The ideology of corruption has completely taken over the country.
The civilian politicians of the here and now have actually become worse than useless, such that some people are seeing the military as the alternative.
Only characters with short memories cannot recall that the military goons are in cahoots with the civilian freeloaders.
It all makes me remember the title of the collection of traditional oral stories by Bakare Gbadamosi and Ulli Beier entitled, some will say blasphemously: Not Even God Is Ripe Enough.
Yes, I stress: Not eve the military can be vouched for to be ripe enough to give Nigeria a fitting status under the sun.
It is incumbent on a proper democracy to sanitize the military and the polity at large for a country to genuinely thrive in progress.
There is the matter among the military forces called esprit the corps, that is, the feeling and sharing of loyalty and support within the group.
This comradeship translates to the prebendalism that has been at the root of Nigeria’s many troubles.
Ever since the Nigerian military stepped into power in 1966, Nigeria has been in dire straits with military-cum-civilian looting of resources that can only be tagged as “lootocracy”.
The point really is that khaki and agbada in Nigeria have no discordant mores in the corridors of power.
Generals of the military are almost always allowed to return after retirement as so-called democratic leaders.
The Nigerian politicos are on a hiding to nothing.
When the Second Republic was birthed in 1979, after 13 years of military dictatorship, President Shagari had to reportedly reach an understanding not to put the past military leaders to trial.
Shagari was of course overthrown by the military barely four years after, three months into winning re-election, ostensibly because of corruption.
Major-General Muhammadu Buhari who took over sentenced many politicians to uncountable years of imprisonment on account of corruption until he too was overthrown for priding the show trials of corruption over governance.
In General Ibrahim Babangida who supplanted Buhari the military class comprehensively proved to the civilians that the starched khaki of corruption was far superior to the elementary stealing into the folds of agbada by the civilian politicians.
The coming of General Sani Abacha removed all doubts whatsoever that civilian politicians could ever match their military masters in crooked looting and direct stealing.
When eventually the military decided to bring back civil rule after having sufficiently shamed themselves, the generals were wise enough to give power to one of their type, General Olusegun Obasanjo (rtd) via what the late musical genius, Fela Anikulapo-Kuti, would call “Army Arrangement”.
Only the safely dead General Abacha who had jailed Obasanjo was the only military man traced to corruption.
Obasanjo asked astounded Nigerians to produce any evidence of corruption against Babangida as he could not discover any by himself.
The Okigbo Report on the Gulf Oil windfall was thus turned into fiction.
The generals such as Buhari and Babangida stoutly refused to attend the Oputa Panel because they were clearly above the law of the land.
Buhari in his second coming boldly stated that Abacha was never corrupt.
If as Nigerians we are serious about fighting corruption, we should copy the example of Argentina that undertook the celebrated Trial of the Juntas, to wit, the judicial trial of the members of the four military governments that ruled Argentina during the dictatorship of the Proceso de Reorganización Nacional which lasted from 1976 to 1983.
The following erstwhile untouchables were put on trial, namely: Jorge Rafael Videla, Emilio Eduardo Massera, Roberto Eduardo Viola, Armando Lambruschini, Orlando Ramón Agosti, Omar Graffigna, Leopoldo Galtieri, Jorge Anaya and Basilio Lami Dozo.
The formal trial started on April 22, 1985 under President Raúl Alfonsín who took power after the return of democracy to Argentina in 1983.
The prosecution was undertaken by Julio César Strassera, assisted by Luis Moreno Ocampo.
The military dictators had while returning power to the civilians enacted a Self-Amnesty Law on April 18, 1983, as well as a secret decree that ordered the destruction of records and other evidence of their past crimes.
The Chief Prosecutor Strassera closed the trial with the ringing words: “I wish to waive any claim to originality in closing this indictment. I wish to use a phrase that is not my own, because it already belongs to all the Argentine people. Your Honours: ‘Never again!’”
Without fear or favour, General Jorge Videla and Admiral Emilio Massera were sentenced to life imprisonment.
General Roberto Viola was given a 17-year jail sentence.
Admiral Armando Lambruschini got eight years while General Orlando Agosti earned a four-and-a-half-year jail sentence.
Until this kind of trial is undertaken in Nigeria, we shall remain shackled within the military-civilian combo of corruption.
If the people’s votes are made to count in Nigeria, and a true leader accountable to the people gets elected, the system can comprehensively be sanitized.
It does not take the military to accomplish this task because the soldiers are not ripe enough.
