1. I. 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 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 the civil war, the ruling military
elite headed by 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 use the civil
war to illustrate why policy choices taken at critical points of transition in a country’s
political transition matter. The action and inaction of the government in the aftermath
of the civil war also highlights 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.
Political-Military Doctrine and Military Professionalism after the Civil-War.
Although state military power was potentially enhanced by the post civil war
"no victor, no vanquished" reconciliation policy, the Gowon administration failed to
improve service professionalism in any significant way. 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
7

2. after the war, his contacts with the military gradually decreased as his relationship
with the civilian bureaucracy grew’3. 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 and
the rupturing of civil-military relations in the latter years. In the end, it was the
undermining of the nation-building project and the exacerbation of its centrifugal
fissures that earned the military near complete discredit of the civil populace.
Within the military hierarchy, sectional loyalties replaced its enviable
‘modernising’ characteristics and this was used to advance the ruling elite's prebendal
proclivities. Although the military consistently maintained a professional façade and
an accommodational strategy that kept it in power for those three decades, the
collegial nature of that strategy assumed a far more segmental edge after Nigeria’s
second civilian rule was aborted. (1983) From this period onwards, 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 ruling elite coincided with the institution’s corporate interests.
On the other hand, 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 fracturing and de-institutionalisation
of the military structure. To varying degrees, successive military regimes adopted this
strategy – from General Yakubu Gowon (1966-1975) to the recently departed General
Abdulsalami Abubakar (1998-9), however the regimes of Generals Ibrahim
Babangida(1985-1993) and Sani Abacha (1993-1998) represented two extremes in the
continuum.
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. Some of these grievances were by-products of Nigeria’s highly
factionalised politics, others self generated by the various military cabals in
government. (Ihonvbere, 1997; Adejumobi, 1999) Although the negative impact of
8

3. the above on professionalism and the operational effectiveness of the military had
become noticeable – especially in the aftermath of the civil war – the euphoria of
federal victory and the immediate pressures of rehabilitation, reconciliation and
reconstruction of the political terrain provided a false sense of security and fostered
organisational inertia. Military planners and battle commanders were uncertain that the
war was won by effective organisation of the military4, although honest enough to admit
that peacetime deterrence will be harder to achieve if renewed attention was not paid to
professional/organisational issues around quick departure from politics, civil-military
relations (given the tension already generated by the presence of a high number of
discharged soldiers in civil society), mission/role, doctrine, force posture, force levels,
combat operational command, resource allocation and weapon procurement5.
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 in policy
making during the transition form war to peace. 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 development, resource allocation and collective military co-
ordination throughout the period of military rule. The limited attempt made towards
central coordination during the civilian rule between 1979 – 1984 was hobbled by the
combination of civilian inexperience and military’s continued inter-service
rivalries.(Abubakar, 1985)
Institutional Decomposition & Organisational Dysfunction – 1970 – 1999)
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
and institutional decomposition. By their very nature, coups are high-risk ventures,
9

4. 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 alleged 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 since 1970. 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 overtly politically
motivated exercise.6
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 during General Abacha’s five year
tenure. 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, institutional
decomposition and organizational dysfunction among the rank and file. At another
level, the political careerism resulting from successful coups also engendered
resentment, rivalry and lack of cohesion amongst the officer corps. Thus,
organizational 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 as well as the image of the
military with the civilian population. In the end, the political military failed to govern
10

5. effectively, and in the process lost its institutional and collegial coherence in the
politics of personal patronage that ensued.
The most pertinent implication of this decomposition is the de-
institutionalisation of the military exemplified by the move from its collegial and
institutional agenda to the personalisation of political and military power, a variety of
measures were utilised. 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 (General Murtala
Mohammed was the best example of this), 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 to personal whim.
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(a military legislature of
sorts), 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 Latin America and South East Asia.7 Although it was
11

6. 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 the so-called 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 more violent period in the country.
At the street level, the manner of rule also delegitimised any credibility that
military rule might have gained with the Nigerian population in the early years. The
Babangida regime dented the residual faith in the military institution in the face of the
poverty-grinding structural adjustment programme and the regime’s annulment of the
1993 elections. In a country where market reforms have been unleashed on the
population by military fiat, and the regime in power had institutionalised rent-seeking
as a legitimate instrument of governance, these essentially economic trends were
reproduced at the political level in the manner in which the state functioned in its
relations with civil society, creating a psyche of militarism and promoting the view
that the country was up for grabs by the highest bidder. The seeds of latter-day
militarism in civil society were largely sown during this period and the subsequent
military government headed by General Abacha.
One of the most deleterious consequences of the de-institutionalisation of the
military was the institution’s 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 retain political power. What suffered most in the process was
the weakening of accountability and absence of transparent security sector
12

