MILITARY INTERVENTION IN NIGERIAN POLITICS

W hat Has The Press Got To Do With It?

Thesis submitted for the degree of

Doctor of Philosophy

at the University of Leicester

BERNARD NNAM DI EMENYEONU

Centre for Mass Communication Research

University of Leicester

October 1997
 UMI Number: U105105

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 ABSTRACT
MILITARY INTERVENTION IN NIGERIAN POLITICS: WHAT HAS THE
PRESS GOT TO DO W ITH IT?
By
BERNARD NNAMDI EMENYEONU

Military intervention in Nigerian government has recurred since 1966 amidst social,
economic and political crises, and the opinion in some academic and political circles is
that the mass media are responsible for creating conducive atmospheres under which
such crises and destabilisation flourish. The argument holds that the independent press
frames governments, especially civilian administrations, so negatively that the ensuing
portrayal of political catastrophe makes it imperative for a forceful intervention rather
than a constitutional change.
This thesis assumes that the role of the press in the socio-political scenario within
which intervention takes place can be gleaned from two perspectives: analysing how
issues relating to governments are presented in the press prior to the intervention that
forced them out of office, and gauging journalists’ impression of military intervention.
The expectation is that both perspectives can yield sufficient insight into the personal
and institutional factors that influence news.
A content analysis of three leading independent Nigerian newspapers in conjunction
with a questionnaire survey of 200 journalists yielded the data for the study.
Relative to the questions which are central to this study, it was found that the
characterisation of the two governments, especially the civilian government in the 1983
period, was highly critical. However, the extra media data which corroborated such
press characterisation strongly argued for the point that the press was more of a mirror
of the social and political realities that prevailed at those periods rather than an
institution that was out to peddle ‘negative’ news or to run down governments.
However, the influences of other social forces such as the press-govemment role
relationship, institutional routines and values, and the agenda of interest groups in the
entire news production process are not overlooked.
Though the journalists differed in their individual perceptions of military intervention,
with some of them admitting that it was either ‘a necessary evil’ or ‘sometimes
desirable’, the overriding posture was far from being supportive of military rule. Even
the journalists who had harboured the wish for a coup, at some point, admitted that
they regretted it soon after. Furthermore, an overwhelming majority would want
military intervention to be outlawed without reservations.
 To Mum and Dad:

your sacrifice for me and my siblings is invaluable, and if this degree adds just
one stair to the foundation you laid for us, then it has been worth the trouble.

And To the Glory of God Almighty:

w ithout the might of your arms and your overwhelming love, I would surely
not have got this far.
 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Someone had joked that a Ph.D. translates into a ‘permanent head damage’. In reality,
studying for a Ph.D. can easily induce a permanent head damage but for the assistance
and inspiration of academic mentors, colleagues, friends and family. For the successful
and timely completion of this course, I am profoundly grateful to Dr. Olga Linne who
doubled as my tutor and supervisor. Acting in both capacities, she not only guided me
through the rigours of academic writing but also supported me whenever the need
arose for a referee.

Going back to the University of Nigeria, Nsukka, where the journey started, I cannot
sufficiently express the depth of my gratitude to Professors Oleka Udeala, Aloy
Ohaegbu and Sylvanus Ekwelie for sponsoring and supporting my bid for a
Commonwealth scholarship.

Other friends and colleagues in that community whose advice and presence sustained
my interest in academics are not left out. Too many to fit into space, only a few can be
mentioned here. They include Dr. Charles Okigbo, Mr. Ebele Ume-Nwagbo, Gozie
Arazu, Chris Uzuegbunam, Sr. Dr. Clare Ochiagha and Sr. Olivia Umoh.

With the unflinching assistance of some friends, the exertion and uncertainty usually
involved in data collection, especially in the hustle and bustle of Lagos, was reduced to
a manageable scale. I am in particular indebted to Chukwudi Ekezie of the News
Agency of Nigeria. So am I to Chike Okocha, Steve Osuji, Jude Njoku, Nkechi
Nwankwo, Paschal and Law Azubuike.

In his capacity as an executive member of the Nigeria Guild of Editors, Mallam Garba
Shehu graciously made it possible for me to attend the Guild’s convention in Sokoto
where I gathered plenty of useful data. For that invitation as well as your wonderful
hospitality to me, I am very grateful. Thanks also to Chuks Anamekwe, Vitus Ekeocha
and Gladys Nwagwu for your help.

As the list grows, I get more nervous about the many friends-in-need that I might not
remember at this time. I believe they will always realise how much I appreciate their
gestures. It will be hard to forget the assistance of Kelechi Okafor, Ken Odoh and
Adaeze Oiji in the collation of newspapers used for the content analysis.

