Dr Gambari, in his book, Theory and Reality in Foreign Policy Making: Nigeria After the Second Republic, maintained: “The elections of 1983 were not conducted in an atmosphere of freedom or with fairness. On the contrary, they were accompanied by serious abuses, blatant malpractices and communal violence. In view of the ethnic pattern of support and voting by the general public, the claims of ‘victory’ by one party in the traditional strongholds of the others stretched credibility to the limit and led to outbreaks of violence. The resulting bloodshed and confusion damaged the reputation not only of the law enforcement agencies, which were often part of the problem, but also of the federal government and politicians in general.”
This was the situation in Nigeria when, on the eve of the New Year 1983, there was another military coup d’état that removed the Shagari government. It was the fourth successful military takeover in Black Africa’s most dominant power. However, unlike the ones before it, this coup did not come totally as a shock. It was one coup that was self-evident.
The decision of the military to govern again on the eve of 1984 was ostensibly a patriotic and altruistic one: to save the country from what they perceived as the monumental scale of corruption and economic depravity in the civilian administration. Even allowing for some measure of sincerity in these intentions, it does not rule out another motivation, rooted in the historical trends, political development, ambitions, and fears extant in post-independence Nigeria: in short, in the on-going North/South geo-ethnic rivalry.
One result of the 1967-70 civil war was the de facto establishment of the Northern hegemony within the army’s corps of senior officers who aimed at ensuring that this would be maintained even during a civilian administration. However, the dominance of the North both as a united political entity and, increasingly, over the economy during the military administrations from 1966-79 was being seriously challenged from the South under the civil administration of Shehu Shagari (Northerner though he was).
When the 1983 election result gave Shagari both a second term of office and made his NPN the pre-eminent party, not only in the North but in majority of the Southern states as well, the worst fears of these top-ranking officers were confirmed. They could foresee that in the next presidential elections in four years time, the NPN would fulfil what was written into the party’s constitution, namely: the selection of a presidential candidate from among the faithful in the South. Indeed, the NPN’s Southerners made no attempt to conceal this aim and immediately after the 1983 elections jockeyed for federal positions in Shagari’s new government.
Shagari had consolidated the Northern officer hegemony by encouraging Moslem Hausa/Fulani promotions (in preference to Southerners and Christian Northerners) by making appointments to coveted commands and awards of lucrative contracts to retiring officers of the same ilk. Despite this, a ruthless, single-minded cabal of Northern officers decided that the danger of their power base being eroded by a Southern-dominated administration with mass popular support (probably including that of the junior officers and rank-and-file in the armed forces) far outweighed any loyalty they owed to President Shagari. These were the more compelling reasons why Major-Generals Buhari and Babangida, with nine other senior army and air force officers, laid their plans stealthily and efficiently for the successful coup of December 31, 1983.
Successful though the actual coup undoubtedly was, in order to gain legitimacy, the generals depended heavily on whatever support they could coax from the people. One of the numerous ways they went about this was to arrest former civilian politicians and lock them all up in different jails around the country. Show trials were staged before military tribunals at which they faced charges of corruption – an attempt by the regime to retrieve the ill-gotten gains the politicians had acquired when in government.
