And unlike previous coup plotters who could invoke “anti-corruption” or “national security” as a ploy for taking power, his raison d’etre was “democratic transition”. He wanted for Nigeria a two party system that political ideology aside, would prevent th

or ‘dictatorships’. And they were. All military governments in Nigeria had come to power through a forceful takeover of government, often through a bloody take-over. Yet, there were several senses in which all of Nigeria’s military governments—from Gowon to Abdulsalami Abubakar—were unique among contemporary military regimes of the time across the world.

For one, Nigeria’s military governments were rather more democratic than they were authoritarian. Of course, they lacked the sort of legitimacy constitutions and elections confer on a democratic government. But the push and pull forces inherent in Nigerian politics and society meant that even military governments in the country had to rule with some measure of popular support for most of the time they remained in power.

Unlike in many African countries of the time where personalised military rule was the norm, Nigeria’s military leaders shared power with key civilian leaders and through that they gained popular legitimacy. This was not the sort of legitimacy an election would confer, but it was legitimacy nonetheless. During the war, but also for a while after it, General Yakubu Gowon, for example, sat at the head of a ‘Federal Executive Council’ comprising most of the political leaders of the First Republic.

The very presence of such leaders as Chief Obafemi Awolowo, Malam Aminu Kano, Chief Anthony Enahoro, and so on, in his government, even in the context of saving the republic that the war effort called for, distinguished Gowon’s military government from its contemporaries on the continent and beyond. But this governing procedure of military-civilian partnership would be repeated several times, and became so entrenched that civilian leaders like Dr Nnamdi Azikiwe, no less, called for its adoption as the most appropriate form of government for Nigeria in the form of diarchy.

And although the military governed mainly through various Supreme Military Councils, and later under IBB, the Armed Forces Ruling Council, key national decisions had input from a wide range of actors in Nigerian society, from intellectuals, civil society activists, the press, traditional leaders, and so on. Of course, this was not always straightforward during the military years.

But the very fact that students, labour unions, the press and other sections of Nigerian society could, and did, by and large, freely protest any government policy was itself an indication of the inherent democratic character of Nigerian society that could not be imperilled by any military ruler. Nigerians have never accepted dictatorship, and consequently, have never really had any, certainly not in comparison to the sort of military or single-party authoritarianism of the time.

It is within this framework, I think, that IBB’s title of ‘Military President’ should be approached. He was the one military leader who realised best and to the fullest that civilianmilitary partnership of building popular consent inherent in all of Nigeria’s military governments, before, and after him. By the time he came to power in 1985, the best days of the military in Nigerian politics were in fact behind it. And just six years after he left, we returned to a democracy that now seems irreversible.

And unlike previous coup plotters who could invoke “anti-corruption” or “national security” as a ploy for taking power, his raison d’etre was “democratic transition”. He wanted for Nigeria a two-party system that political ideology aside, would prevent the sorts of ethnic, regional and religious fissions and tensions that brought down our previous democratic experiments and tore society apart up to that point. That twoparty system has now been more or less realised, if still ideologically empty.

Babangida ultimately failed to deliver ‘democracy’ for Nigeria, something for which, history will perhaps remain forever unkind. But the structures of politics and government that he envisioned, and tried to attain, were not much different from what we now have, perhaps only better.