JUSTICIA on The Southerner Newspaper
Sunday, July 20, 2025

The quest for political power in Africa is more often than not, the game of blood lust. It could be at the behest of the CIA, the French Intelligence, their British cousin, or in Nigeria, marabouts, seers, or babalawos.

Chairman Mao Zedong, the great Chinese helmsman, was quoted as saying that politics is war by other means.

In Africa, like the birth of a baby, a new regime is always accompanied by bloodshed, in which case, the slaughter of animals, or simply burying them alive, is often the softer part of the hideous game. Sometimes it comes in the form of human sacrifice, either as a ritual during the process of winning or in consolidating power, or simply to make the point that those at the helm of affairs are not only in government, but they are in power, to paraphrase the arrogant claim of General Ibrahim Babangida.

The history of power tussles in Nigeria has always been littered with the blood of men as in the 1966 coup and counter coups, or those that preceded them like Operation Wetie, (which was the dousing of a victim with petrol and setting him on fire) or necklacing (putting a car tyre on the neck of a victim and setting him on fire) – to borrow the sexiest phrase purportedly coined by Winnie Mandela during the struggle against Apartheid terror in South Africa. 

Except for the alleged friendly fire from fellow Nigerian soldiers, which claimed the life of Brigadier Ibrahim Bako when he sought to arrest President Shehu Shagari in the wee hours of December 31, 1983, the coup that brought Major General Muhammadu Buhari to power went relatively bloodless.

Although Buhari had been privileged to serve in various capacities as Military Governor of North Eastern State (now Adamawa, Borno, Gombe, Taraba and Yobe states) under the Murtala Regime and as Commissioner (Minister) for Petroleum Resources under the Obasanjo Military Regime, it was clear that Buhari was one of the blue-blood military officers favoured by the benevolent spirits driving the affairs of the military and the predatory oligarchy that had won ownership of the Nigerian state after the British orchestrated power shift in 1960.

Barely eighteen months in power, Buhari had unleashed a reign of terror, and any form of criticism was savagely put down. Umaru Dikko, Shagari’s minister of Transport, was lucky to have escaped the military dragnet as he fled to Britain. In Britain, Dikko, a noted member of the cabal that ran the Shagari Administration aground, had launched a campaign against the Buhari regime.

To send a message that he was tough and his iron rule cannot be trifled with, Buhari, with the support of Israeli Mossad agents, had Dikko kidnapped in a London Street, drugged, crated, and ferried into the cargo bay of a waiting Nigerian Airways plane to be flown to Lagos. But for Dikko’s Nigerian mistress, who tipped off the British Police before his rescue, his corpse would have been received by the Nigerian Security Organisation, NSO, the secret police in Lagos.  

After the failure of the kidnapping, the father of the mistress, a prominent Nigerian Airways pilot, was picked up by the NSO and detained for many months without trial.

With the benefit of history, it was no surprise that 30 years later, as a democratically elected President, Buhari would arrange with the Kenyan government to abduct and deport Nnamdi Kanu, leader of the Biafran secessionist group, to face trial in Nigeria. Old habits they say, die hard. 

As the Buhari regime packed the prisons and detention camps with politicians, journalists and perceived enemies of the state, the regime launched a war against indiscipline (WAI) and enacted draconian decrees with retroactive effects to legitimize the WAI .

Soldiers were turned lose on the population with koboko and with savage fury. They flogged those who flouted simple rules like queuing up at bus stops. Every conceivable act of misdemeanor was savagely punished.

Fela was detained and later sentenced to five years imprisonment for importing less than five thousand dollars into the country after a performance abroad. His offence was that he should have declared the money on arrival at the airport.

This was said to have violated the Exchanged Control (Anti-Sabotage) decree.

Under these draconian decrees punishments were retroactively increased. False Declaration of assets under which most of the politicians were held, provided lengthy prison terms without an option of fine.

This meant death sentence for former governors like Ambrose Alli of Bendel State (Edo and Delta), Aper Aku of Benue State, Bisi Onabanjo of Ogun State. Under the State detention of persons Decree number 2 of 1984, people were hauled into jail if they were suspected of threatening State security or contributing to the economic adversity of the country.

