The Coup Joke!
When the Chief of Army Staff (COAS), Lt. Gen. Tukur Buratai, recently issued a stern warning to all officers and soldiers in the Nigerian Army to steer clear of politics, because some politicians had been making frantic efforts to infiltrate them for various political “actions and gains”, those who knew the import of his statement didn’t gloss over it.
Yet, his warning was not unconnected with the growing uncertainty that has pervaded the horizon following President Muhammadu Buhari’s illness, which few weeks ago compelled his return to London, the United Kingdom for further medical treatment.
Buratai’s concern was equally believed to have informed the reshuffling of top military officers in the Nigerian Army recently. A statement by the Director of Army Public Relations, Brig. Gen. Sani Usman, said the army headquarters and the COAS had received information about such “sinister plans”by certain politicians to derail the professional calling of some army officers.
Understandably, the country is going through a difficult period and in need of many things, including a hands-on leadership if it must sufficiently wrestle its challenges. It certainly does not need the military meddling in its affairs. A time was when such interventions could grudgingly pass. Not anymore! The world, today, has moved past such mundane, hopeless and typically corrupt interventions and Nigeria cannot be left behind on such accounts.
It is heartwarming, therefore, that some prominent Nigerians had quickly come forward and pushed back whatever threat such hobnobbing by soldiers with politicians posed. The Nigerian case is not hopeless and no such retrogressive intervention would be entertained. The coup scare had better remained a hoax or at best, a joke!