Back here in England, it would have been much colder and the academic load more
stressful without the warm and edifying company of a good number of friends and
colleagues. My deep gratitude goes to Jimena Beltrao, Halimahton Shaari, Fred
Esumeh, Amirah Chaudhry and Amir Alwan.

To the Emenyeonus in London, especially Uncle Ted and Aunt Stella, Aunt Edith and
Lillian, I cannot thank you enough for your care. I am equally thankful to the grand
Emenyeonu-Afoko family for their moral support.

At this juncture, I would like to express my utmost gratitude to the Board and staff of
the Commonwealth Scholarship Commission at Gordon Square, London, for granting
me the tenure to pursue this course. Thanks also to the Awards Administrators at the
British Council, Manchester.

And finally, to my parents and siblings, for your love and prayers, my greatest joy and
gratitude to God is to be able to share with all of you this accomplishment of our
long-cherished dream.

Ben Nnamdi Emenyeonu

Leicester,

October, 1997.
 LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS

ABN Association for Better Nigeria

AFRC Armed Forces Ruling Council
AG Action Group
ASUU Academic Staff Union of Universities
BCNN Broadcasting Corporation of Northern Nigeria
BON Broadcasting Organisation of Nigeria
CBN Central Bank of Nigeria
CD Campaign for Democracy
CDS Centre for Democratic Studies
DFRRI Directorate for Food, Roads and Rural Infrastructure
ENBS Eastern Nigerian Broadcasting Service
FEDECO Federal Electoral Commission
FM Frequency Modulation
FRCN Federal Radio Corporation of Nigeria
GCE General Certificate of Education
GNPP Great Nigeria People’s Party
ING Interim National Government
LUTH Lagos University Teaching Hospital
MAMSER Mass Mobilisation for Social Justice and Economic Recovery
MAN Manufacturers Association of Nigeria
MOSOP Movement for the Survival of Ogoni People
NADECO National Democratic Coalition
NAN News Agency of Nigeria
NANS National Association of Nigerian Students
NAP National Advance Party
NAWOJ National Association of Women Journalists
NBA Nigerian Bar Association
NBC National Broadcasting Commission
NBC* Nigeria Broadcasting Corporation
NBS Nigeria Broadcasting Service
NCLR Nigeria Criminal Law Report
NCNC National Council of Nigerian Citizens
NDP Nigeria Democratic Party
NEC National Electoral Commission
NEPU Northern Elements Progressive Union
NET Nigeria External Telecommunications
NGE Nigerian Guild of Editors
NIPOST Nigerian Postal Services
NITEL Nigerian Telecommunications
NLC Nigeria Labour Congress
NMA Nigeria Medical Association
NNA Nigeria National Alliance
NNDP Nigeria National Democratic Party
NNPC Nigerian National Petroleum Commission
NNSC Nigeria National Supply Company
NORM National Orientation Movement
NPAN Newspaper Proprietors Association of Nigeria
NPC Northern People’s Congress
NPN National Party of Nigeria
NPP Nigeria People’s Party
NRC National Republican Convention
NRC* Nigerian Railways Corporation
NT A Nigerian Television Authority
NTS Nigeria Television Service
NUJ Nigeria Union of Journalists
NYM Nigeria Youth Movement
OAU Organisation for African Unity
OIC Organisation of Islamic Conference
OPED Opposite Editorial
PEMG Presidential Election Monitoring Group
PRP Peoples Redemption Party
P&T Post and Telegraphs
RKTV Radio Kaduna Television
RNC Royal Niger Company
SAP Structural Adjustment Programme
SDP Social Democratic Party
SMC Supreme Military Council
SPSS Statistical Programme for Social Sciences
SSS State Security Services
SWAN Sports Writers Association of Nigeria
TSM The Sunday Magazine
UAC United Africa Company
UHF Ultra High Frequency
UPGA United Progressive Grand Alliance
UPN Unity Party of Nigeria
VON Voice of Nigeria
WAEC West African Examinations Council
WAI-C War Against Indiscipline and Corruption
WNTV Western Nigeria Television
 LIST OF TABLES AND FIGURES

TABLE 3.1: CLASSIFICATION OF THE PRINT MEDIA IN NIGERIA......................................... 81

TABLE 5.1: SAMPLING FRAME OF PUBLICATIONS ANALYSED............................................167

TABLE 5.2: SAMPLING FRAME OF RESPONDENTS FROM THE ZONES AND STATES. ...172

TABLE 6.1: DISTRIBUTION OF ITEMS OVER THE PERIOD OF STUDY................................ 178

FIGURE 6.1: NEWSPAPER STORIES BY YEAR..............................................................................179

TABLE 6.2: FREQUENCY OF ITEM TYPES.....................................................................................184

