Military’s Resurgence In Our Democracy

By Emmanuel Onwubiko

IN what could pass as the most poetic expression of democracy, the renowned political scientist Professor John Keane made the following opening statement in his widely acclaimed book The Life and Death of Democracy, thus: “History is often said to be a catalogue of human sorrows, an unending story of bootlicking, a slaughterhouse of crimes. It is not always so.”

Dr Keane said democracy was born of resistance to tyranny, just as he reasoned that Greeks’ claimed invention at first caused no great stir but that few spotted its novelty.

The above commentary from one of the global political thinkers which at first sounded like the little book of lamentations could be compared to the inglorious roles played by the Nigerian Military and policy in the just ended Rivers State rerun parliamentary polls.
The disturbing partisanship of the Nigerian armed forces is reminiscent of the 40 years that the Nigerian military took over power and ruled Nigeria in the most lawless form in such a way that the Constitution was in suspension not until overwhelming public pressures forced the military back to their barracks in 1999. The resurgence of the military in the political firmament of Nigeria is deeply troubling.  This development ugly as it is must be arrested immediately because the long term damage it would inflict in the credibility and integrity of the Nigerian military as an institution.

When President Muhammadu Buhari came on board last year, he made the Chief of Army staff Lt. Gen Tukur Buratai to constitute a board of inquiry which investigated alleged partisanship of the military in some past elections and over three dozen military officers trained with billions of public fund were prematurely retired as a result even though many of these indicted officers are in courts challenging their sack. But to now witness a worst case scenario of the same military behaving like dogs that eat their vomits with the open and brazen partisanship as seen in the Rivers State rerun election is indeed traumatising.

Rivers State also the nation’s hot bed of inter-party rivalries between the nation’s two main political parties known as the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and the ruling All Progressive Congress (APC).

The rerun legislative re-run elections in Rivers State were occasioned by the legal cancellation of last year’s election in which the People’s Democratic Party swept virtually all of the parliamentary seats both within Rivers State House of Assembly and the Senate and House of Representatives seats to represent the State of Rivers at the National Assembly. The party at the center saw the annulment as an opportunity of a life to gain entry into Rivers State.
From evidence available on the social media and even from eye witnesses, the roles played by the military and police to sabotage, undermine and scuttle the will of the Rivers State electorate are despicable.