INTRODUCTION
In this unit we will examine the theme of military and other political issues in Nigerian literature. Military politics is one of the unfortunate offshoots of colonialism in Africa and consequently a recurrent theme in the African novel. In African culture, there are people traditionally trained to fight wars in case of external aggression. These trained men are often seen in the time of need. They obey those occupying political or tradition executive powers that they vowed to protect. They do not imagine themselves occupying the political positions as heads of government or heads of their communities. However, when the colonial powers came into being in Africa, they trained Africans in the art of their kind of wars. They exposed Africans to wars by recruiting them into fighting the first and the second world wars. These African military men encountered European soldiers in battle field. They learnt new logistics of military intelligence. We shall study the treatment of these themes in Nigerian literature using some Nigerian literary works s yardsticks.
3.1 General Overview
The military rulers who tasted power never wanted to relinquish power. For instance, since Nigeria’s independence 48 years ago, the military have served the political arena for over 30 years. The military rulers held on to power with endless promises of democracy. Many Nigerian writers who wrote about militarism have presented them as being corrupt more than the people they are supposed to correct. Most of them developed into dictators like Muamar Ghadaffi of Libya and the late Sani Abacha of Nigeria. Many African countries are still under the grip of militarism because it is either their leaders are military rulers or ex- military. One still sees the same military politics even as the people are hopeful of a democratic government in place.
Many Africans believe that military politics was a reaction to the corrupt practices of the political class. For instance, Chinua Achebe’s A Man of the People was described as a prophetic work because it was launched almost at the brink of the first military coup de tat in Nigeria. Chinua Achebe believed then that the corruption going among the First Republic politicians in Nigeria might trigger off a possible coup as a corrective measure. However, this dream of correction turned into pure anarchy as the military leaders projected their militarism as tactics in governance. These military rulers siphon the people’s economic base and save huge sums of money in foreign accounts. They turn the country’s treasury into their personal accounts. The situation seems very pathetic.
The theory of military intervention in politics in Africa and other third world countries is a catalytic post-colonial discourse. In Nigeria, the inability of the political elite to give the young nation the needed creative force to move forward and the employment of political institutions to serve the whims and boisterous accumulative urge of sectional leaders created the chasm that heralded the first military coup in 1966. Thus, in the wake of the first coup d’état and counter-coups in Nigeria (nay Africa), the men in uniform had at various times, unimaginatively harped on the same tune as the motivation for their over-throw of legitimate governments, that is, ‘the love for country’ . Unfortunately, the soldiers have never achieved the litany of objectives that brought them to power. Some of the social decadence that they sought to eliminate includes corruption and outright embezzlement, the quest for genuine federalism, the promise of more inclusive arrangement, political stability, reduction of poverty level, safety and security of life, and better health facility.
The military by nature rules by command and obedience; thus no room for opposition that would have guaranteed checks and balances of any sort, and the gulf they tried to fill, by and large, encouraged unrestricted access to the national resources which they expended so unsparingly, irresponsibly and inefficiently. Thus, the mottled gangsters’ circuit show became a centrifugal force which drew the whole military institution from its lofty ideals of professionalism, national security and loyalty; and the military’s longing for stable polity became a chimera in an induced culture of violence which became a nucleus of incoherence with the embezzlement of public funds heightened only by degree as the Nigerian military produced a nest of millionaire and multi-millionaire generals. Thus this economic war of looting waged on Nigeria plundered its resources while the impoverished citizens live in squalor and abject poverty and the purportedly ‘redemptive missions’ led to ‘ruinous mission’ as the military grew into a mildew and ominous albatross on the political terrain, emphasizing only its oppressive endowments; the archetypal characterization and role possessed at the early morning of colonial irruption on the continent
Some theorists and politicians have however carved a specious argument and an Alice-in- Wonderland theory of a northern oligarchy of the Hausa/Fulani, whose nomenclature changes according to the fancy and degree of mystifications and political bruise sustained by lachrymal scholars and political victims. Thus the Kaduna mafia is thought to be the manipulating force behind military rule in Nigeria in a votary of castigated hegemonic philosophy of the caste, Maitama Sule Dan Masani Kano, which nearly lent credence to this myth when he freely uncovered a clandestine enterprise in one of his numerous interviews, stating that: a directive was issued to all the ministers in Sardauna’s cabinet, that each time any of them, was on tour they were to ensure that they visit schools and recruited people into the military. The occasion and motivation for this surreptitious gang up, was the bestial treatment meted to political elite in Iraq at the dawn of the country’s first coup.