7. governance. As now evident from the public hearings of the Human Rights Violations
Investigations Commission, these extra-military intelligence units became a law unto
themselves and ‘agents of insecurity’7
Another legacy of this thirty year involvement in politics is what we have
referred to elsewhere as the creation of Nigeria's "bureaucratic-economic militariat"
(Fayemi, 1999), which could be traced 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 1977.8 If one traced the
personal, political and financial links of business individuals associated with the
military prior to their exit from government and after the return of the civilians in
1979, the emerging trend of a network comprising the military, the civilian
bureaucracy and the business elite became immediately apparent.9 Although this
started largely as a 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.10 In no time though,
this pursuit of individual wealth set the tone for a conscious institutional programme
of wielding political influence and this further worsened the decomposition of the
military institution, leaving its officers at the whim and caprices of the personal ruler
and his patronage.11
Wider implications in the Nigerian society
The policies adopted to combat the economic difficulties that accompanied the
1980s oil glut also suited the strategy of personalisation of rule. In fact, it would
appear that structural adjustment policies couldn’t have been implemented without a
measure of personal rule that undermined consensus and consultation within the wider
society. As the country became sucked into the vortex of structural adjustment
programme under General Babangida, the elevation of finance over industrial capital
represented 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
13

8. 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. By 1993 when Babangida left office, Nigeria was among the 20 poorest
countries in the world (The World Bank, 1994). The situation worsened under the
Abacha regime; GNP grew only by 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 – with all of these sowing the seeds of
increasing violence in civil society.
Indeed, 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 – especially from resource laden regions of the country, in the Niger Delta, for
example, concluded that the overwhelming power of the centre was responsible for
their worsening economic 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
General Babangida also 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.
Under his successor, 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 1998. 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 the 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 the perception that the agenda
was to use a complete control of the economy to ensure a firm grip on the political
14

9. 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.
In themselves, these manifold legacies of military politics constitute major
challenges that need to be grappled with in improving civil-security relations, but
perhaps what is more problematic is their impact on state legitimacy – especially in
the context of political transition to the extent that security sector restructuring is
dependent on overall state restructuring. The context within which this has taken
place in Nigeria’s democratising polity is worthy of elaboration.
II. State Legitimacy, Political Reform and Impact on Civil-Security Relations
The pacted nature of Nigeria’s 1999 transition and the faustian bargains with the departing
military which produced a post-transition political configuration which looked more like
a re-packaged space for controlled clientelistic politics than a fundamental restructuring
of power dented the belief that a political reform project was in place. The fact that
Africa’s experience of pacted transitions have not necessarily led to consolidated
democracies nor enhanced state legitimacy, especially in places where the ethos,
language and character of public discourse have been completely militarised or in
countries where the nation-building project remains unfinished was repeatedly
recalled by those who felt democratic consolidation will require more of national
restructuring than electoral democracy.
While scholars of democratic transition in countries emerging from prolonged
authoritarian past have stressed the virtues of sequencing and argued that any opening
for democracy can, at best, be a means to an end, an instrumental response to a multi-
faceted crisis, hence there is merit in occupying, rather than boycotting, an emerging
space, no matter how limited, (Geddes, 1998), a significant number of critics of
Nigeria’s embrace of military transition in 1999 cautioned against misconstruing re-
packaged space for ‘entrenching militarism’ as a new space for democratic endeavour.
These critics also argued that unless the fundamental issue of the constitutional
arrangements and structure of Nigeria’s federalism was subjected to an open and
15

10. transparent discussions amongst stakeholders, state legitimacy would always remain
in doubt amongst disaffected communities within the nation state.
State legitimacy by its very nature derives from a combination of objective and
subjective realities in the lives of the average citizen. Although popular acceptance of
the government helps, legitimacy can also emerge from an incremental, rather than an
absolute acceptance of a ruling government from the outset. In the case of the civilian
government in Nigeria, there is evidence to suggest that confidence in the government
increased incrementally in the first year in office (Afrobarometer, 2000), but the same
survey also revealed that this dipped in 2001 following repeated perception on the part
of the populace that the government has not done enough to enhance state legitimacy.
More often than not, legitimacy is mostly enhanced in situations where the state has
the capacity to provide efficient and well functioning institutions and infrastructures
of government – legally backed and socially coherent – that together establish and
maintain an enabling environment in which human security and human development
takes place.
Whilst many Nigerians were happy to see the back of the military, the fact that the
political transition was a product of a militarily imposed constitution hardly helped
matters in a country where militarism and dissatisfaction with military rule have
combined to raise the level of tension and communal conflicts. Indeed, the hostility to
the old military State encouraged an outright rejection of the 1999 military
constitution. Instead, various constituencies clamoured for a new constitution that is
people driven and process led – aimed at reconstituting the Nigerian State along
equitable, transparent, socially responsible and just lines in the post military era. At
every level in the Nigerian State, the idea has taken root that for the State to gain
legitimacy; it must be refashioned to reflect the realities of their multifaceted
societies.
Although the new government recognised the merit of the arguments about a defective
federal structure arising out of an imposed constitution, it also saw the clamour as a
challenge to its own legitimacy; hence it refused to consider calls for a national
conference to debate and agree a new constitution. Instead, it established a technical
committee to review the constitution and submit recommendations to the President to
be tabled before the Parliament. Although the committee reported accurately the depth
16

