The Niger Delta and The Orkar Coup - by Capt Tolofari Part 1

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The Niger Delta And The Orkar Coup: By Capt Tolofari. - Nigerian Village Square
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THE NIGER DELTA AND THE ORKAR COUP: BY CAPT TOLOFARI.

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By Sun News Publishing Monday, September 27, 2004 I MET Captain Nimibibowei Harley Empere in Zaria during May of 1986. We had both gone to that northern city to attend the Military Police Officers Basic Course. He came in one night, a few days after my own arrival. He was dressed in a pair of blue football pants and a yellow-and-blue tracksuit top, with a wide straw hat on his head. He got close, introduced himself and proceeded to make enquiries. But I asked him to remove his hat so that I could see his face. I had been asked twice in Lagos if I knew him. Major Saliba Daddy Mukoro was an instructor at the Military Police Training School. His name had been mentioned by a Lieutenant who was also on the course, well before we met him. The Lieutenant had obviously been tremendously impressed by the fact that Mukoro was a PhD. I told them that a doctoral degree was within the grasp of any one of them that had the same opportunities as Mukoro. On the day Empere and I met Mukoro we had gone into an office to make a phone call to Kaduna. He came in, greeted us, asked after our welfare. Then he said, "I hope you will work so hard that you will come first." He did not address any one of us in particular. But, given the way he said it, I laughed. I knew that performance counted for little in the Nigerian military. I knew, because from my days at the Defence Academy, I had consistently performed very well. Hearing me laugh, he asked, "Why are you laughing, wont you like to come first? During my time I was first and it helped me." I laughed again. Perhaps his days were different from ours. Or, having newly returned from the USA, he was still looking at Nigeria from the view of things there.
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In the mid-eighties it was not those that came first, second or third that got recognised, it was those that were seventeenth or even seventieth that got rewarded with courses abroad, car loans, furnishing allowances and so on. What mattered was not merit, but whom an officer had as his godfather or how lowly he would put down his self-respect and bootlick. Anyway, I worked hard and came first for the personal satisfaction that good performance gives me. Not that it was hard job. I held countless discussions with Empere, usually after classes, while we waited for the horrible meals that we were served, or at night while trying to sedate ourselves with idle talk. However, there was always one serious subject that we never failed to talk about: the Rivers State - its position in the scheme of things in the country, the repression, the oppression and the fraud perpetrated against Rivers people. We talked about its oil wells and its neglect and low level of development. We talked about Oloibiri, where oil was first struck in Nigeria, where oil is still drilled, but which conjures the image of a disused and forgotten graveyard; about Finima and the politics of the Liquefied Natural Gas project; about Alasa-Eleme and the politics of establishing refineries in arid lands with no drop of oil. We discussed the peculiar terrain of the Rivers State, the mangrove swamps and the plagues of mosquitoes and snakes they breed; the salt water all around, with no fresh water to drink; the heavy rainstorms that destroy the thatched houses in which our people try to shelter themselves. Empere and I also discussed the representation of our people in the national ruling bodies, our share of ambassadorial appointments, chairmanships and membership of management boards of federal parastatals. We racked our minds to find one single Riversman or woman that had the licence to export crude oil but drew a blank. We talked about revenue allocation. We discussed federal projects in other parts of the country, the distribution of federal largesse, and about federal patronage. We wondered how oil money could build from scratch a city as big and as modern as Abuja in just a few years while Rivers State remained a one-city state, Port Harcourt, itself a small and overpopulated town. We talked about the flooding of the Niger Delta gradually washing away our villages, which somehow never made the papers as the flooding of the Bar Beach in Lagos, or the political draughts in the north; we discussed oil spillages for which reason our fathers go on endless fishing trips and come home with empty baskets to starve with their families and live shorter lives, alongside the locust attacks of farms in the north which the government annually makes battle preparations for. We also talked about other things, the Nigerian Army, for instance, and the military in general. We talked about its sheer size, we thought it was unwieldy; we talked about its training and immobility, and doubted that it could be effective; we talked about the wastage of materials; we discussed godfatherism and bootlicking in the military; we