FIGURE 6.2: PAGE DISTRIBUTION OF ITEMS...............................................................................187

TABLE 6.3: FREQUENCY OF AUTHORS..........................................................................................188

TABLE 6.4: FREQUENCY OF ACTORS............................................................................................. 193

TABLE 6.5: FREQUENCY OF ‘OTHER’ ACTORS...........................................................................194

TABLE 6.6: FREQUENCY OF TOPICS...............................................................................................196

TABLE 6.7: POSITIVE AND NEGATIVE CHARACTERISATIONS............................................. 198

TABLE 7.1: RESPONDENTS’ EDUCATIONAL QUALIFICATION.............................................. 245

TABLE 7.2: POSITIONAL DISTRIBUTION OF RESPONDENTS..................................................247

TABLE 73: REGIONAL DISTRIBUTION OF RESPONDENTS.................................................... 249

TABLE 7.4: RESPONDENTS’ IMPRESSIONS OF MILITARY INTERVENTION..................... 254

TABLE 7.5: RESPONDENTS’ IDENTIFICATION OF JUSTIFIABLE OVERTHROWS........... 255

TABLE 7.6: JUSTIFICATIONS FOR OVERTHROW...................................................................... 267

TABLE 7.7: RESPONDENTS’ DESIRE TO CALL FOR MILITARY INTERVENTION............ 281

TABLE 7.8: RESPONDENTS’ REGRETS AFTER COUP................................................................286

TABLE 7.9: RESPONDENTS’ REACTIONS TO JUSTIFIABILITY OF REASONS FOR

POWER SEIZURE....................................................................................................................................286
TABLE 7.10: BENEFITS OF MILITARY INTERVENTION IN POLITICS................................. 287

TABLE 7.11: ADVERSE EFFECTS OF MILITARY INTERVENTION........................................ 289

TABLE 7.12: MOST PROMINENT GAINS AND PAINS OF MILITARY INTERVENTION 292

TABLE 7.13: DISTRIBUTION OF RESPONDENTS’ IMPRESSION OF COUPS BY RANK

AND EXPERIENCE............................................................................................................................... 295

TABLE 7.14: DISTRIBUTION OF RESPONDENTS’ IMPRESSION OF COUPS BY

REGION, AGE AND EDUCATION...........................................................................................296

TABLE 7.15: DISTRIBUTION OF RESPONDENTS’ OPINION ON JUSTIFIABILITY OF

COUPS........................................................................................................................................................ 301

TABLE 7.16: DISTRIBUTION OF RESPONDENTS’ OPINIONS ON JUSTIFIABILITY OF

COUPS CONTD.........................................................................................................................................302
 TABLE OF CONTENTS

TABLE OF CONTENTS

CHAPTER ONE: INTRODUCTION........................................................... 1

1.1 PR EFACE........................................................................................................................ 1

1.2 THE RESEARCH PROBLEM .....................................................................................6

1.3 RESEARCH O B JEC T IV E S.......................................................................................12

1.4 THE SYNOPSIS OF THE TH ESIS...........................................................................14

CHAPTER TWO: NATION, STATE, POWER AND MILITARY

INTERVENTION IN POLITICS: A HISTORICAL AND
PHILOSOPHICAL BACKGROUND......................................................... 16

2.1 NIGERIA: THE JOURNEY TO NATIONHOOD..................................................16

2.2 THE 1959 NATIONAL ELECTIONS AND THE BIRTH OF THE FIRST
REPUBLIC (1960-1966)......................................................................................................21

2.3 THE CONCEPT AND PHILOSOPHY OF COUPS D’ETAT..............................27

2.3.1 THE STATE, POW ER AND POLITICAL CONTROL: A

PHILOSOPHICAL FRAM EW ORK................................................................................ 27

2.4 THE EM ERGENCE AND SPECIALISATION OF MILITARY ROLES IN

DEVELOPING NATIONS..................................................................................................30

2.5 MILITARY INVOLVEMENT IN POLITICS: THEORETICAL

EXPLANATIONS................................................................................................................31

2.5.1 P o l it ic a l C u l t u r e ..................................................................................................34
 TABLE OF CONTENTS

2 .5 .2 T h e M il it a r y as a D o m in a n t S u b -s e t of S t a t e B u r e a u c r a c y .................... 39

2.5.3 T h e I n s t it u t io n a l A p p r o a c h ............................................................................. 41
2.5.4 T h e P o l it ic a l E c o n o m y A p p r o a c h ...................................................................43

2.6 THE CLIMATE OF COUPS D’ETAT IN NIGERIA........................................... 45

2.6.1 T h e J a n u a r y 15,1966 C o u p ..................................................................................45

