The Military Foray into Nigerian Politics and Nation-Building: Historical Reflections on Murtala/Obasanjo Military Regime

• Authors: Sunday Abraham Ogunode
• Languages of publication: EN

Abstracts

EN

The Nigerian military, after each successful coup d’état in the second half of the twentieth century, advanced no reasons to justify their intervention in the nation’s politics beyond corruption and mismanagement of the economy. While these reasons were obvious, the political workings and institutional framings of the various military regimes that ruled Nigeria for over three decades did not reflect any significant change in the nation’s fortune. If politics of ethnicity and religious bigotry were adduced by the army as other reasons for their interventions, the military was, in the end, guilty of the same. This chapter is, therefore, concerned with retrospective historical reflections on the efforts of the Murtala/Obasanjo military regime at nation-building. The historical methodology of critical analysis, concise chronology, and objective interpretation were applied to the cross-examined data obtained from primary and secondary sources. In-depth interviews were conducted with purposively selected informants based on their knowledge of the subject matter and excerpts of Murtala speeches were analyzed while secondary data sourced from history and political science texts. Through these sources, the chapter argues that, though the regime made appreciable efforts at breathing new life into the troubled socio-economic and political waters of the nation, their inability to grapple with the complexities of the Nigerian polity proved beyond every reasonable doubt, their non-readiness to be the change and development agents they presented themselves to be. The chapter concludes that military intervention in Nigerian politics did more harm than good to the country as state institutions and structures that would have given a new direction to the nation were fundamentally damaged and this has been part of the bane to Nigeria’s inclusive development and nation-building since the 1960s.

Keywords

EN

Historical Reflections; Murtala/Obasanjo Regime; Nation-building Narrative; Nigerian Military

• Publisher: University of West Bohemia, Pilsen, Czech Republic
• Journal: West Bohemian Historical Review
• Year: 2021
• Volume: 11
• Issue: 2
• Pages: 273-290

Contributors

author

Sunday Abraham Ogunode

• Department of History and International Studies, Adekunle Ajasin University, Akungba-Akoko, Ondo State, Nigeria