In this interview, (with The Punch) Col. Tony Nyiam, who was
part of the failed attempt to oust the Gen. Ibrahim Babangida’s military
government in 1990, tells how the Orkar coup originated and its relevance to
Nigerian politics
You said
what has come to be known as the Orkar coup was not a coup but an action. What
is the difference between the two?
I said it was a pro-democracy action
to stop a situation where there would have been perpetual diarchy in Nigeria,
where politicians in uniform would have put a system in place for them to rule
forever. I’m talking about a system similar to what the Arab uprising
dismantled in Egypt.
But a more senior military officer,
Gen. Olusegun Obasanjo, referred to it as a coup.
It is because in our setting we
misuse words. And because we are used to misusing words, we believe even words
that are not really the truth. A military coup would be a coup against an
elected government. Our action was not against an elected government. In fact,
it’s the responsibility of a military officer to rise up against anybody who
takes over power from an elected government, which the government we took action
against did. The government we took action against, which was part of the
Muhammadu Buhari to Ibrahim Babangida regime, had usurped power from the
elected government of Shehu Shagari. If there is a coup that overthrows an
elected government, it is the duty of a military officer to do a counter-coup
to restore democracy.
Would you have done the same thing if
Buhari had remained in power to that time?
If we had seen the same indications
during Buhari’s time, the plan by the military to perpetuate itself, we would
have done that. But Buhari wasn’t of that kind of mould.
Are you saying your stay in power
would have been brief, only long enough to prepare for elections?
Yes. We would have stayed just 18
months to do basically three things, which Nigeria still needs to do. They are:
a national census, a proper headcount. I’m happy that as I’ve been saying for
years, Festus Odimegwu, the new chairman of the National Population Commission,
clearly said there has been no credible census in Nigeria since 1816. The fact
is that Nigerians have been so ignorant and have refused to deal with the
crucial matter. The census, right from the British time, has always been used
to perpetuate the internal colonisers over the rest of Nigeria. The three
things we would have done; first a proper national census, so we can know how
many we are and how we are spread. If we truly know what the Nigerian
population is, over 40 per cent of the constituencies in the North-West and
North-East, would not exist. We can only know that if we do a proper census and
that is why today, Festus Odimegwu’s life is being threatened because he wants
to give us a true count for the first time.
The second thing would have been a
conference, which would allow Nigerians to negotiate how they want to coexist. Today,
we have a situation where there are abuses of the federal character system. For
example, a candidate from say Delta State has to score 170 to pass, while
another from another part of the country is required to score eight. Such
abuses cannot really be acceptable by a people who have a nation. We are
yet to have a nation. The imperative of a conference cannot be ruled out;
people need to negotiate. The third thing was to conduct a free and fair
election, which has eluded Nigeria for long. In all the regimes, a semblance of
free and fair election we see only in a few states in Nigeria basically Lagos
and the other states in the South-West. I’m not saying they have achieved it,
but we see relatively free and fair elections in these regions. It is not surprising
why these regions are the most developing, South-West is the most peaceful,
relatively compared to other regions and of course it is the region, where
there is relative collective governance of the people. I must give credit to
this government, led by President Goodluck Jonathan. The Ondo and Edo
states governorship elections, which were relatively free and fair, are credit
to Jonathan’s government. These are the things we would have done in those 18
months and those three things whether we like it or not, have to be done.
First, we must have a proper census and that is why all Nigerians must support
Festus Odimegwu to give us a proper census. Two, we must sit down and negotiate
our corporate existence. We must stop deceiving ourselves with these fraudulent
elections we’ve been having.
There is the argument that we don’t
need to have another conference since we have representatives at the National
Assembly.
It is the most ignorant assumption.
Why do I say it is ignorant? With all the political scientists we have in our
midst, people forget that what we are practising is what we call indirect
democracy. What do I mean? The proprietary right over people’s sovereignty is
delegated to people we elect to make laws for us. When it comes to making
constitutional reforms or constitution making, you go to what is called direct
democracy. Direct democracy means direct voting by the people in the form of a
referendum and that is why the universal practice is that a constitution making
process that does not go through a constituent assembly, whose decisions are
approved by a referendum, is null and void. We see the examples. Look at South
Sudan; it’s creation resulted from a referendum. How is it that Nigerians do
not understand that for a constitution to be legitimate, it has to be driven by
the people, and the people are usually represented by a constituent assembly?
And this constituent assembly is usually made up of non-partisan politicians,
because partisan politicians are only concerned with the next election.