11. of disaffection in its report to the president, it recommendations largely stuck to the
status-quo of centralised authority with no recognition for the various communities’
clamour for power de-concentration. Against the background of conflicts in almost
every section of the country and campaign in civil society for a more inclusive
constitution making process that is independent of the state machinery; the government
went ahead to foreclose freedom of association at the level of political participation,
imposing extra conditions for political party formation in a recent Electoral Act. All of
these measures have combined to further erode regime and state legitimacy and, as
unjustifiable as communal violence is amongst the larger population, government’s
actions is seen as directly linked to communal violence.
The unsettled nation-building project has continued to put overwhelming pressure on
civil-security relations as the government resorts at the slightest opportunity to the use
of security agencies, especially the army, to curb violent opposition to state violence.
Whilst majority of Nigerians continue to deplore violence as a means of resolving
political conflict(Afrobarometer, 2001), more than two thirds of the population still
consider the Nigerian constitution defective and the current structure unsatisfactory.
Caught in this context between the wider population and the political leadership has
been the security forces used in curbing political opposition, and gaining further dent
on an already uncomplimentary image among the wider population.
Fundamental therefore to the improvement of civil-security relations is the agreement on
a constitutional document that is not merely a legal instrument with no standing with the
people - one that is seen as a tool for bridge-building between the ordinary citizen and
the state. Yet in order to enhance state legitimacy grounded in human rights and good
governance, an organic link is needed between the constitution as a rule of law
instrument primarily concerned with restraining government excesses, and the
constitution as a legitimation of power structures and relations based on a broad social
consensus in a diverse society such as Nigeria. This, observers believe, will enhance state
by restoring trust in the State whilst arresting desertion from it.
To date, it seems the lack of clarity and decisiveness in the political reform project by
the political leadership, both in terms of its capacity to listen to a wide variety of
views in society and in terms of managing precarious and delicate relationships
between political actors and the wider population that represents the crux of the
problem. At its base has been the fundamental issue of proper governance in the
17

12. country generally, and the security sector in particular and how civilian and military
leaders handle policy differences between them in their relationship with the wider
population. It is also about the extent to which partisan politics sets the agenda for
security sector reform and the place of professional autonomy in the civilian control
of the military. Equally central is the limits of objective civilian control that is not
driven by democratic governance. Within the context of civil security relations, one
can identify a number of separate and sometimes intertwined areas in which clarity
and consensus on the part of political and military leaders will significantly improve
civil-security relations. These include: a) Role and Mission of the military and other
security actors based on a shared understanding of the threat environment; b)
government’s commitment to military professionalism; c) professional autonomy over
military matters; and d) role of international actors in military reform programme.
III. Key issues at stake in civil-security relations
a) Role and Mission of the Military
A military mission gives an indication of the threat a nation must deal with
and its location in relation to that threat. Is it internal, external or both? A
‘missionless’ military poses a great danger in relation to its primary role as a defender
of the nation’s territorial integrity and it is really the responsibility of the civilian,
political leadership to define the role of the military after due consultation with all
stakeholders in society, including the military. Granted this is not always a
determination based on an ‘objective’ assessment of the threat environment, but given
the stated commitment of the new administration to a professional military, the
military had hoped that the exercise in search of military mission in the immediate
aftermath of a discredited era would be subjected to a measure of professional
assessment and confidence building.
Given the pacted nature of the political transition, which produced an ex-
military General with significant support from the military constituency, the civil
society saw the government initially as an extension of military rule by other means.
The president’s 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. The appointment of service chiefs on the day he came into office - gave a
18

13. strong impression of a government committed to military professionalism and
determined to ensure civilian supremacy. Yet, there was no clear articulation of the
new administration’s agenda with regards to the mission of the military, beyond the
general statement on the need for a professional military. Instead, it appeared that the
political leadership came prepared with its own pre-conceived notions about what to
do with a military and there was a strong hint that it felt the solution lay in reducing
the size of the military without any objective assessment of the threat environment
and the capability of the institution.
Although it later balked at this original intention to reduce the size of the
military and the president even publicly disagreed with his Defence Minister that such
a decision was taken, the military leadership still felt that various actions taken were
driven by a desire to ‘tame’ the institution. In spite of these initial misgivings, the
military leadership embraced the new administration’s declared commitment to
professionalism enthusiastically. This was partly due to the quality of the military
leadership and the recognition on their part that reforms were not only desirable, but
also essential following years of decay. But the continued lack of clarity over the
mission of the military was soon tested when the army was ordered into the Niger
Delta town of Choba and Odi in Rivers State barely five months after the government
came into office. Whilst many, including the army chief, believe that the military
mission should be restricted to an external, combat role such as peace-keeping
(perhaps influenced by his celebrated role as the Field Commander of ECOMOG in
Liberia) as a means of strengthening civil-military relations and re-orienting the
military towards a more professional outlook, security chiefs like the National
Security Adviser, insist that internal security operations could not be ignored since the
constitution is clear on the need for the military to act in aid to civil authorities, “in
terms of suppressing insurrection and …to restore order when called upon to do so by
the President”(Section 217 c of the 1999 Constitution).
For many of the officers keen on redeeming the battered image of their
profession, a focus on the external with a clearly defined role and mission in
peacekeeping is critical to removing the military from politically tainted projects
internally. The involvement of the military in Odi, Bayelsa State in November 1999
brought this into clear relief and these officers argued that if the military must get
involved in internal security operations, proper criteria would need to be drawn up for
19

