Oh how charitable

Future historians will note a particular generation of military officers who played an outsize role in some of the biggest events in post-colonial Nigerian history. Many of them would be surprised to find anyone considered them to be part of the same group; their internal, intra-group rivalries were violent and murderous. Tragically, their quarrels with each other were often projected beyond the group to draw in wider swathes of the Nigerian population.

The long buildup to fratricidal conflict known as the Nigerian Civil War began in the 1950s when restored self-government became a real possibility. One of these days, academics will seriously and rationally research and explore how and why we as a people took ourselves from peace to civil war in less than 16 years; for now, simplistic explanations predominate. But whichever way you look at it, no matter how much liquid "fuel" of civil war we had sprayed all over the country in that decade-and-half, it was a particular generation of military officers who took a lit match to the fuel, thus starting the fire in earnest.

The coup of January 15, 1966 was many things, but within the overall picture there was the specific case of officers (the "5 majors" and their accomplices) killing fellow officers Zakari Maimalari, James Pam, Arthur Unegbe, Kur Mohammed, Abogo Largema and other officers/soldiers.

Due to the paucity of credible historical research and the preponderance of half-truths, I cannot say that I know what the relationships between the members of the officer corps were before this event. I do know that after this event, the members of this generation of officers spent the next 35 years fighting, betraying and killing each other.

The January 1966 coup introduced the first of many military-civilian diarchies. I know we like to call them "military" regimes, but civilian politicians, technocrats, administrators and plutocrats were as much a part of those regimes (maybe even more so), as the soldiers who ostensibly led the regimes. That first diarchy did not last long; members of the officer class rose up and killed Ironsi, Fajuyi and other fellow officers.

Then followed the Civil War, with members of the generation like Ojukwu, Effiong, Njoku, Nzeogwu, Ifeajuna, Banjo, Onwuatuegwu, Ademoyega etc on one side, and members like Gowon, Buhari, Babangida, Muritala, Obasanjo, Nwachukwu, Garba, Abacha, Vatsa, Dimka, Bissalla, Danjuma, Shehu Yar'Adua etc on the other.

The members of this generation of officers continued betraying, fighting and killing themselves after the end of the Civil War.

Members of the group overthrew the Gowon-led regime; Gowan went into exile and his allies among the powerful state governors (like Ukpabi Asika) were forced out. Muritala Mohammed, who had had a hand in the 1967 coup, was installed as president.

Rival members then overthrew the Muritala regime, killing Muritala in the process. The unsuccessful plotters, men like Bissalla and Dimka, and the men who crushed the coup, notably Ibrahim Babangida, were members of this same group of officers. The plotters were executed in grisly fashion, in public, on the beaches of Lagos.

It should be noted that during the 1970s, Mohammedu Buhari was a federal minister, one of many officers in this group to hold senior government jobs. In the 1980s, Joe Garba would serve not only as UN Ambassador, but would chair the UN Security Council.

But I am jumping ahead.

In the aftermath of the assassination of Muritala Mohammed, the new triumvirate of Obasanjo, Shehu Musa Yar'Adua and Theophilus Danjuma (the man who led the detachment that killed Ironsi and Fajuyi) organized a transition to civilian-led government, the Second Republic. But their generation of officers were not done with Nigeria yet.

During the Second Republic, Emeka Ojukwu, leader of the Biafran side of the Civil War was granted an amnesty and returned to join the ruling National Party of Nigeria (NPN). It was a simple trade; Ojukwu got to return to Nigeria free of judicial consequence, and the NPN gained a massive weapon (a much stronger weapon than K.O. Mbadiwe) to use against Nnamdi Azikiwe's Nigerian People's Party (NPP) in Imo and Anambra, the states with Igbo-majority populations.

It was all for naught anyway. In 1983, Dogonyaro, Abacha and others overthrew the Second Republic, installing Buhari and Idiagbon in federal executive positions. Just over a year later, they moved again, this time dethroning Buhari and installing Babangida as president.

At this point, most of the senior members of this peculiar generation of officers had moved out of the military, and the incoming federal and state diarchy governments were led by men who had been junior officers during the crucial years 1966 and 1967.