Maitama Sule’s confessions, like the legendary confessions of a prodigal acolyte before mother “Idoto” in Okigbo’s poem, a necessary ritual for his baptism into statesmanship seems so wild, narrow and arrogant, seeing the ruinous consequence of the perverse vision on Nigerian political and economic epistemological space: one discovers an oppositional algebraic sum that only points at the “narrowness of vision” of some self-seeking and self-opinionated bunch of ethnic chauvinists who laundered themselves to power through their surrogates and thus violently and relentlessly maintained a vertical network of personal and patron-client relations. Thus the military’s troublous (mis)adventure in politics drew Nigeria to the fringes with the dubious regimes of Babangida and Abacha (1985-1998) as the worst period of crisis and military dictatorship in the entire post-independence period and as the time tickled away, the juntas and the whole military institution drifted and lost their sense of direction. And second, the greed of the military dragged the nation by degrees, slowly but surely away from the project of nationhood, and thus by the end of almost forty years of military rule, Nigeria was far more fragmented than it was in January 1966, when they first seized power.
Thus, the pains and frustration of military rule equally foregrounded the realities of some post-colonial literary texts in (African) Nigeria, whose grains include anguish, privation, fatalism and cynicism. Who is the Writer? A writer may be protean in nature, depending on the perception and context of his/her conception or cognition. Within general academic province, she/he is an intellectual in a field of knowledge. But significantly, she/he is a member of the society. More specifically, however, the writer in this context as a member of society and like any member of society partakes of the observable experience(s) of the society. In the universe of this discourse, the writer, unlike other members, is conceived as one who portrays and examines these experiences in: a specialized creative manner and with the sole aim of sourcing for relevant materials from the pool of experiences. The selected materials (experiences) he/she interprets, recreates imaginatively, and reflects or refracts, depending on his/her level of consciousness and degree of commitment. The writer is therefore a true artist, always wanting to create works answering the most urgent questions engaging the contemporary mind. One significant feature of the writer in this context is not only his cognition of life but also an aesthetic interpretation and artistic revelation of cultural environment to yield the link between art and life that queries the mode or medium of transmission.
SELF-ASSESSMENT EXERCISE 1
Discuss the role of the Nigerian writer in the correction of militarism in Nigeria?
3.2 Militarism as Theme in Achebe’s Anthills of the Savannah
The novel starts out by describing a Cabinet meeting. After the session is closed it turns out that outside the palace there is a crowd of people from the province of Abazon who try to get to meet the President. The people are dissatisfied because, as it later turns out, Sam has caused them to suffer by shutting down water-holes in the province, which are dry as a result of the drought. He refuses to meet the delegation. After this event, Ikem goes to meet the delegation. It turns out that he is in a way one of them, born and raised in Abazon, and has come to be greatly respected by the Abazonians as the famous editor of the National Gazette. When he leaves the Abazonian delegation that day, he is stopped by the traffic police because of some misdemeanour. It is later revealed that he was followed by State Research Council agents who needed proof that Ikem had actually visited the delegation in order to be able to accuse him of treason for siding with the rebellious Abazonians. Some time after this, Ikem is fired from the National Gazette by orders from the President, who thinks Ikem's writing in the Gazette is too critical of his "administration". The President actually wants Chris to do the firing, but he refuses. After being sacked, Ikem makes a radical speech at the University of Bassa (the capital of Kangan). The speech is purposefully misquoted in the Gazette the next day, giving the impression that Ikem wants the President dead. He's charged of treason and conspiracy, soldiers come to pick him up from his home and shoot him dead, claiming it was an accident.
After this episode, Chris feels he can no longer work under President Sam as Commissioner for Information. He is afraid he is going to wind up like Ikem, and goes into hiding. A while later, he too is charged with treason and becomes a fugitive for real. After a couple of weeks hiding, he decides to travel away from the capital to the province of Abazon. When he reaches the province, it turns out that there has been some kind of a coup d'état and the President has fled the country. Upon hearing this he joins a celebration on the street and meets a drunken policeman. By accident, the man shoots him dead.