14. evaluating their involvement in such non-combat operations. The spate of civil
disturbances and the seeming inability of the police to handle these problems left the
president with little or no alternative when requested by states in crisis to send troops
to suppress insurrection. This lack of clarity was exacerbated by the most recent crisis
in Benue State in which the whole village of Zaki-Biam was flattened and several of
its inhabitants killed during reprisal attacks by soldiers who had lost colleagues in
communal strife in the Middle Belt of Nigeria.
To underscore the seriousness of the crisis, the Chief of Army Staff
Conference(COAS) held in Kaduna in November 2001 had its focus on ‘the role of
the army in internal operations.’ As though to foreclose the robust debate expected at
the conference of all army officers, the president declared the conference opened by
saying that his government will continue to use the military as it deemed fit, both in
internal and external operations. Although the conference still had a full and frank
discussion of the issues with many officers insisting that the military code with
regards to internal operations must be effectively implemented, if they must continue
to join such operations, others still felt that the solution lies in enhancing the capacity
of the police and other civilian enforcement agencies.
As discussed below, the current capacity of the civil policing institutions
underscores why the government feels it is irresponsible to restrict the military to
purely external threats in a situation where the threat environment indicates that
internal threats are larger than the external threats that the nation faces. Yet, there is
no doubt that the nature of governmental response to the various regional and
communal crises may very well be responsible for fuelling the belief in the efficacy of
force in conflict management, rather than emphasising the place of proper governance
in the security sector.13
Although this is the most pertinent issue that has brought the question of
military mission to the fore, the lack of clarity on military mission has generated more
debate inside and outside the military in terms of the developmental role of the
institution in peacetime. There are strong advocates on both sides – those who believe
that the only way the military could justify the expenditure consumed would be to
utilise its developmental role in peacetime. On the other side of the debate are those
who strongly believe that involving the military in anything other than its primary
20

15. duty of defending the realm is a recipe for unstable civil-military relations. The
problem with the debate on military mission lay in the inability or reluctance of the
government to institute a strategic defence review exercise that is wide-ranging and
inclusive which seeks to analyse the mission of the military within the context of the
political and threat environment. Although the Defence ministry has since undertaken
a defence review to guide the country’s defence policy with a view to clarifying
military role and mission, the ownership of the process remains questionable and the
issue of military mission remains unclear.14
(b) Commitment to Military professionalism
The lack of clarity about the role and mission of the military has affected the
direction of the re-professionalisation agenda. Although the government has
strenuously avoided the use of military restructuring, preferring the more neutral
reorientation and re-professionalisation of the military, the thrust of its programme
from inception betrayed a certain direction. As evident from the speech made at the
National War College on September 10, 1999, the Vice President, Atiku Abubakar
promised a "comprehensive transformation of the Armed Forces into an institution
able to prove its worth". According to him, 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.
21

16. 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 demobilisation. 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.’15
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 even if
unsubstantiated perception of a disproportionate recruitment of 'Northerners' into the
Nigerian military on the one hand set against the view that ‘Northern’ officers were
being victimised under the current dispensation was one the government had to
respond to. Indeed, the erstwhile retirement of "political" officers by the new
government was clearly perceived in affected circles as a response to the demand to
"right-size" the perceived dominance of the military institution by Northerners.
Although, none of this could stand up to rigorous independent analysis, in a poisoned
political atmosphere, it was easy for unsubstantiated claims of marginalisation to gain
political currency.
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
22

17. 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 and the demands for representation necessary in a diverse democratising
polity.
The fact that the government had not shown enough political direction in
addressing these questions earned it criticisms from the military. 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 feeling of the military constituency in a an unusually scathing 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
23

18. 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; even less so to expect the President and
his team to change this anomaly in two and a half years in office. What is at issue 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, not to
mention the military professionals to be affected by it. The feeling is rife within the
military as it is in civil society that two years of civilian governance ought to have
significantly improved their conditions. 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.
Linked to military professionalism concerns is the worry about professional
autonomy over military matters. The military leadership is of the view that the
political leadership must respect professional autonomy in spite of the temptation to
want to display a messianic knowledge on military matters. In their view, while it is
appropriate for their political masters to set the framework for issues such as size,
shape, organisation, force structure, weapons procurement and conditions of service
on the one hand, it is inappropriate for the presidency or the Ministry of Defence to
also want to take operational control over these strategic issues. To the military
leaders, even if the final decision lies with the political leadership, success can only
come in a climate of sustained dialogue and interaction between the civilian, political
leadership and the military hierarchy. Unfortunately, for much of the last two years,
the political leadership in the Ministry has not paid sustained and adequate attention to
the issues of professionalisation. Even the decision to appoint service ministers for
the Army, navy and the air-force has undermined the platform of the Chief of Defence
Staff meant to coordinate the activities of the services – already diminished by
General Malu’s seeming disrespect for the occupant. It has actively promoted inter-
24

