By John Amoda
The one area in which Nigeria’s social scientific understudy of the British colonial administration is most deficient is in the areas of strategic appreciation of military security and the engineering of stability of defense.

Colonial Nigerianisation of the officer corps of the Armed and Police Forces was in the service of system maintenance, to ensure seamless change of administrators, the Nigerian replacing the British. There was no need in the indigenisation of the officer corps of the British colonial security order for the British to unveil the colonial security plans, since what was accomplished in the Sandhursts of the United Kingdom was the training of Nigerians to replace their British counterpart.

The Civil War that divided the post-Colonial officer corps into Nigerian and Biafran officer corps brought to an abrupt end the reliance on the British Empire maintenance training regime, thus making it an imperative necessity for the military on both sides of the Civil War to do some original thinking in military security and its implication for stability of defense.

Thus, the Civil War constituted also a new beginning in self-reliant strategic thinking by the Gowon and Ojukwu leaderships. The challenge of the dual responsibilities both of government and civil war security of society borne by Gowon and Ojukwu has not been fully appreciated by Nigerian academia and media. The consequence is the dearth of expertise and research in matters of war and peace in Nigeria’s political science.

Current events have left us no alternative but to take on the academic task of learning to think through issues of military security and stability of defense. In seeking for an effective way for developing capacity for such strategic learning Michael Mann has been most helpful. In his Incoherent Empire (Verso 2003), Mann itemised the capabilities necessary for the military expansion of a state into an empire.

That subject matter has both a historical significance for present day Nigeria seeing that Nigeria came into existence as a province of the British Empire, and a current relevance given the fact Nigeria is in the transition project phase, where its future depends upon the interplay of the contestation between forces of the British Empire and forces for the reform of the same.

If we must shape the future in terms of Nigerian sovereignty interests, it is important we have clear appreciation of what it takes to build, uphold and change empires. Michael Mann is, therefore, of immense help when he provides the enumeration of the capabilities needed for empire building.

To build and secure empires, is also to prevent the overthrow of empires and to limit the damage to the interests in empire when reform of empire cannot be prevented. Empires, Michael Mann argues, require four military resources, namely: Secure defense or deterrence against attacks; offensive strike power; the ability to conquer territories and peoples; and the ability to pacify the conquered afterwards.

The military resources enumerated are all conventional. Empire explains Mann “require conventional, not nuclear forces”. And an armed force with the above four enumerated features has imperial military power over its internal enemies in the first instance and by the same token has military capability to defend its sovereignty when externally attacked.

Its possession of the capacity for deterrence against attacks entail its ability to defend its interest when such are under enemy attack. It has retaliatory capability that discourages its enemies from initiating offensive attacks in the first place.

Its offensive strike power places such armed force in a position of surviving a surprise attack and in turn unleashing an offensive strike power that inflict such security damages on the enemy as to put an end to further enemy attacks. Possession by a society of deterrence against attacks and offensive strike power, therefore, secure such society from internal and external enemy attacks and through these two capabilities the societal sovereignty and autonomy are assured.

Michael Mann enables us to state the minimal capabilities that the Nigerian Armed and Security Forces must possess: These are the two capabilities needed for defence of the sovereign interest of government, namely, secure defence or deterrence against attacks, and offensive strike power.

Both capabilities make a first strike by enemy, internal and external, so costly as to discourage a second strike; and the first enemy strike provokes a retalitiatory first strike as to cause the enemy to abandon the military option. A government whose security forces possess these two capabilities can institute an internal order that it can defend, for it has the ability to conquer territories of its internal enemies and to subdue the same. Surely there is much to learn from Michael Mann on how the Jonathan government can position itself in the face of internal armed aggressions.

The policy should not be to convert the enemy into a friend but to make the enemy see the profit of being a friend. Yes, there is much wisdom in the Roman position-Odeant ut Timeant. They can hate us if they must, but we must make them fear us, so says Rome to its enemies. The challenge is determining the ethos of an armed forces with the capabilities specified in this essay. Should its ethos be a religious sectarian, or nationalist one; should it be liberal elitist or republican constitutionalist democratic ethos? This is the challenge of the Jonathan era. All other issues are of secondary importance.