private in fashioning an agenda that all stakeholders can identify with and sign up to.
Yet, while it is clear that the question of structure is central, the presence of agents of
delivery is absolutely crucial if structure is to deliver on the goods. Based on the foregoing
analysis, a number of measures seem to suggest themselves in developing an agent-
structure approach to security sector transformation in Nigeria:
1. Security Sector restructuring can only succeed in the long run within the context of
national restructuring;
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37. 2. There is a need for conceptual clarity in government through a comprehensive approach
to security sector reform which can produce a rationally ordered, codified security sector
review framework and plan of action;
3. There is a need to deepen the regional approach to security sector transformation with a
view to integrating the political, social and the economic;
4. Policy instruments must recognise the need to reconcile economic and social
development and enhance the input of non-state actors – in policy formulation to
enhance social capital.
5. International assistance is only helpful within the context of a clearly felt need;
6. Recognition of the legitimate security needs of the communities and constituencies that
make up the nation must be factored into the human security approach to poverty
reduction.
7. Policy instruments must recognise the link between globalisation and conflict, rather
than assume that the effect of introducing global market principles is always going to be
positive in the promotion of pro-poor growth.
8. Policy instruments must locate the security agenda within the democracy and
development framework and reflect the link between politics and economics, and
between security and opportunities in the set of values adopted to enhance security
sector transformation.
9. Democratic, not just civilian, control of military and security establishments in
democratising polities is necessary.
10. The human security approach is a process, whose results will not necessarily be
immediate, hence the need for a long term view by interested stakeholders.
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