19. service rivalries as each Minister pushes the case of his or her service rather than
enhance a common understanding of the role and mission of the armed forces.
Equally, blatant disagreement between the military leaders and the political leaders
over roles and responsibilities has affected the unity of purpose expected of these
actors.
While the mistaken notion that civilians have no business in military
operational matters is rife in the military, and the civilian bureaucracy in the Ministry
of Defence is seen to be largely deficient, it is also true that the military generally
respects civilians who they are convinced will make the effort to understand the
institution and their needs. As General Malu deprecatingly observed, “Just because
you’re in the Ministry of Defence doesn’t mean you know exactly how the military
operates”.16 The irony of course is that military officers do not often make the
connection that the lack of knowledgeable civilians in the defence ministry is the
effect of the deliberate policy of populating the Ministry with soldiers when the
military was in power. Even, middle ranking positions, which should have been held
by civilians, were turned into staff offices for undeployable but politically connected
officers who refused to go to the field. Indeed, throughout the period the military was
in power, not only were civilians working in the MoD employed independently by the
various services, (hardly the feature in other ministries where they were centrally
recruited) at least 90% of the civilian staff belonged to the junior grade. Even the less
than 10% in professional grade played no crucial role in defence policy deliberations,
thus creating a vacuum in the knowledge base of civilians about the military.
Having acknowledged the fact that military involvement in politics has
undermined military professionalism, it also ought to be stated that respecting the
professional autonomy of the military in a civilian dispensation should not mean
abdication of responsibility on the part of the civilian, political leadership if civil
military relations is to thrive. This is the paradox of objective civilian control. While
it allows the military to concentrate on military matters and minimise its involvement
in political issues, the logic of it also delimits civilian control over military matters.
Hence, when layers of civilian bureaucracy are imposed on the military, it seems clear
that this is bound to generate tensions no matter how well intentioned this might be.
What has become clear in the civilian leadership attempt to re-professionalise
25

20. the military is that measures taken by government still appeared to have focussed on
the dominant ‘western’ 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’, but not a political sphere that respects
military’s professional autonomy. In reality, this perspective treats civilian control as
an event, a fact of political life, not a process that has to be negotiated within a
continuum, especially in a country emerging from prolonged authoritarian rule. By
viewing civilian control as a set of technical and administrative arrangements that
automatically flow from the post military transition, the government and its
functionaries ignores 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.
Therefore, there is a need to redefine the 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 in the last two and half years of
civilian rule explains why 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 objective control mechanisms can
take its place in the democratic governance of the military. 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 also explains the increased level of dislillusionment with the
26

21. seeming inability of the civilian government to address the festering security threats
within the political environment, still fuelled by the perception of the military as an
unrepresentative ‘agency of insecurity’. It might seem odd, but communities now
strongly believe that the best way to promote their interests is to either campaign for
the regionalisation of the armed forces or get as many of their own into the officer
corps as a mechanism for promoting their world view.17
(c) The emergence of the ethnic-regional factor in the armed forces
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 which 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.18 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.19
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
27

22. 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 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 rise of militant non-state actors and their varied responses across
country to conflicts over identity, nationality, self-determination and autonomy.(See
Table 1) The introduction of Sharia in many of the Northern states (the recent killings
in Jos over the ‘native’ and ‘settler’ disputes), 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 the troubled nation-
building project with its attendant impact on civil-military relations. 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 remain committed to the principles of a federal union,
it is clear that the nation-state as it is constituted remains 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 processes that are
bottom-up and people driven, rather than those simply imposed by military fiat in the
28

23. quest to prove ‘strong leadership’.
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 organisation 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 and its
impact on civil-military relations that we now turn.
(d) Non-State actors, Societal militarisation and violence
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 the country. 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)
Whilst this paper cautions against the treatment of military disengagement as a
solution to societal violence, it is important to note that 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, formal military disengagement has widened the space
within which concrete democratic reform and security sector restructuring 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
29

24. 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.20 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 affects the
likelihood of a dialogue and consensus driven process. In a country where the
political leadership automatically forecloses 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
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 in 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
30