Only two months after Buhari's overthrow and Babangida's enthronement, there were a raft of arrests of officers and soldiers accused of planning a coup. Though there is a possibility (maybe even a probability) that Mamman Vatsa was not actually involved in the alleged coup planning, his name is the one most associated in the public consciousness with the alleged would-be coup. Within this overall group of officers who had wielded an outsize effect on Nigerian events since 1966, Babangida and Vatsa stood out for being almost like competing fraternal twins. Yet Babangida did not hesistate to approve Vatsa's execution (along with the executions of other suspects).

Five years later, in 1990, there was a second attempted coup (perhaps it was really the "first").

It was twenty-four years, nearly a quarter of a century, had passed since the events of January 1966; it seemed the people of Nigeria had learned a lesson from the four bloody years that followed. By and large, Nigerian citizens had adopted a posture of keeping out of intra-military violence after 1970, allowing the officer corps to fight it out among themselves without their quarrels sucking in the wider citizenry or inciting outbreaks of ethno-regional and communal violence as had happened in the years 1966-1970.

When the 1990 coupists appealed to still-simmering ethno-regional hate in the hope of drawing support from the broader population, the Nigerian citizenry responded with curiosity and surprise, but were clearly disinterested in leaving their homes to participate in a rerun of the 1960s. Some of the plotters fled the country, while others were executed.

Babangida hung on, starting a "transition to civil rule" that turned out to be a stage-managed, cartoonish joke. Many Nigerians remember the annulment of Abiola's general election victory in 1993. Few remember that that event was actually the second annulment. The first occurred in 1992; Shehu Yar'Adua, the number two in the triumvirate that led the diarchy between 1976 and 1979, had emerged as the Presidential candidate of the SDP, but President Babangida "disqualified" Yar'Adua and others (including civilians with long-term ties to the diarchy) from running for President. It was only then that the SDP and NRC selected Moshood Abiola and Bashir Tofa respectively as their presidential candidates, two civilians with firm ties to the diarchy, two civilians with stronger ties to Babangida himself, two civilians who had become multi-millionaires by exploiting their ties to the governing system.

Abiola was the prime beneficiary of Babangida's annulment of the primaries that gave the SDP presidential nomination to Shehu Yar'Adua, and (understandably, I suppose) Abiola did not oppose or protest the annulment. It is an important lesson. Very often we allow bad things to happen, because we think we can benefit from those bad things, never mind the fact that those bad things could consume us just as easily as our opposition. Moshood Abiola had been involved in Nigerian politics at the highest level for decades, aligning himself with any government in power, be it diarchy or fully civilian-led. He knew better than anyone else how the tides suddenly turn, how men can be at the very top of the system one year and find themselves facing a firing squad or involuntary expulsion from politics the next. But he profited from the system, and hence was uninterested in challenging it; to challenge the system was to give up wealth and power (which did eventually happen when he belatedly moved to challenge Babangida's powers of unilateral annulment).

I suppose the same comment could apply to Shehu Yar'Adua, who also became a multi-millionaire through his connections to the system, only to have his political ambitions crushed by Babangida, who had been his junior in the diarchies of the 1970s.

The 1993 annulment weakened Babangida, and a ridiculous Interim National Government was created to provide cover for the hand-over of power from Babangida to Abacha. Under Abacha's iron hand, dissenters were treated roughly at best, murderously at worst.

Abacha was able to use Emeka Ojukwu to help pacify the Southeast for the government in the context of continuing agitation in the Yoruba-majority states regarding the annulled 1993 elections.

In 1995, Shehu Yar'Adua was sentenced to life imprisonment, to punish him for pushing for civilian-led rule. Shehu Yar'Adua ultimately died in prison, in 1997.

Moshood Abiola was also jailed, in 1994 in a vain effort to stop his fight for the realization of his presidential mandate won in 1993. He died in prision in 1994.

Sani Abacha died of unknown causes in 1998.

He was replaced by Abdulsalami Abubakar, another member of this peculiar group of officers with outsized representation in major events in Nigerian history.

Abubakar started a programme to return the country to civilian-led government, giving rise to the current Fourth Republic. The presidential candidates in the 1999 elections were Olu Falae (an technocratic adjutant of Ibrahim Babangida) for the AD/ANPP alliance and Olusegun Obasanjo (yes, him again) for the PDP. Their running mates respectively were Umaru Shinkafi (a former head of the National Security Organization in the Second Republic) and Atiku Abubakar (a product of the late Shehu Yar'Adua's PDM machine).