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discussed the fast-growing stratification of the military along thickly drawn lines of religion, language and ethnicity, and expressed fears over Nigerias security; we discussed the relegation of merit and the encouragement of mediocrity; we discussed military-civilian friction; we talked about officers and soldiers who were on the payroll of smugglers and who acted as escorts. We talked about military personnel that were themselves smugglers; we discussed also those who harassed businessmen, legitimate and illegitimate, and extorted large sums of money from them, and those who could be hired by one or the other party in any quarrel to deal with their opponents; and we talked about the corruption and chop-chop at all levels of command in the military. We knew what we were talking about; we were in the military police. I do not recall that there was any single day that we did not bother our heads over these issues. Sometimes Empere would say, Hey Tolofari, stop troubling your little head and go to bed and we would end for that day. When our course ended in August, we dispersed: he to Ibadan, I back to Lagos and our other course-mates to their various stations. I was deployed to the Army Headquarters Provost Battalion, at Ojo Cantonment, where I served until April 22, 1990. There I worked with a number of Commanding Officers (CO), both in their acting and substantive capacities. One of them was a veritable devil. As a man he was ugly, in addition to which he was pig-headed, tribalistic, vindictive, a crook and a master of the Nigerian militarys tradition of eye-service. On my part, I held appointments as Battalion Adjutant, Company Second-in-Command (2 i/c) and Company Commander. In 1987 I had the privilege of commanding the Military Police Contingent at that years independence parade in Abuja. It was at that parade that the promotions of Babangida (to the full rank of General), Abacha and Bali to Lieutenant General and Aikhomu and Koshoni to Vice-Admiral, were announced as each one of them arrived. At that parade, Mrs. Mariam Babangida did not ride with her husband, she preceded him to the grounds thereby putting all the senior officers present in a quandary as to whether or not she should be given the salute received by Service Chiefs. And it was following that parade that the veritable devil persecuted me from October 1987 to January 1989 when I outlived him in the unit. My "offence" was that I did not short-pay soldiers in my contingent their ration cash allowance (RCA) and give him the balance to swallow, as would have been the case if I had been a "sensible officer". In 1989 Major Saliba Daddy Mukoro was posted in from his staff appointment at the Corps Headquarters to the AHQ PRO BN as the Commanding Officer. I had escaped being posted, as an instructor, to the Military Police Training School in Zaria. Mukoro became my CO. By then I had been working at the Army Headquarters Garrison, Ikeja, as 2 i/c for over one year. For some time, my breath got constricted and came out in short gasps whenever I remembered my tour of duty there.
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I lived in a desolate hellhole called the Officers Village, an extension of the Ojo Cantonment, some six kilometres from the cantonment gate. The village, having about four hundred houses for officers, had neither water nor roads; there were sandy footpaths though that served as roads. It was not serviced by any transport system, and even those that had cars of their own found it difficult to manage the transportation situation. The place was so bad that while I was there, the Chief of Army Staff, General Abacha, visited the cantonment twice, in 1987 and 1989, but refused on both occasions to take the drive to the Officers Village. To get out of the village people had to trek out of their houses to the village gate where they would stand for long hours - women, children, officers and soldiers - waiting for what was called express motorcycles. On the motorcycles they would perch precariously, two persons behind the rider of the machine. On any particular morning or afternoon, on the return journey, officers would be seen perched on motorcycles, with Nigerian Armed Forces pips shining on their shoulders, and behind them on the same machine might sit somebodys wife sitting astride. She could be a pregnant woman. When Mukoro came in 1989 he redeployed me to the Battalion Headquarters as Adjutant. We worked together for one year. During this period the battalion, as every other battalion in the army and other services did, received N100,000. The money was called the President