There has been a remarkable shift in the political landscape of West Africa in the last few years. Soldiers are again making an odious entrance into the corridors of power. Silently but steadily, they are returning and the martial strains of their voices are getting louder. It’s becoming fashionable to speak of soldier-rulers in the same sentences as elected representatives of the people.

Here in Nigeria, an irresponsible segment of the population is in an atavistic run towards a bygone era of power grab, one in which adventurers in military fatigue took centre stage as actors in a drama that was not entirely of their own making. These agent provocateurs take their examples from countries we should be ashamed to compare to ourselves given the relative quality and quantity of our human and material resources. Why on earth should anyone be comparing Nigeria to Rwanda? 

If we admire that country’s social and economic progress, are we prepared to accept its constriction of the democratic space that has made that possible? We speak ever so loudly about how we are worse than we were under the military, even while sitting pretty on live transmissions where the president is all but called a criminal to his face. How many rank and file soldiers would accept this not to mention a General? From Burkina Faso to Mali, Niger to Guinea, the military have in the last few years shown they still have a huge appetite for power and some point to them as appropriate models worthy of emulation all because of an electoral loss and their temporary exit from power. 

With the Indian Ocean country of Madagascar turning to the barracks for their saviours, some people see that as yet another credible corridor opened for power-mongering mutineers to sneak into political governance from the backdoor. We give audience to career politicians who claim to be hungry just two years out of power, asking what our youths and “Gen Zs” are doing while their agemates are storming presidential palaces and barricading legislatures. This, when their own children are graduating from law schools, home and abroad, and are being given out and taken in marriage. They are with their mouths stoking a fire they cannot put out.  

Rather than growing our democracy by a robust engagement of those in power, we are encouraging the exaggerated old wives’ tales of politicians not prepared to do the work of opposition but are content to point accusing fingers at a ruling party supposedly bent on creating a one-party state by arm-twisting members of the opposition. I suppose it is Bola Tinubu or his APC that is forcing Sule Lamido to the courts after applying for and failing to get a nomination form for the chairmanship position of the PDP, days after the party stopped selling the forms? 

Wild card candidates, forever afraid of party primaries like Peter Obi, out searching for free tickets into political offices, are coddled and promoted as champions of democracy and a government that is relatively doing better than any we have had in decades, given our present circumstances, is flippantly written off as non-performing all for the sake of politics. Why can’t some see that a do-nothing opposition is the elixir a ruler needs to become a despot? What are we learning from the history of geriatrics like Paul Biya, Allasanne Quattarra, Teodoro Nguema Mbasogo and Yoweri Museveni? 

We turn for lesson to the closed community of pariah despots across the West African regions. Who would tell these confused travellers that they’ve lost their way? That the world has moved beyond them? They may sit atop the dunghill they have reduced their countries to, but where else would they be welcomed in an age when even elected rulers are routinely denied visas to attend international engagements while arrest warrants are issued on others; who would tell these misguided men that they are in a different world powered and united by technology that leaves little or no room for the medieval powers that are military regimes? Why should Nigerians allow politicians to persuade them that it is to such people we should be looking for examples of responsible leadership? How did we find ourselves here? 

No sooner was the 2023 election won and lost than some of our politicians started calling for the intervention of the military. They and their supporters were practically on their knees. They have not stopped to think of the implications of their actions, its ethno-regional, religious and economic complications? What matters to them is that nobody gets what they have lost. And about two weeks ago, it appeared like their prayers have been heard when a frequently sensational online medium broke news of a planned coup that was supposed to have been executed on the occasion of the country’s 65th independence anniversary. That report was immediately denied by the government despite taking certain decisions, such as the appointment of new service chiefs, that have been linked to the alleged coup. This writer is inclined to stick with the government’s position in the absence of any positive evidence that a coup was either planned or foiled. 

Whether true or not what is obvious from the report is that the alleged coup was probably planned as some kind of gift to Nigerians- at least those who have been calling for one in the last two and a half years. I guess the economic and security situation of the country is part of the excuse these elements would have offered as the excuse for their action. Yes, some have not stopped parroting how unpopular the present government is. But the situation we are in will not be resolved by a popularity contest. Ours is a life or death contest, not the political gamble that most opposition politicians take it for. Which would explain why some of them like the ADC spokesperson, Bolaji Abdullahi, are demanding the government admits there was, indeed, a coup. But what would that prove- confirm their bias that the government is unpopular? What happens after that? 

On the other hand, other opponents of the government are saying reports of a coup was a red herring being promoted by the government to distract Nigerians from its failures. So, head or tail, the government loses according to the logic of these categories of Nigerians. Yet, the evidence before us all tells us that things are improving no matter how slowly they may seem. The indicators are positive that the reforms, which nobody has told us are not needed, are achieving the required results. Inflation is down, the exchange rate is stable and our foreign reserve is at an all-time high. It’s a matter of time before we are where we want to be. A plague on coup mongers!