They are not concerned about posterity or long-term issues in the country. So,
constitution which outlives people and a generation should be driven by civil
society, collection of every nationality in the country and clerics. I would
cite an example. My second home is in Scotland and in Scotland those who drove
for the national conference were the clerics of the Church of Scotland, they
were at the forefront. We also saw it in Ireland. Britain has the oldest
parliament in the world, why are they allowing a constituent assembly to go
ahead, while there are parliaments? It is only in Nigeria that such argument is
raised because of the ignorance of the difference between direct and indirect
democracy. That’s why I have tried to do an aide-memoir to aid constitution-
making. There are certain basic principles of constitution-making, which if we
do not follow, would be like building a house on quicksand.
Do you think we would have been able
to tackle these problems if the June 12 election had not been annulled by
Babangida?
The thing is, Chief MKO Abiola, who I
had the opportunity to work with when he escaped from Nigeria to UK, was a man
that we lost because his plan was to correct the national issues and start
democracy in Nigeria. But because some western interests in Nigeria did not
want this, they colluded to do away with him.
You once said soldiers could be
recruited for a coup without their knowledge. How is that possible?
Yes, there are many instances. You
might want to verify this from Gen. Buhari, he was not the initiator of that
coup that brought him in as Head of State, it was Gen. Ibrahim Bako and
Babangida that initiated it. But because they wanted a credible figure as a
face, he was brought in. He did not know the genesis of that coup. He was not
quite aware of the original idea behind the coup and that was why when he
decided to make a change, he was forced to step aside. So, if this could happen
to a whole Gen. Buhari, who was supposedly the leader of a coup, it shows how
many soldiers can be brought in that way.
Does that mean overthrowing Shagari’s
government was IBB’s idea?
It was the idea of late Gen. Bako and
IBB. Buhari was only brought in because they needed a face with integrity.
Can you give other instances?
Gen. Yakubu Gowon was not part of the
coup that brought him in. He was a decent man. Nigerians like to play what the
Yoruba people call bojuboju;
they bring a figure with integrity to cover up their real intention; the real
intention of politicians in uniform who have found cheap party. Many elements
of them are in our partisan politics today.
That means such heads of states were
under the control of the coup plotters that installed them.
Obviously. And these people are still
the reason why we are not allowed to have a proper census, they are still the
ones ensuring that we don’t have a conference as well as a free and fair
election because if you give the people their rights to choose who to governs
them, you have freed them and these oligarchs don’t want that.
Could it be a defence in the military
to say I wasn’t part of a coup, I was just brought in?
It couldn’t be a defence because at
the point you know that it is a coup, you should do everything possible to
resist it.
Even at the risk of taking your life?
That was what we did. At the point
when we realised that they were going to perpetuate the military government in
Nigeria, we took the risk.
Can we say this plan was an
Hausa-Fulani agenda, since most of these military leaders are northerners?
We cannot reduce this thing to an
issue of a peaceful Hausa-Fulani man or a peaceful Yoruba man or a peaceful
Igbo man. I think we are above that. What we see is an interest of oligarchs,
who think power and money controls and there are all sorts of people in that
fold. For a long time, you may say one ethnic group has a preponderant
membership of that group.
It was reported that the late Gideon
Orkar wanted to excise northern Nigeria from the country. Was it part of the
agenda?
The unsung hero, Gideon Orkar, was
far from anybody who wanted to divide the country. He was calling all regions
of the country to some conditionality that they have to meet, if they want us
to coexist. It was because that was an era when certain people were saying that
they were superior, and that power was their prerogative and that they had the
monopoly of power.
Would that have been due to the
ethnic coloration of previous coups?
Sure. It is sad that democrats are
missing the issue that we were fighting against, which we still need to fight
against. It is a situation where they take over power and give advantage to
their people to the extent that today if we count the local governments we have
in Kano and Jigawa which are states not up to Lagos in population, the local
governments are up to three to five times the number of local government areas
in Lagos. Lagos is a place, apart from the Niger Delta which gives us foreign
exchange earner. Lagos contributes over 70 per cent of our non-oil revenue
generation and the same Lagos gets less than what Kano, which produces less
than two per cent, gets. This is why I must say Lagos State made a mistake,
instead of relocating the problem where it lies; it is not about deporting Igbo
beggars to Onitsha end of the Niger Bridge. Lagos should take the right steps
legally or otherwise to assert the rights of the state which is being the owner
of the Value Added Tax and the sales tax generated in Lagos. The things we
fought against are still structurally within our polity. Today, you cannot pass
a bill at the National Assembly, if two zones — North-East and North-West — do
not agree. So, two zones can stop four zones — South-East, South-West,
South-South and North-Central — from moving forward. The irony of this is that
these zones are in the semi-desert areas that are usually less populated going
by all empirical evidence. We have problems with our census figure; that is why
they have all those constituencies and that is why they planned coups to
perpetuate that.