In Anthills of the Savannah, Chinua Achebe writes about the problems facing newly independent African states. The prevailing theme and the most visible one of these problems is the corrupt, dictatorial rule set up in Kangan (Nigeria) and most of the other "new" African states that let down the dreams and hopes that were associated with independence. Although the rulers were no longer European, and although they were a lot closer to the people than their European predecessors, they fairly soon distanced themselves from the people. The first instance of this alienation in the novel is the way Sam deals with the problem of the Abazonian delegation. Instead of going out to meet them by himself, he assigns someone else to do it. The fact that he's built himself a luxurious lakeside mansion is another representation of this. There is also the theme of oppressive dictatorial rule. The way Sam deals with Ikem is reminiscent of traditional totalitarian states, especially the Latin American juntas. This is also the case with freedom of speech in Kangan. The paper, apparently the only one in the country, is censored and orders regarding its contents often seem to come straight from the President.
Another theme of the book is described in Ikem's peculiar dilemma. Despite his position as editor of the Gazette, he wants to appear like just another Kangan worker. Therefore he doesn't ride a company car to work, but drives by himself in an old beat-up car. The dilemma is pointed out to him by a taxi driver: by driving himself, he is taking away a job opportunity from some poor Kangan chauffeur. The larger problem here is the position of the black, African elite in the new African countries, where the elite has traditionally been of European origin. There was no elite class in the pre -colonial period in Africa. The novel also deals with the theme of being a been-to, an African who has come back to his country after a longer stay in the West. The main characters are all been-tos and this is reflected in the ways in which they try to position themselves in relation to the "common" Kangans. An example of this is how Chris relates to Emmanuel, a university student leader; and Braimoh, a cab driver.
There is a direct reference to the West in the scene in which Beatrice goes to a party that Sam has organized to impress an American journalist. The journalist wraps the President and the whole Cabinet around her finger, lecturing them about how Kangan should take care of its foreign affairs and debt. She represents the attitudes of the West to the African countries in general and their unequal standing in world politics. According to Walter Rodney the colonial machinery created a military elite that later became military dictators in the post- independence era. A good example is Sam, the military despot in Achebe's Anthills of the Savannah.
SELF-ASSESSMENT EXERCISE 2
Critically explain how Sam, the military president, exhibited dictatorial governance in Kangan
3.3 Militarism as Theme in Okigbo’s Labyrinths
In 'Lament of the Drums', one of the segments in Okigbo’s Labyrinths, a song of exile, depicts the parlous state into which Nigeria has fallen. It thematizes the rape of democratic values by the military and their opportunistic civilian collaborators, the perversion of justice, the underdevelopment of the country through the wanton waste of her human and material resources, and the overall degeneration of the land. The elegy ends with:
The wailing is for the Great River:
Her pot-bellied watchers
Despoil her... (p.50)
The river, of course, is the Niger from which the country derives its name. The ellipsis indicates that the destruction of the land shall be a continuous process. As aptly predicted by the poet, the Nigerian Armed Forces that are supposed to protect the land lay siege to it, fall upon its fat like robbers, and strip the people of their laughter. Okigbo brings back the image of the predatory eagles in 'Elegy for Alto' to express the idea of a second conquest, but this time around the usurpation comes from within:
THE EAGLES have come again,
The eagles rain down on us -
POLITICIANS are back in giant hidden steps of
howitzers, of detonators, (p. 71).
The neo-colonial African politician - civilian or military - continues with the structures of exploitation and privilege erected by the white conquerors in the colonial period. Although Okigbo hailed and praised the architects of the first military putsch in Nigeria, the Majors' coup-of January 15, 1966, he recognized the danger in the Armed Forces perceiving themselves as politicians and warned the self-acclaimed saviours against the temptation to loot the nation's treasury and thereby commit the mistakes of civilian politicians. He intones:
Alas! the elephant has fallen -
Hurrah for thunder -
But already the hunters are talking about pumpkins: If they share the meat let them remember thunder. The eye that looks down will surely see the nose;
The finger that fits should be used to pick the nose. Today - for tomorrow, today becomes yesterday:
How many million promises can ever fill a basket... (p.67)
It is fruitless counting the number of military coups - botched or successful - that have been reported in Nigeria. The same facile explanation of saving the people from themselves and from evils of maladministration and economic mismanagement and returning the country onto the path of true democracy is proffered by the coup plotters. It is sad to note that the promise has so far remained unfulfilled. The intervention of the military in the politics of the nation is a total disaster. The most urgent task that confronts the Nigerian people is how to deliver their country from the death-clutch of its greedy Armed Forces. The joy that attends the poet's homecoming, like the ephemeral euphoria at Independence, is deceptive and ironic. Correctly apprehended, it is the joy of freedom from being. The poet's
homecoming is celebrated in terms that suggest the Worship of Death:
Death herself,
the chief celebrant,
in a cloud of incense,
paring her finger nails...