25. 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 if the feeling of
exclusion is still prevalent and there are no institutional mechanisms in the
constitution to address the segmental edge that diversity and difference seem to be
gaining in the larger society. Whilst many believe that a variety of measures will have
to be utilised in dealing with the problem, a key approach that is gaining prominence
in civil society is using the constitution not just as a rule of law document but as a
social compact between the rulers and the ruled – aimed at promoting inclusion 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.
IV. Constitutionalising civil-security relations and security sector reform
If the objective of creating a stable civil-security relations is to be achieved,
particular attention must be paid to the principle of accountability of the military 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 and promoted by the executive and legislative
branches of government. This is important for a number of reasons. First,
accountability, transparency and openness have become fundamental constitutional
tenets and the Obasanjo administration has pushed accountability to the forefront of
its reform agenda. Second, as a national institution, the military relies on the public
for support and sustenance in order to fulfil its constitutional mandate and given its
recent history, the population remains sceptical of its commitment to accountability
and transparency.21 Third, the notion 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 in wider society. Hence, the view that issues
relating to the armed forces and security services must be subjected to public
discourse is becoming not just acceptable but regarded as inevitable. Therefore, in
promoting accountability, it is now generally accepted that the public must have a say
as critical stakeholders in the shape and direction of security sector reform, including
on issues relating to democratic governance in the sector, its role and mission and
organisational coherence. Groups in civil society have therefore taken upon
themselves the need to broaden their knowledge of the security sector in order to
contribute to debates on conflict prevention, police and military reforms, criminal
31

26. justice system and international peacekeeping.
One critical area in which civil society has taken this up is in terms of
constitutionalising civil-security sector relations. Previous Nigerians constitutions
have tended to be unclear and simplistic about the armed forces and its role in
Society. Although Section 217(1) of the 1999 constitution 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, there was no attempt to reflect on the problems that arose from prolonged
military rule in the intervening period and what implications this might have on civil-
security sector relations. 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
necessary at relevant periods, this generalised nature of the role and broad functions
has also been a problem. This has often been the case when 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 even during civil rule. In the case of
Nigeria, this has led to a further lack of accountability and presidential control, rather
than democratic governance of the security sector.
Legislative Oversight & Democratic Governance of the Security Sector
Given the burden of Nigeria’s authoritarian past and the loss of credibility by
the military, those knowledgeable about security issues in civil society felt elected
civilians should play a key role in military restructuring and redefinition of roles and
missions. This led to some conflicts between a section of the populace who contend
that legislative oversight should be central to democratic governance of the security
sector and others strongly of the opinion that presidential control is more effective.
Aside from the fact that this has generated a frosty relationship between the
legislative and executive branches of government, the defence, police, security and
intelligence committees of the two houses of parliament, have largely been irrelevant
32

27. as far as policy making and implementation on security matters are concerned, in spite
of the wide legislative powers at their disposal. Not only are they often unaware of
developments in the security sector – perhaps due to lack of interest, but often because
they have no independent means of investigating military proposals from the
executive branch.22 There has been widespread agitation in civil society about the
need to constitutionalise in a comprehensive manner the role of the military and other
security actors in internal security issues, clarity in the use of emergency powers vis-
à-vis the citizens’ non-derogable rights, the place of international human rights law in
the practice and professionalism of the military as well as on issues pertaining to the
representativeness of the armed forces and law enforcement agencies. The current
review of Nigeria's constitution has provided an opportunity in civil society to re-
examine the constitutional dimension of military matters and a clarification of the role
of the executive, the legislative branch, the military institution and other security
actors and the oversight functions in the wider society in ensuring a stable civil-
military relations.
On the issue that has become the most critical to the Nigerian public – the
quest for an anti-coup strategy – they believe the current Nigerian constitution does
little justice to it. In the view of civil society observers, the most worrying clause in
the 1999 constitution is the subordination of the constitution to Section 315 (5)c of the
1999 constitution, which 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 membership to override it both at the national as well as state assemblies.
Opponents are of the view 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.23
Although Section 1(2) of the 1999 constitution stipulates 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, the concern in civil society remains that a
strict legal interpretation of Section 315 on the National Security Act indicates that the
Act can override the constitution, in which case an interpretation of the above clause
33

28. 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.
Finally, beyond the focus on an anti-coup strategy – which is understandable
because of the country’s history, the civil society has argued that 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 understands the link24 but
this thinking must be translated into policy.
V. Demilitarising Public Order and the Role of Civilian Policing
Given the threats posed by internal security problems 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 certain
sections of the civil society, and the 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 ratio of 1:400, the ratio 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.25
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
34

29. 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 police force in
confronting public order issues in the post-military transition period.
On its part, the new government has sought to reassure the public in its attempt
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 regarding the rise in crime and
the inability of the police to cope, especially in the urban areas pressured the
government to sanction a return of 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 in law enforcement can only
take place within a particular political, socio-economic and historical context. The
35