The power of courts to grant habeas corpus or review the reasons why people were detained was ousted from the jurisdiction of the courts.  

To publish a report which offended the military regime or public officials was punished with imprisonment. Ironically, for a man who later in his political career became Maigaskiya (the truthful one in Hausa), truth was not a defence under the Public Officers (Protection Against False Accusation ) decree number 4 of 1984. Publishing the truth was not a defence, rather, the test was whether the report was deemed to have offended or embarrassed a public official.

That public official could be anybody but including a court clerk, an Army corporal or a retired General who was legally not a public official. Nduka Irabor and Tunde Thompson of The Guardian newspaper were sentenced to one year imprisonment and the newspaper fined Fifty thousand Naira , (about fifty million in today’s Naira) for publishing a report about diplomatic postings.

Many observers then believed that the decree was an act of vendetta by General Buhari against the media for publishing reports about the theft of $ 2.8 billion under his watch as Commissioner of Petroleum resources under the Obasanjo Miitary regime.

Although the Justice IrikefeJudicial Commison of Inquiry which probed the alleged theft exonerated him there is no question that the allegation had smeared his image as a relatively clean officer in a polluted pond of predation and financial malfeasance, which was the hallmark of military rule. It was a known fact some of his contemporaries are the richest men in Africa today.

Although many good reasons could be adduced for the ouster of the Shagari Administration, three months after it was re- elected, albeit in an election marred by serious cases of rigging, with the benefit of hindsight, the intervention by Buhari and his cohort could not be justified in the national interest. Democracy would  have survived the stiffest of tests and almost ten  years of arbitrary rule.

The regime wasted almost two years if fighting a three pronged battle of demonizing the ousted civilians, hounding them into prisons arbitrarily under gruesome conditions in the guise of fighting corruption, fighting a war against indiscipline, a war directed against all who wore no uniforms or ’’ bloody civilians’’.

It was a war to terrorize the population  into submission, subservience and subjugation to an evolving culture of militarism, and a war to consolidate power through sweeping pseudo socio-economic measures, as dictated by the oligarchy, who in turn, was dictated to by their imperialist handlers.

Part of this war had some moral undertones but it was waged with a tinge of hypocrisy. While it claimed to be fighting the scourge of drug trafficking, names of wives of senior military officers increasingly popped up in intelligences reports by the police Special unit and the NSO.

To enforce these measures, some draconian decrees that violate human rights, suppressed press freedom and freedom of expression, independence of the judiciary,  detention without trial, trial by Military Tribunals for crimes that have nothing to do with security of the state were enacted.  

As if to perform the ritual of human sacrifice which goes with the seizure and exercise of power, three youths, Barhtlomew Owoh, 24, elder brother of Nkem Owoh, the Nollywood star, and two other young men, Lawal Akanni Ojuolape, 23, Bernand Ogedengbe, 25, who had been standing  trial for narcotics charges, a chargeable offence which carried a punishment of six months in prison had been released on bail. On their next date of appearance at the Ikeja High Court, they were arrested by the secret police and re-arraigned in one of the military tribunals.

The punishment had been amended to take retroactive effect and the penalty increased from six months to capital punishment. The young men were promptly tried, condemned and executed. Human sacrifice had been served to the gods of power.

When members of the Supreme Military Council were debating the enactment of the Decree number 20 which provided for the death penalty, the junta was said to have been divided over the draconian nature of the drug law, but the Buhari group prevailed when the secret police brought evidence of the influx of cocaine and heroin from South America, and the involvement of wives of senior military officer.

Indeed shortly afterwards, tongues started wagging about the arrest of one Gloria Okon, a drug mule allegedly working for the wife of a senior military officer at Mallam Aminu Kano Airport, Kano. Buhari, it would seem, had breached espirit de corps.  

He was ousted by his colleagues in a palace coup on August 27 1985 by General Babangida, the Chief of Army Staff, who ruled the nation with iron fist until he was forced to ‘’step aside’’ on August 27 1993.

Ironically, General Buhari and the Chief of Staff Supreme Heaquarters Brigadier General Tunde Idiagbonwere ousted in the palace coup in 1985. They were detained for three years without trial under the  infamous decree number 2. They turned out to be the longest detainees under the decree.