Boot title: REPRESSIVE STATE AND RESURGENT MEDIA UNDER NIGERIA'S MILITARY DICTATORSHIP, 1988-98

Author: AYO OLUKOTUN

Year Published: 2004

Publishers: NORDISKA AFRIKAINSTITUTET

No. of pages: 136

Reviewed by Sheka Tarawalie

“The worst civilian government is better than the best military government” is a common saying of neo-liberal activists campaigning for the thriving of democracy. This means life is, at best, unbearable under the most soft-handed military government. But how will it look like in the most hard-handed one?

After reading Ayo Olukotun's ‘Repressive State and Resurgent Media under Nigeria's Military Dictatorship, 1988-1998', one is left with the nauseating thought of the causes for the backwardness of the Africa. If the high-profile most populous nation on the continent is transformed into a guinea-pig state, pigeon-holed by erratic, heavy and high-handed soldiers parading as the people's messiahs, then what will it be like in smaller, unattractive African states?

Olukotun's story is that of authoritarianism at its perfect state, power at its vintage stage, and dictatorship at its highest peak. As the author himself revealed in a subsequent review (published in www.thisdayonline.com, on 29^th May 2004) he did on Dr. Alade Fawole's book, ‘Beyond the Transition to Civilian rule: Consolidating democracy in Post-Military Nigeria”, there was in Nigeria a somewhat “exclusionary process by which soldiers choose those who would succeed them as rulers.” Throughout her independence history, except for a brief ten-year period, the country's Generals have always had a field day in hijacking and counter-hijacking the politics of the country. But it was never so manifestly demonstrated or demonstrably manifested as in the pre, present, and post Abacha era.

Reporting on the dictator's death in June 1998, James Rupert of The Washington Post's foreign service gave a vivid picture of the consummate coup-maker who apparently followed the systematic political rape (to borrow Wole Soyinka's description) of a nation : “It was Abacha who appeared on national television on New Year's Eve 1983 to announce that a military coup had toppled Nigeria's last elected government; two years later, Abacha went on state-run TV again to say that General Mohammed Buhari was being replaced by Major General Ibrahim Babangida.”

And when Babangida was pressurised out of office by a pro-democracy press and its allies - the story continues - he, instead of handing over to the elected civilian, insisted on hand-picking a civilian interim administration, setting the stage for Abacha himself to take over. And when he did, Olukotun's book picked the story, what followed was never before witnessed in the country: it was “a peculiar form of repression, not just of (the) media, but also of the active sectors of civil society, as the latter rose in revolt against an increasingly venal and arbitrary rule.”

Therefore Olukotun's theme would appear as the story of a man who had machinated military coups so much that he bide his own time to eventually take over but was met with stiff resistance from a people yearning for freedom and democracy. However, to me, it goes way beyond that: it is the story of power, of its absoluteness, and how such absolute power does not only corrupt absolutely, but suddenly consumes its chief perpetrator, as it has happened in all history. Because, however natural Abacha's death must have been proclaimed, its coming at a time when he had found himself alienated and ostracized by the whole world - except, perhaps ironically, in my country Sierra Leone, where President Kabbah, in a nation-wide address on state radio, hailed him as a wonderful man and “the best friend” of the country (well, that's another story altogether) - one cannot deny that politically, psychologically, religiously, socially, and medically, Abacha's doors were closed. The political conundrum in which he, either advertently or inadvertently, placed himself to succeed himself as civilian president at all cost after eliminating many perceived enemies, and the simultaneous resolve of the media (or certain sections of the media) and civil society (or still certain sections of civil society), backed by the wider international community, to prevent him from achieving this, was so complicated that ultimately the only solution to the problem became the dictator's sudden death.

Olukotun did not go that far to narrate the story, but he certainly alluded to it when in giving a historical perspective of Nigerians' hatred for villainous rulers in Chapter 6, titled, ‘Protest vernacular - Neo-Traditional Media versus the Military State,' quoted Samuel Johnson's ‘History of the Yorubas' which contained the story of a wicked Alafin (king) who killed his apparent successor to cling to power, igniting a protest from the people. Then look at the result: “Just before the protest got to the people / Alafin Jayin committed suicide.” What a great relevance it will make if this celebrated Yoruba folklore is modernised as, “Just as the people resisted his self-succession / Dictator Abacha suddenly died (or committed suicide?)”

A thoroughly-researched work on Nigeria's contemporary military era, Olukotun's book exposes the lengths and breadths and widths and heights to which dictators would go to try and hang on to power. Killing celebrated writer and human rights activist Ken Saro-Wiwa not being enough; incarcerating the apparent winner of the annulled elections M.K.O.Abiola not being satisfactory; the killing of his wife Kudirat Abiola not being sufficient; beating up, jailing and deporting international journalists (no time to talk about killing local journalists and burning down or barricading media houses in the country) not fulfilling his desire; stealing the country's wealth for private use not being the end; the military (unsurprisingly supported by certain sections of the press and bought-over civilians) as portrayed in Abacha's rule was out and about to terrorize and mutilate the conscience of a nation. But, Olukotun insists, that “did not succeed in quelling media resistance or in preventing the media from insisting on democracy, human rights, and renewal.” Tired of being bullied, banned, brutalized and battered, the media (particularly Tell and News magazines, backed by the “pirate” Radio Kudirat) went underground to itself do the hitherto un-heard of - operating from hide-outs “in defiance of the state” “much in the same way as an underground press had flourished in the nooks and crannies of apartheid South Africa.”

The only difference being that at the hour of victory, in the passing away of the old order, in South Africa the symbol of the struggle in the person of Nelson Mandela took over as leader of the nation, whereas in Nigeria it was another General, Abdulsalam Abubakarr (who was the army's Chief of Staff and described by James Rupert as Abacha's “close ally… who apparently wished to prolong the army's grip on power.”) who came to power.

Olukotun's focus seemed to have ended in Abacha's death and therefore concluded that “a section of the media and radical civil society came out of the years of military dictatorship with enhanced prestige and pedigree in view of the seminal anti-authoritarian struggles.” Much as this is true, Olukotun did not make mention of how this “enhanced prestige” could have been more enhanced had Abacha's successor succumbed to giving power to the apparently democratically-elected Abiola. And the tragic part was not that Abiola was denied this, but that he actually died in prison, only for the transition set out by General Abubakarr to benefit another General, Olusegun Obasanjo - albeit being an opponent of General Abacha's regime yet an earlier military leader. To all intents and purposes, wittingly or unwittingly, Nigeria is still under the grip of the Generals - and stories of dictatorial tendencies have not stopped coming from there to date. I am sure that's why, in reviewing Fawole's book earlier mentioned, Olukotun said General Abubakarr's transition merely “produced a result of sorts”. Because it looked like with finesse and tact, Abubakarr still used the “exclusionary process” to choose who would succeed him.

By and by, artistically, Olukotun's book is more than a standard academic work that will definitely give succour and comfort to all those people, including foreign journalists, who suffered under the repressive grip of Nigeria's military dictatorship between 1988 and 1998. It is an eternal pointer on why and how military rule should be rejected in all shapes and forms. In just seven chapters, Olukotun makes an empirical survey of ten years in Nigeria with each chapter having an introduction, a contextual analysis, and only the first lacking a conclusion. As a university don and a former journalist himself still writing in the Nigerian press, Olukotun poignantly brings out how the Nigerian press, even with meagre resources as compared to its western contemporaries, displayed the values of a noble profession. I don't think there could have been a better person to catalogue the tensions and strains so evocatively and effectively brought out in this handy book. It should be on the shopping list of every literate African and all others interested in the goings-on in Africa.