Babangida Grant for Running Costs. Brigades received N150,000 while Divisions and Corps Headquarters got N250,000 each. This amount to a battalion was equivalent to ten years quarterly grants! Mukoro and I made a budget and most judiciously spent the money, personally buying the materials and calling in the workmen to renovate and furnish offices, repair seven vehicles and five motorcycles grounded by the former CO, construct a new armoury that was more secure, establish a soldiers club and a loan scheme for soldiers to boost welfare and morale. The money was also used to pay for fuel and stationery. These are all firsts in the Nigerian army. And, I stand to be disputed, that we were the first unit to send genuine accounts of this special grant to the Command Finance Office, assuming that any other unit sent any form of accounts at all! During this period I went for my Captain to Major Practical Promotion and Junior Staff College Qualifying Examinations in Bauchi. This was a military assignment for which my unit should pay for my transport and lodging. I produced a budget of N725 for the trip from Lagos through Jos to Bauchi and back. But whereas the unit had just received N100,000 the previous month, my CO refused to finance my trip, due to the projects we planned to spend the money on. Yet we knew the real reason that the special grant was dished out and we knew what happened to the money in other units! I will return to this subject later. In January 1990, in anticipation of a posting to the Army Headquarters as the Director of Staff Duties and Plans, the Provost Marshall posted Mukoro to the Special Investigation Bureau (SIB) at the Corps HQ. The idea was that he would need Mukoro
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as his Personal Assistant and it would be easier to take Mukoro from the position of Investigation Officer at the SIB than from the position of a Battalion CO. Eventually Mukoro followed the Brigadier to the Army Headquarters. During the last week of January Mukoro sent a subaltern in my unit to ask me to come to his office. Now, I was not in the habit of leaving my office before the close of work, I never went around visiting senior officers and carrying idle gossip, which was a common habit in the Nigerian militarys officers corps. Still I went to see Mukoro a few days after I got the invitation. He expressed disappointment for my not having called to greet him since he left our unit. I answered by reminding him that, as he well knew, it was not my habit to so behave. Incidentally, he had written in my course report in 1987 and my annual assessment report in 1989 that I kept too much to myself. Many officers spend their workday going from office to office, going from house to house in the evenings and weekends, visiting senior officers with powerful appointments in order to ingratiate themselves, so that they would be remembered for opportunities, mentioned as good boys and be initiated into the circles in which the gravy train passed around. Their tool was often to backbite, spread gossip and assassinate the character of other officers. To me, it all amounted to objectionable behaviour, against all the kernels of my home training. It was the function of the cancer of bootlicking, eye-service and godfatherism, which to a great extent had contributed to the malaise of our public service system. But it was the custom of the Nigerian military. He asked me about the unit and I told him that the new CO, Major Muhammed Said, was full of praises for us, as indeed were all commanders and officers in all units in Lagos who had seen or heard about our work. We had changed the physical outlook of the battalion, made it mobile and battle-ready and raised the standard of neatness and discipline of our soldiers to the primary position in the army, so that it was easy to identify a soldier from the unit. Said had replaced me as Battalion Adjutant with my course-mate and good friend, Capt. G. A. Wahab and given me the appointment of the Officer Commanding of the operational Company of the unit. Soldiers rumoured, and I vehemently discountenanced it, that it was because Said wanted to work closely with his fellow Moslem. I personally considered Said to be an open-minded and good man, even though he also had that same insolence that every northern Moslem had toward southerners and belonged in the group of young northern Moslem officers in the army that were referred to as the junior AFRC. They had almost unhindered access to the Chief of Army Staff and all the key appointment holding senior officers from the north, as well as civilian ministers and directors of parastatals, etc. They were feared by their superiors and commanders because of this and were treated with awe by the latter. In their various Corps they were given posh appointments and they very often went on courses abroad, ahead of more deserving officers. They existed in the Navy and Air Force also.