Beyond the presidential stage, assorted "godfathers", men who had acquired wealth and with it power during the diarchies, created massive political machines to seize control of entire states and to bargain at the national level for a share of the cake in exchange for "delivering" their fiefdoms to particular candidates.

Four years on, in 2003, there was a flashback to the 1960s, as the three leading presidential candidates were Olusegun Obasanjo (winner), Mohammedu Buhari (runner-up) and Emeka Ojukwu (third place). I remember thinking that nothing proved the truth of Nigeria's political stagnation more than the fact that these three were still relevant 40 years later. What had Nigeria gained from their long years of involvement in politics? What was it that they had not had the chance to do in 40 years that they would do after 2003?

And four years later, in 2007, in an election that lacked credibility, Umaru Yar'Adua emerged as the new President of Nigeria. President Yar'Adua is the younger brother of the late Shehu Yar'Adua, who had been number two in the 1976-1979 triumvirate and who became a latter-day enemy of Babangida and Abacha. That Obasanjo, who had been number one in the 1976-1979 triumvirate, elevated Umaru Yar'Adua to the presidency, is a reminder that Shehu Yar'Adua's political machine outlived him.

After leaving the army in 1979, Shehu Yar'Adua acquired wealth in the usual way of Big Men (through conections to power), but more significantly he created a national political machine, variously known as the Peoples Democratic Movement (PDM). This machine has been very influential in Nigerian politics. First it catapaulted Shehu Yar'Adua to the SDP presidential ticket in 1992, before Babangida's intervention. Later the PDM formed the bedrock of the alliance of machines (including machines loyal to Ibrahim Babangida) that placed Olusegun Obasanjo in the Presidential mansion in 1999; Atiku Abubakar, who became Vice-President, also became the de facto national leader of the PDM at this time, drawing into its fold the state machines of various PDP governors. Once more, in 2003, the PDM and its alliance partners manipulated Obasanjo into office, after which political warfare broke out between Obasanjo and Atiku.

Obasanjo wanted a third term. Atiku insisted on the deal they had agreed upon (that Atiku would succeed Obasanjo after Obasanjo enjoyed two terms).

Victory in the first battle went to Atiku; the Third Term constitutional amendment was defeated in the National Assembly. But the war was ultimately won by Obasanjo, with the help of fixers like Nuhu Ribadu, Maurice Iwu, Tony Anenih, etc. Obasanjo's political machine and allied machines were able to coopt much of the PDM machinery, and destroy the rest of it. Atiku Abubakar was supposedly the leader of the PDM machinery -- but how can you purport to lead Shehu Yar'Adua's machine against Shehu Yar'Adua's younger brother? I daresay the collective mass of political machines in Nigeria preferred Umaru Yar'Adua; he had a softly-softly consensus approach where Obasanjo, Buhari and Ojukwu approached government as though it was an army and they were generals -- and where Atiku has a reputation for corruption, Umaru Yar'Adua was reputedly the only Fourth Republic governor to leave a fiscal surplus after his term.

Okay, I guess you are wondering why I decided to bore you with this long history of a peculiar generation of Nigerian military officers.

Simple.

One of their number, Theophilus Danjuma .... number three in the 1976-1979 diarchy, and the leader of the detachment that assassinated Aguiyi-Ironsi and Adekunle Fajuyi ... announced =N=15 Billion ($100 million) donation to provide free medical and education services for under-privileged Nigerians. The eponymous TY Danjuma Foundation will distribute the funds as grants through accredited non-governmental organizations.

On behalf of the Nigerians who will benefit from this charity, I am grateful. But Danjuma and others officers from the peculiar generation bear an outsize share of the blame for the poverty those Nigerians are living in in the first place. Frankly, those Nigerians would have been better off if Nigeria had had a strong, large, deep and broad economy capable of generating enough employment and wealth, enough productivity and consumption (of healthcare and education among other things).

I mean, haba! Of all things, Theophilus Danjuma gained his current wealth an oil block that was "allocated" (i.e. given) to his business interests by .... Sani Abacha!

It is ridiculous.

A gift of $100 million ... to salve the conscience of a person partly responsible for our economy being tens of billions smaller than it should have been?

Should we really be grateful for this ... charity?