Do you think the action failed
because the northerners were not involved and because of the conditions given
to them to be part of Nigeria?
First of all, our action and Chukwuma
Kaduna Nzeogwu’s action were the only actions that were not palace coup. The
likes of Bako and IBB’s coup which brought in Buhari wer. The fact is that the
government of Shagari was a government that the military was highly involved in
because of the ethnic kinsmanship. There was a fight over contracts that broke
the coup. It was an in-house thing. So, the coup was driven by people’s selfish
interests and that is why I don’t call it a military coup, I call it a
politicians-in-uniform coup. Nzeogwu’s action and our action were done by
outsiders, who felt this cash-and-carry ruling and stealing would not be
allowed to continue.
If the action had been successful,
who would have been the head of state?
It would have been Maj. Saliba
Mukoro. He was the initiator. They heard about me and they wanted some senior
people to be part of the action. When they approached me, I didn’t accept
immediately because I wasn’t the type that will go for a coup or any action.
But when I heard the strength of the argument, and in line with my insight as
to what was happening in government because I was a close aide to Babangida and
Sani Abacha. It would have been immoral of me to report the young
officers. I was torn in-between reporting these young, overzealous and
selfless boys, who wanted certain issues solved and maitaining loyalty to the
military government. People forget that it was because of the action that Delta
State was created. And the system in Delta State today has fraudulently
prevented one of the people who initiated it, Great Ogboru, to govern. People
forget that Bayelsa State was created because of the action. And that’s why I
still find it sad that till today, even with the President coming from Bayelsa,
no Bayelsan government has honoured those boys who sacrificed their lives for
the Niger Delta. I have said it over and over that these chaps deserve to be
honoured. I think the Niger Deltans, President Jonathan and the Ijaw should
take cue from the Yoruba and honour those boys. The majority of the boys in our
action were Niger Deltans for obvious reasons.
Were you the only colonel in the
action?
We were two lieutenant colonels. I
was brought in by another lieutenant colonel. But that lieutenant colonel sold
out and that was why there was a leakage and we had to rush. The person who
recruited me had sold out.
Is he a Niger Deltan?
Yes. His name was Lt. Col. Patrick
Oketa.
When you were pardoned, what was your
feeling?
First of all, we were grateful to
Gen. Abdulsalami Abubakar and Admiral Mike Akhigbe, who were the initiators of
the pardon. These were two gentlemen who were never part of any coup. Power was
just dumped on Abdulsalami and true to his character; he wasted no time in
returning power to civillians. The system of returning power to civilians
should have been better but because he didn’t want to stay a day longer, he
left and this is a reflection of his character.
Do you still relate with your
colleagues?
Sure, what we didn’t realise is that
most of our colleagues who were travelling were very helpful to us, because
they knew what we fought for. If our actions were not taken, you would never
have had the chance of having an Igbo man as Chief of Army Staff. No Yoruba man
would have had that chance either. Why do I say so? Some of us had insight as
to a succession plan in the army for the next 50 years. You would never have
had the likes of Gen. Martin Agwai being the Chief of Army Staff and Defence
Staff, because he belongs to the northern Christian minority. The army, after
General T.Y. Danjuma’s time became an army that was to be led by only an ethnic
group. People forget that there is a linkage between our action and the chance
that MKO Abiola was given for the election.
Now that we have Delta and Bayelsa
states and we have the Ministry of Niger Delta and an Ijaw man is the head. Do
you think these are enough to right the wrongs of the past?
Those issues are again the usual
Nigerian way of dealing with things; rather than go for a holistic tactic. A
fundamental thing essentially is to restore power. Once power is restored to
the people it is left to them. All these things are just temporal
measures. The fundamental issue is to return Nigeria to true federalism.
This talk of diversifying our economy cannot happen if we do not have fiscal
federalism. People forget that when we had proper federalism, the main foreign
exchange for Nigeria was agriculture. So, we have to go back to that
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Politics
True talk sir,God bless u
ReplyDeleteI'm so elated by ur adequately interview,infact is an insight,kudos
ReplyDeleteIt shall be well with you n your family in Jesus name how I wish I csan I have ur phone number to talk to you.please help the youths of this country to live to enjoy the fruits of your labour which must not be in vain.our traders at abuja want to milk this country dry,they should be stoped please.I think APC has your intentions now for this Nation!
ReplyDeleteThat is the costly mistakes igbos fail to learn from "ethnicity and selfishness", despite the contributions of Fani kayode
ReplyDeleteWell said..what an insight
ReplyDeleteI salute u & ur comrades sir!
ReplyDelete