30. evidence of the first two years in office is that the current ad-hoc police 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 the rise of ethnic militias and the campaign for State/regional police
accountable to State Governors has to be responded to by innovative mechanisms
aimed at addressing diversity and difference;
• Third, the proliferation of arms in the country (sometimes of more superior quality
than the weapons carried by the Police) requires a combination of local and
regional response;
• 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 remains a challenge for
government; and,
• Five, the belief that use of force and violence gets quick results as a conflict
management mechanism has affected 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 and in
ensuring an improved civil-security sector relationship. The quest for 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 structures 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 in
civil society given the problems that have attended the centralised control of the
police force and the use it had been put under previous regimes. To create a service
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31. 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, the view is held strongly
that policing ought to be a community service, not a federal force. There is also the
additional recognition in civil society that no matter how well the police conducts its
affairs, reform should be pursued in a holistic manner. 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. Sadly, reforms to the judicial
system have been much slower 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.26
Emboldened by citizens’ campaign for security, many states are responding to
the clamour for local police by employing the services of ill-disguised ethnic militias
for internal security duties. In Anambra, Rivers, Enugu, Oyo, Osun, and Lagos States,
"Bakassi Boys" and Odua Peoples Congress' operatives are now actively involved in
state sanctioned vigilante activities and even gained legitimacy by their unwavering
commitment to defending the community against armed robbers. As a result of these
evident problems of performance and credibility that the Federal Police now
encounters vis-à-vis the seeming effective, albeit illegitimate presence of privatised
security arrangements, there is an intense debate with strong arguments on both sides
for the use and abuse of private security arrangements. In spite of the recognition of
the potential relevance of community involvement in policing on the part of
government and civil society, what seems responsible for the reluctance on
government’s part is that a decentralised arrangement which empowers the local
community and the state governments goes to the very heart of the debate about
national restructuring and the nature of political reform and governance in the public
sector. Although exacerbated by three decades of militarism and authoritarian control
in Nigeria, the structural problems did not arise out of military rule. All over the
country, the cries of marginalisation that now rent the air from every community is the
direct result of the strongly held belief that politicians are self-seeking and
disinterested in any fundamental reform of the political system.
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32. VI. International and Regional Dimensions of Civil-Security Reforms
Although we have concentrated largely on the domestic causes and
implications of the crisis within the civil-security sector, it would be wrong to assume
that the crisis of civil-security relations or its resolutions can simply be premised on
isolating the domestic arena from the international, especially given the context within
which current security reforms is taking place in Nigeria. Conceptually and in reality,
the Nigerian security sector is responding to the changing nature of security
understanding within the global context. In civil society and within government, there
is a growing clamour for broadening the definition of security in the public sector
reform agenda. This broader conception seeks to articulate security in a manner that
addresses the failure of the state to provide basic physical security and livelihood.
While the government recognises the need to strike the right balance and understand
the dangers that might accompany too broad a conception of security which altogether
dismisses the legitimate need for the military, developing a consensus in society
around the need for increased public expenditure on the military within the context of
the broader definition of security continues to pose problem. Indeed, civil society still
reposes little confidence in the military and tends to see it as an unproductive
consumer of resources dedicated to regime security rather than public security – hence
the often carte blanche demand for the reduction of military expenditure.
There are two aspects of the international dimension that requires attention.
First is the place of international assistance for security sector reform and second is
the place of Nigeria in securing a stable sub-regional polity that is responsive to the
yearnings of the population.
While security sector reform is seen largely as an internal project that has to be
undertaken by the State in consultation with critical stakeholders, that there is a role
for international community is hardly a matter for debate. What is often contested is
the nature of that involvement in the security sector. In the administration’s view,
there is a 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.”(Atiku Abubakar, 1999)
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33. In seeking to understand how the government conducted the task of
relationship building, rehabilitation and strengthening with foreign partners, it is
important to state that the Nigerian military had very little to do with the arrangements
even though the institution was not new to military assistance programmes. Indeed,
as a colonial product, the post-independence military benefited immensely from
external support. For example, 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. It was also not known if
the elected government conducted any objective assessments of what the needs were
and countries that could best deliver the assistance packages before approaching
interested parties.
While it would appear that there were various options open to the
administration on coming to power, the government decided to engage the services of
a foreign private concern of retired military officers known to be closely connected to
the government of the United States in the re-professionalisation programme, after a
visit to the United States by President Obasanjo, with little or no consultation with the
legislature or the military. The organization recruited for the exercise, 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"(www.mpri.com). 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 in Nigeria.
In 1999, 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 context”. 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. On completing the initial
assessment, MPRI 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.
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34. No doubt, all of the above constitute areas in which support can be rendered to
the Nigerian military, the fact that government failed to secure wider acceptance for
MPRI’s presence at a time that the local media was awash with rumours of a secret
military pact with America, created an environment of suspicion. Although it was
clear that the military advisers had the support of the Defence Minister, the National
Security Adviser and the President, the relationship with the military leadership was
soured from the beginning. Apart from the undisguised opposition of the military
professionals, especially its leadership to MPRI’s involvement, MPRI’s belief that
models of civil military relations from a different social-cultural context can be