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At the end of our chat Major Mukoro pointedly invited me to come home to see him that evening by 20:00 hours. It was Wednesday, January 31, 1990. Previous to that day I had been to his house only twice during the one year that we worked together. The first time was when I returned his townsman whose pension had not been paid since he was discharged from the army immediately after the civil war. I had taken the man to the pensions office to clear the mess. We did not meet then. The second time was when, one weekend, we were trying to raise money to reclaim the body of a soldier of the unit that his people wanted to take home for burial. The soldiers body was lying at the mortuary of a Lagos hospital and the army had no provision for such expenses, even though the soldier died on duty. That January 31, I visited him. We sat on the steps of his house. He asked me how things were, how I saw the political and economic situation of the country. He said he was fed up. I made a grunt. Mukoro studied in the United States of America for seven years, receiving a PhD degree in Criminology, all on the Armys sponsorship. Besides, he also attended a military police course in the USA. I could count two Generals and one Brigadier that he was close to and who looked kindly on him. He lived well, "in relative comfort...because of my long years in the US," as he said to me once. Yet he was fed up with everything, and what did he expect me to say? He was reacting to the realities of the time, which demanded that good men must act. During Babangidas administration, for two, three years up to that time, several professionals - pilots, doctors, engineers, professors in the universities and others who belonged to the most comfortable class in the country, found it difficult to maintain themselves and their families and live with some dignity as human beings. For this reason they left the country in droves, giving rise to discussions and the setting up of commissions on brain drain. The countrys middle-class was completely wiped out. There were only paupers, the rich and the super rich - a handful of the immediate family and friends of those that held political power and dictated the distribution of national wealth, who reaped the huge unearned benefits through presidential and other government patronage. Frankly, when Mukoro invited me to his place in the manner that he did, two things crossed my mind and the subject we eventually discussed was one of them. Mukoro and I, while he was my CO, had discussed the countrys political and economic situation on a regular basis. We discussed the recurring religious agitations, corruption in high and low places, the rusting military, the foisting of mediocrity in every facet of our national life. He asked me on one occasion what I thought could be done. I said two things. One was a peoples revolution, a peoples uprising - everyone walking into the street and demanding a better life, saying that they had had enough of the torture that life in Nigeria had become. I envisaged a revolution that would sweep the country for between five and ten years, that would affect everyone no matter the nook or crevice of Nigeria they lived in.
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A peoples revolution that would ask for accounts of their stewardship everyone that had been in public service in any kind of position of responsibility since independence; and which, at its end, would bring sanity to the Nigerian society. For I often saw the degree of corruption, oppression, repression and exploitation in the country only as insanity. But I knew that the country could not have a peoples revolution of that nature because Nigerians are cowards, fickle, they are compromisers, bootlickers and praise singers. I often have the image of them as the common mob in Shakespeares Julius Caesar, who accepted that it was good that Caesar was killed for his misdeeds against the society but promptly asked of the man who had slain him, "let him be Caesar". However, apart from being a class matter, the oppression, repression and all the other iniquities (to use the religious term) forced on the Nigerian people was also to a greater extent a matter of one section of the country using their presumed large numbers, the concentration and consolidation of power in their hands and the dictates of their intolerant religion, to hold in servitude and near-slavery the rest of the people. For this, I proffered a final solution: let them go away, let us part ways and fortunes. We were no Siamese twins, we were not even at all of the same pedigree or stock, we were simply a patchwork that the British found convenient to create. Indeed, I had developed this line of thinking since I came to understand the pattern of the political power game in Nigeria long before I went into the army. Naturally, I was asked how I thought changes could be brought about. I said that I did not believe in coups detat. I had expressed the same opinion as far back as 1987. That year Mukoro and I had worked on two committees, he as chairman and I as secretary of both committees. One day the members of one of these committees discussed at length about military coups. I said nothing, so I was eventually asked directly if I had no opinion on the matter. I replied that I did not see coups detat as a solution to the problems of the country. What had happened with coups was that each successor had accused his predecessor of certain atrocities against the people, but perpetuated those same atrocities and even more. With increasingly tougher skin the people tolerated every new dictator as their powers of protest weakened steadily. Each succeeding military government in Nigeria turned out to be more corrupt than all preceding governments, civil or military. Each succeeding military government foisted on the people greater religious, namely Islamic, and family or clan hegemony; control of political power as well as economic power went into the hands of an ever closing circle of tribesmen and friends and family members. In this regard the Babangida administration was infinitely the worst. Each succeeding military government treated with greater nonchalance and disdain the yearnings and aspirations of the people, paying attention only to the millions and billions of the peoples money that they were putting away for themselves and their families. I did not believe in the deceit of military rulers as saviours, I was fed