At her feet rolled their heads like cut fruits; She
bathed her knees in the blood of attendants; her
smock in entrails of ministrants... (p.55)
The images remind us of the pogrom in which thousands of Igbo people lost their lives in the Northern part of the country and the waste of lives during the Civil War. Nigeria is portrayed as mother-earth that consumes her own children but, unlike earth- mother, the country continually fails to profit from the promise of procreation and regeneration and, therefore, remains a waste land. The picture of a hecatomb and horror is relatively the same for most post-Independence states of Africa. Carnage, a regular feature in modern African history, continues to rage in Algeria, Liberia, Rwanda and Somalia. The continent bleeds and bleeds again from self-inflicted wounds, as if to prove the veracity of Yambo Ouologuem's thesis that she is bound to violence. Her poetry is an unbroken paean to Moloch. The poet's homecoming reminds us of Thomas Carlyle's Worship of Sorrow. The current political debacle in Nigeria is a re-enactment in its horrendous detail of the tragic events that led the country to the path of war in the late sixties. The detention of M. K. O. Abiola, the acclaimed winner of the June 12 1993 presidential election, is analogous to the imprisonment of Obafemi Awolowo on treasonable felony charges. 'Both parts of Silences', Okigbo wrote in the ‘Introduction to Labyrinths’, 'were inspired by the events of the day. ‘Lament of the Silent Sister’, by the Western Nigeria Crisis of 1962, and the death of Patrice Lumumba; ‘Lament of the Drums’ by the imprisonment of Obafemi Awolowo, and the tragic death of his eldest son.' (p. xii)
It is not an exaggeration to assert that Nigeria's season of anomy started barely two years after her attainment of political Independence. Despite the long period of doom, there is still not even a shadow in the horizon of the possibility of relief for the suffering of the people. The flowers of the nation, the minorities, and the multitudes of pariahs - all aliens in their own land, like 'the drums' (the ancestors) - 'sense/ With dog-nose a Babylonian capture' (p.46) and shriek in the agony of despair as they lament daily their predicament and watch their supposed protectors usurp their being, make a mockery of their sacrifice, and stifle their seeds to death. They either embrace revolutionary violence, as Okigbo did, or continue to moan in despair, or go into exile. It is thus clear that the-dream of freedom is still a tantalizing mirage as Nigeria persists in treading the path of thunder.
SELF-ASSESSMENT EXERCISE 3
Explain how Okigbo captures militarism in his Labyrinths
3.4 Militarism as Theme in Rotimi’s Our Husband Has Gone Mad Again
Again in Ola Rotimi’s Our Husband Has Gone Mad Again, we see attack on the ex-military personnel in Nigeria attempting to go into civilian politics with the same military mentality. The drama is a satire, critical of the ills in the Nigerian society. The major object or subject of attack and derision in the play is Lejoka -Brown. He was ex-military personnel, a veteran who believes so much in his military intelligence in outsmarting everybody. Rotimi makes fun of Lejoka-Brown because of military madness. The playwright outrightly lampoons his hero’s idea about politics with military intelligence. In the discussion between Lejoka-Brown and Okonkwo, the former has this to say why he takes to politics:
“Are you there…? Politics is the thing, no in Nigeria mate, you want to be famous? Politics. You want to chop life? No, no… you want to chop a big slice of the national cake? Na politics” (Our Husband, p. 4)
Lejoka-Brown’s motive in joining politics is not dictated by his sense of patriotism and service but he sees politics as a means to an end. He is certainly myopic, ideologically barren and too ridiculous to be a leader of the nation. In exposing Lejoka-Brown’s motive, Rotimi is subtly indicting the decadent Nigerian political activists. By making jest of Lejoka-Brown, Rotimi is indirectly attacking the greedy, selfish and pleasure seeking leaders in Nigerian society. Hear Lejoka-Brown:
It is a war, politics is war. Ooo I am not taking
no chance this time I took things slow and easy
and what happened? I lost a bye election to a small crab. (Our Husband, p. 7)
Certainly, Lejoka-Brown’s statement evokes laughter in us. Yet, it goes to show how crude and ruthless he is. If Lejoka -Brown is taken as a symbolic representation of Nigerian leaders, one can then say that the playwright is criticizing Nigerian leader’s use of brute force to achieve political ambitions especially the ex-military personnel who are occupying political positions in Nigeria. Lejoka-Brown’s surprise and attack campaign strategy elicits the playwright’s mockery. Although, Lejoka vigorously explained to his party members the nature of his military strategy, he only succeeded in dramatizing his hollow mentality. He says:
Gentlemen, our election campaign plan must follow a platform of military strategy known as surprise and attack
(Our Husband, p. 50)
From Lejoka’s campaign plan, he exposes the fact that he is incredibly ridiculous. Rotimi portrays him as a man who fails to understand the difference between a politician and a soldier. And this is the problem of militarism in Nigerian politics. Most of these ex-soldiers in civilian politics still practice the hard-line military tactics on the people to the extent that the people could not distinguish the former military rule from the current democratic dispensation. Olusegun Obasanjo’s democratic rule in Nigeria could not be differentiated from his military rule. The same brute, force and anarchy also prevailed. This is the symbolic representation in Lejoka-Brown.