transferred into another context wholesale was seen to be more problematic. Since this
is a pattern that Nigerians have become familiar with in other fields of government
since the inception of the administration – the seeming dependency on foreigners for
assistance even where local expertise will do - what had simmered underneath since
MPRI came on the scene - surfaced in a public criticism in July 2001 when the Army
chief, Victor Malu openly called for the need to “protect our nation” against foreign
encroachment. Whilst it must be stated that not all the sections of the military were
opposed to MPRI, this opposition to MPRI’s involvement struck the right chord with
the country’s human rights and civil society sectors and many of its leaders such as
prominent human rights lawyer, Gani Fawehinmi and academic Attahiru Jega, not
known for their endorsement of anything coming from the military openly rallied
behind the call. General Malu went to great lengths in his denunciation of foreign
involvement in the security sector and many believed that his public espousal of his
disagreement was not unconnected to his rallying call that:
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…27
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35. Although MPRI is still in Nigeria trying to complete its current contract whilst
seeking possible renewal, it is now evident that the government is responding
positively to the demands within the military and civil society to diversify
involvement of external players in the security sector reform programme. Already,
the British Defence Advisory Team came into the picture in 2000 when it sent a
military adviser to the Defence Ministry to assist with a range of issues around the
improvement of the Defence Ministry. It would appear that this low key approach has
earned the British government the respect of the military and Defence ministry
hierarchy leading to suggestions that the assistance programme might be expanded at
a time that MPRI’s involvement looks increasingly in the balance. Yet, while MPRI’s
continued involvement may not be assured, the same cannot be said of the bi-lateral
arrangement responsible for Operation Focus Relief – the training program for some
battalions involved in the peacekeeping work in Sierra Leone. Indeed, the contract for
this training programme has recently been renewed. While it is not without its own
problems, it has not received the kind of opposition that MPRI’s involvement has
generated. This may well be as a result that it is a more focused programme dealing
with specific aspects of military professionalisation in which there is agreement on
unmet needs, or more specifically because it is bi-lateral and subjected to better
accountability structures on both sides. More significantly, the clamour to involve
African security forces with a record of transformation has also been endorsed both
within the military and political circles and a military pact has been recently signed
with the South African National Defence Force on exchanges, training assistance and
logistics support, even though this is outside the on going bi-national commission
arrangements which has yet to receive parliamentary assent in Nigeria.(The Guardian,
November 16, 2001).
There are pertinent policy relevant lessons that can be learned from MPRI’s
involvement in the re-professionalisation programme of the Nigerian armed forces –
in terms of how external players should respond to request for assistance. The first
lesson for countries desirous of providing assistance for security sector reform is that
assistance should be based on a careful consideration of unmet need and based on
consensus of critical stakeholders. Second, it is equally important that partnerships
between donors and national governments exist on an equal footing if it is to produce
expected results. Approaches that allow supporters to assist in the military reform
process without seeking to drive the process and without placing more premium on
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36. credit and profit ought to be the pivot of such relationships. This will inevitably
require a determination to seek engagement over a long term, greater transparency and
a more open and sustained dialogue with government, parliament, civil society and
the security actors (not just the president and the defence minister as has been the case
in this particular case) whilst treating security sector reform as a complementary,
rather than a separate part of the whole development and institutional reform process.
Third, while clear-sighted personal leadership is central to any reform agenda, it is
important not to misconstrue presidential endorsement for institutional support.
Fourth, reform in the security sector must be seen as an integral part over
overall public sector reform within a national restructuring programme which must
see security and stability as mutually reinforcing elements alongside equity and
consensus driven concerns for the social and political transformation of Nigeria's
sordid past. International involvement in other aspects of the security sector and
administration of justice reforms ought to embrace this client determined and
inclusive approach in order to elicit broader support.
Regional Dimension: Beyond military assistance though, the politics of
globalisation and the sub-nationalism of local politics which has been exacerbated by
the politics of ethnicity, seemed to have encouraged the Nigerian state toward a
regionalist project in its security sector transformation programme which has not
generated negative response from the populace. 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 as one response to 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 in the Mano River Union and the Senegambia
areas. 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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37. The government’s commitment to integration of the economy and pursuit of
the dual-track monetary policy arrangement also emphasises the Government’s
recognition of regional economic integration as the ultimate solution to regional peace
and security. As an effective antidote to globalisation and ethnicisation – there is now
a firm recognition that regionalism must permeate the nation-state and its citizens in a
more deep-rooted manner. Although there is a section of the populace that believes
that charity ought to begin at home and Nigeria’s resources should be spent on
improving the living conditions of Nigerians, there is a growing awareness in civil
society that Nigeria has gained credibility across the continent and internationally
from its peacekeeping work and focussing the attention of its military on
peacekeeping activities might actually constitute a major mechanism for improving
civil-military relations, if this leads to a reduction in military involvement in local
activities that often dent the institution’s credibility with the populace.
To a large extent, the government’s continued focus on peacekeeping would seem
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 offers the key opportunity 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: What future for Civil-Security relations
From the foregoing analysis, the challenges and trajectories of civil-military
relations and security sector reform in a country emerging from prolonged
authoritarian rule are quite different from what obtains in settled polities. We have
analysed the emergent issues within a historico-political context without ignoring the
domestic-international dimensions to civil-security relations in the democratising
polity. The paper has also integrated objective and subjective civil control
mechanisms in the analysis of the place of the military in a democratising
environment.
Whilst the paper contends that the government has shown some commitment
to improving civil-security relations, it has concentrated largely on military reform in
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