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up with it. But the issue was not whether the government was military or civil. It was always the same people who ruled, they took their orders from the same source, only the faces and names changed. So my preference was for a peoples uprising. I said that I wished for a situation where the sick, the uneducated, the unemployed, the oppressed and the traumatised would declare that they had had enough and rise up themselves against their exploiters and oppressors. It happened in France, it happened in Russia, Rumania and Poland. But I also realised that there were certain tough factors that militated against the hope for such a revolution in Nigeria. One, the poor oppressed and exploited majority were hungry; they were uneducated, afraid and had since become fatalistic, resigning themselves to their fate as the will of God. That there was a conspiracy on the part of the political ruling class to oppress and exploit the poor and the weak masses is an a priori. There was a plan by a part of the country to see that this political and economic hegemony was at all times maintained in their own hands. Commencing from Shagaris government or perhaps earlier, it had appeared to be a deliberate policy to reduce the people to illiteracy and serfdom. This came to a height under Babangida. An uneducated, timid, and inarticulate and heterogeneous people cannot be expected to conceive, inspire, organise and execute a revolution. The people were starving, they needed to work twenty-five hours a day to put food on their tables once a day; the pangs of hunger alone would stop them from going out in the streets to start civil disobedience. Besides all these, the government had a very strong and well-greased machinery for repression - the military, the "kill-and-go" police, and the security services. They would have been gunned down as happened during the anti-SAP riots of 1989 and the fuel riots of May 1992. Again, the poor masses had been so trodden upon, had been in a stupor for so long that they no longer cared. They merely waited out their lifetimes, consoling themselves from day to day as they trudged and scrounged, that God dey, na poor man prayer. The last factor perhaps, that made the possibility of a peoples revolution in Nigeria very remote was the unfortunate assemblage of over two hundred and fifty different ethnic group and clans that spoke as many different tongues. Given the situation, many would point at a man who comes from their geographical area and say that because that man, who would not recognise them in the street, who would never give them audience if they had the audacity to beg for it, was part of the government, they would not take action to cleanse the evil. During our mid-1989 discussion of these issues Mukoro asked what I thought could be done. I replied that there was no basis for the Nigerian nation. I proposed that every state should go its way, if possible, but that definitely the north
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and the south should split. Ideally, however, we should split into North, South, Middle Belt, West and East (which would include Bendel.) The entire south could confederate or work out an economic union. I stated again that I did not accept coups detat, which only changed faces, as a solution but believed strongly in the balkanisation of the country. I suggested that come 1992 (to which Babangida had shifted his handing over date from the original date of October 1990) southern politicians and military officers should confer (the north does this regularly); that our political leaders in the national assembly should move a motion asking for a restructuring of the lopsided political, economic and physical arrangement designed to perpetually keep power and rulership of the nation in the hands of northerners, ask for a weaker federal government, demand that states should be the resource centres instead of the federal government taking everything and sharing unequally and most unfairly to the states. I said the motion should give a time limit within which these demands must be seen to have come into effect without any means of sabotage, failing which the country should split into north and south. Of course the north would refuse. My view was that while the north was making all efforts, through coercion, bribery and outright force to kill the motion, or while it was being debated, we would be making military preparations to back the pronouncement of the split when it came eventually. But again there were inherent handicaps in this suggestion also. One was that our southern politicians never appeared to be capable of ever co-operating. The seed of discord had been sown long ago by events of the first republic, the pogrom of 1966 and the civil war under the