SELF-ASSESSMENT EXERCISE 4
Discus the way Rotimi attacks militarism in Nigerian politics in Our Husband Has Gone Mad Again.
4.0 CONCLUSION
The role of the military in Nigeria has been more of the negative. As seen in the works under study in this unit, they come to correct but end up destroying what they ought to correct. A 'post-colonial' view of Nigerian history is an entirely ugly record because of the ugly military imposition of power. This study enables us to understand what a people have become in the process of a particular form of political and cultural contact. It tells of an important, even crucial, moment in a process of becoming a stable political nation. It acknowledges that colonialism was a fact of history that Nigerians can not dismiss urgently. The military created regimes of trauma. In such regimes, national identity is a mere fabrication, defined by passports and legal instruments merely, a form of identity. In such a situation, history is the account of the post-colonial encounter because there are no longer nations and peoples, and there is nothing to remember or recall. The military reminds us that the experience of colonialism dissolves all identities, erases nationalities, makes destiny irrelevant and even problematic. It is different from the condition created by national histories, even when that history is rife with exile and dispersal. That is why it helps to see that Anthills of the Savannah is not about nation-building in the post-colonial era, but about the destiny of particular peoples, a destiny conceived as having a life and purpose of its own. The anthills of the savannah are eternal reminders of the many wild fires of every national history. Their only theme is renewal, a renewal that crashes at the point of hope. The coup predicted in Okigbo’s Labyrinths forewarns the looming catastrophe associated with military politics which is out to bring respite to the people but ended up being more traumatic than the preceding corrupt government. Lejoka-Brown in Our Husband Has Gone Mad Again is a typology of the military civilians permeating all evils in the name of democratic dividends.
5.0 SUMMARY
Nigerian literatures with militarism as theme are common in Nigeria because of the long history of military leadership in Nigeria. We see Sam, Chris and Ikem as the residues of western colonial might entrenching western values in various ways in Nigeria. Clearly, of course, both Chris and Ikem, two of the principal thinkers in the Anthills of the Savannah, think they are intellectuals engaged in the building of a new and just post-colonial, or more exactly, a post-independence, society. The final issue is not about the future of the state, but the future of the people. In Labyrinths, Okigbo expresses the fear that might result from militarism which eventually manifested in the Nigerian civil war. He warns that the progress of a people is determined upon the collective responsibility of the masses in achieving a common goal. The likes of Lejoka-Brown in Our Husband Has Gone Mad Again must be flushed out if a true democratic dispensation is to be experienced in Nigeria. Nigerian writers have been in vanguard of expressing the fears associated wit militarism in Nigeria as revealed in these works and many more not mentioned here.
6.0 TUTOR-MARKED ASSIGNMENT
Answer these questions carefully:
1. Explain why Nigerian writers use militarism as themes in their works.
2. What are the effects of military intervention in Anthills of the Savannah?
3. Discus how Okigbo expressed fears about militarism in
Labyrinths.
4. Lejoka-Brown is a typology of Nigerian military leaders. Explain this as exemplified in Rotimi’s Our Husband Has Gone Mad Again.
5. Assess the influence of militarism in Nigeria as reflected in Nigerian literatures.
7.0 REFERENCES/FURTHER READINGS
Achebe, Chinua (1987). Anthills of the Savannah. London: Heinemann.
Okigbo, Christopher (1971). Labyrinths & Path of Thunder. Lagos: Apex Books.
Rotimi, Ola (1981). Our Husband Has Gone Mad Again. Ibadan:
Longman.
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