By Group Captain Sadeeq Garba Shehu (rtd)
DESPITE IT’S OTHER SHORTCOMINGS…. THE BEAUTY OF DEMOCRACY (COMPARED TO MILITARY REGIME) IS ALREADY EVIDENT IN THE VERY FACT THAT… Ordinary Nigerians, public affairs analysts, social media commentators and journalist are now freely discussing the possibility of a military coup…. and afterwards go to their homes to sleep peacefully.
When I hear such talk, I shake my head and say.. When the cat is away…. It wasn’t so during military regime. For the younger generation who don’t know, and the older generation who might have forgotten, permit me to remind that during the days of military regime, such discussion was a dangerous taboo.
If you engaged in such discussion, or provided a venue for such discussion, or just happen to be in the wrong place at the wrong time where the possibility of a coup is being discussed by others, or even if it was discovered to have visited a drinking joint or Officers Mess where discussion about coup was broached,…. You Are A Goner.
At the least, you spend some months in detention in a dank underground cell where you are oblivious whether it was day or night. If you’re lucky, you are later cleared and released..a broken man with poor eyesight.. . and then later retired… As the military has branded you a disgruntled officer with an axe to grind with the system for wrongful detention and who if left in the service may seek to settle scores.
It could be worse… much much worse. Ask military officers like us who joined the military during the days of coups, counter-coups and aborted coups. Just your business card found somewhere or with a coup plotter could spell doom for you.
While military men don’t maltreat wives of colleagues who plotted coup, a girl friend, mistress or side chic of a coup plotter, especially the one that hosted him during days running to the coup, may not be spared as a co conspirator.
I must be honest, in those days no officer would release a seemingly innocuous Press Statement saying “Some people are instigating us to stage a coup but we will not do it”….. That, would be suicide. The man with the greatest dilemma then is a military officer who though not part of the coup plotters, the misfortune of overhearing that a coup was being planned.
He has three equally difficult and life threatening decisions to make: Either join the coup and pray it succeeds because if it fails he is dead. Or refuse to join and report…. But if the coup succeeds, he’s a goner. Or he refuses to join but also didn’t report… in which case if the coup is foiled and during investigation it was found that he knew but didn’t report, he receives same punishment as the coup plotters.
Its thanks to democracy that many journalists and media houses are freely discussing the issue. DON’T PRAY FOR MILITARY COUP.
Group Captain Sadeeq Garba Shehu (rtd) is an international Defence and Security Consultant