manipulation of Balewa and Gowon, respectively, that the Yoruba, the Igbo and the minorities of the south do not even attempt to think about a south-south coalition. Our southern politicians were always looking for northern sponsors, always trying to outdo themselves in the search for second-fiddle alignments and coalitions with northerners, maintaining and deepening the political hatred between themselves and, therefore, always owing allegiance instead and being subservient to northern interests. Such politicians could not be expected to come to an agreement over such a motion, much more to table it and pursue it in the national assembly. The second factor was that our politicians simply love their skins and would not stake their present enjoyment for a future that had not arrived, even though that future be more promising and most desirable. Lastly, the northerners have always been focused on what they want in the Nigerian association, they always present a common front and are ready, by crook, hook or naked force, to get it out of Nigeria, no matter what sacrifice would be made. In 1966 they killed over 40,000 easterners to keep their hold on power; between 1967 and 1970 they executed a war that claimed about two million lives to maintain their hold on power. Thus, it was likely that once such a motion was
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tabled they would commence and complete the military arrangements before us and would have no qualms about using them even as a first option. Having analysed the situation thus, we came to the consensus that a military option, which offered a better chance of a clean break, would be more effective. It had with it the advantage of shock effect. We discussed how much money it would take to make preparations for such a strike. We did not contemplate recruiting and training men or the importation of arms and ammunitions. If we were to do this, I expressed fears that the necessary funds could be raised. Recruiting Nigerians that did not know how to fight for causes into a revolutionary force would have been very difficult. Besides the project could be infiltrated and compromised during the long period it would take to turn these men into a fighting force, physically and psychologically. But even a smallscale preparation would require a few million Naira, to assemble the material and to provide service support for the soldiers that would be used. In the seven months or so that we discussed this matter in 1989, we did not progress beyond this point. On January 31, on the doorsteps, out of earshot of his wife and two visitors, he asked me: "Tolofari, dont you think its time for some kind of action?" "The way I see things," I answered, "everyone is looking forward to 1992 and anything that happens now will be seen as an extension of military rule. I dont think that the Nigerian populace can stand it any longer. Personally, even as a military officer, Im bored stiff with military rule." "No, nobody will see it like that. I can tell you that most people want the man out," Mukoro replied. That was indisputable, but I said that that was the attitude of Nigerians, but when it got to action they would not come out. I queried why they could not go out on their own and effect change instead of waiting for one false military messiah after another. He countered with our old arguments that what was needed was a swift military action. "What about all the mans security?" I asked. Babangida had spent on security more money than all the previous governments since independence put together. He had the three arms of the NSO - the State Security Service (SSS), the Defence Intelligence Agency (DIA) and the National Intelligence Agency, as well as the civil police, the Brigade of Guards and the special Presidential Bodyguards - his own creation, trained in Abeokuta by the Israelis (who at that time had no diplomatic relations with Nigeria), in addition to some Israeli security personnel. My doubt was not out of fear for what these forces could do, but that in any military operation we check relative strengths - a comparison of enemy forces, arm for arm and man for man, with the men and facilities at our own disposal. This is normally one of the imperative factors considered in any military appreciation. BTW: Saliba Mukoro is now a professor of criminal Justice at mississippi Valley State
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University
Comments Page: 1
posted on 10-11-2005, 15:07:46 PM
CUO Umunnah
Excellent work, Sir!
Appreciations -
Thank you kindly for your communications and for all the nitty-gritty articulated insofar.
Your logistical and technical hypothesis & preparations are well in order, unfornately what necessitated reasons for Okar & Niger-Delta operations remains prevalent in our society today and even much more.
\"Evil trumph in our society because good men do nothing\". Edmond Burke.
Thanks for your contributions but it seems was not a good idea, not enough and even split of this enterprise patched country- Nigeria might not be a possible option at the present time.
Where do we do from here? Did you hear that Babangida wants to run for election in 2007?
The democrattic institutions are a in a sorry situation lets hope it\'s work in progress....
Nigerians are their own prisoners -
11/12
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The Niger Delta and The Orkar Coup - by Capt Tolofari Part 1

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THE NIGER DELTA AND THE ORKAR COUP: BY CAPT TOLOFARI.

posted on 10-11-2005, 15:07:46 PM

Nigerians are their own prisoners -

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