2.6.2 T h e J u l y 29,1966 C o u n t e r C o u p ....................................................................... 50
2.6.3 T h e D e c e m b e r 31,1983 C o u p and the F all of the S ec o n d Re p u b l ic 58
2.6.4 T h e A u g u s t 27,1985 C o u p .................................................................................... 66
2.6.5 T h e I l l - f a t e d ING and the N ovem ber 17,1993 P a l a c e C o u p ................... 73

CHAPTER THREE: THE NIGERIAN MEDIA SCENE........................n

3.1 INTROD UCTIO N........................................................................................................77

3.2 THE PRINT M EDIA................................................................................................... 77

3.2.1 M AGAZINES............................................................................................................ 84

3.3 THE BROADCAST MEDIA...................................................................................... 85

3.3.1 THE DAWN OF PRIVATE BROADCASTING.................................................. 88

3.4 MEDIA-GOVERNMENT RELATIONS..................................................................91

3.4.1 THE PRESS AT INDEPENDENCE...................................................................... 96

3.4.2 THE PRESS IN MILITARY ADMINISTRATIONS..........................................98

3.5 CONCLUSION........................................................................................................... 103

 TABLE OF CONTENTS

CHAPTER FOUR: THEORETICAL BACKGROUND.......................105

4.1 INTROD UCTIO N......................................................................................................105

4.2 THE SOCIOLOGY OF NEWS CON STRUCTION............................................ 107

4.2.1 OW NERSHIP AND ORGANISATIONAL PO LICIES....................................I l l

4.2.2 THE SCENARIO IN DEVELOPING N A TIO N S............................................. 112

4.2.3 NEWS ROUTINISATION..................................................................................... 118

4.2.4 NEWS SOURCE INFLUENCE.............................................................................122

4.2.5 JOURNALISTS’ PROFESSIONAL ORIENTATION AND NEWS

VALUES............................................................................................................................. 126

4.2.6 EXTERNAL PRESSURES: THE DEPENDENCY FACTOR.........................135

4.3 INCIPIENT CONCEPTS ON AGENDA SETTING........................................... 138

4.3.1 THE AGENDA SETTING DEBATE................................................................... 139

4.3.2 AGENDA SETTING AND IM PACT ON BEHAVIOURAL ATTITUDE.... 141

4.3.3 AGENDA BUILDING............................................................................................ 143

4.4 THEORETICAL INTEGRATION A PPR O A C H .................................................146

4.4.1 THE MASS MEDIA AND THE ‘M EDIATISATION’ OF CRISIS................146

4.4.2 NEWS AS C R IS IS...................................................................................................149

4.4.3 NEWS SOURCES AND SOCIAL CONTROL...................................................150

4.5 CONCLUSION........................................................................................................... 152

 TABLE OF CONTENTS

CHAPTER FIVE: THE RESEARCH METHODOLOGY................. 154

5.1 INTROD UCTIO N......................................................................................................154

5.1.1 RESEARCH QUESTIONS................................................................................... 155

5.2 METHOD OF STUDY.............................................................................................. 155

5.2.1 CONTENT ANALYSIS..........................................................................................155

5.2.2 DEFINITION, LIMITATIONS AND M ERITS................................................. 158

5.2.3 OBJECTIVES OF THE ANALYSIS................................................................... 163

5.2.4 SELECTION OF NEW SPAPERS........................................................................163

5.2.5 THE PERIOD OF STUDY.................................................................................... 165

5.2.6 THE SAMPLING PROCEDURE......................................................................... 166

5.2.7 THE CODING INSTRUM ENT............................................................................168

5.2.8 THE PERIOD OF ANALYSIS............................................................................. 168

5.3 THE QUESTIONNAIRE SURVEY.........................................................................168

5.3.1 OBJECTIVES OF THE SURVEY........................................................................171

5.3.2 THE SAMPLING PROCEDURE......................................................................... 171

5.3.3 THE SURVEY INSTRUM ENT............................................................................ 173

5.3.4 THE PERIOD OF SURVEY................................................................................. 173

5.4 SU M M ARY .................................................................................................................174

CHAPTER SIX: PRESS CHARACTERISATION OF

GOVERNMENT.......................................................................................... 176
 TABLE OF CONTENTS

6.1 INTRODUCTION......................................................................................................176

6.2 THE QUANTITATIVE ANALYSIS........................................................................176

6.2.1 GENERAL FREQUENCIES................................................................................. 177

6.2.2 TYPE OF IT E M ......................................................................................................184

6.2.3 PLACEMENT OF IT E M .......................................................................................186

6.2.4 AUTHORS AND SOURCES................................................................................. 187

6.2.5 ACTORS REFERRED TO.....................................................................................193

6.2.6 ‘O TH ER ’ ACTORS................................................................................................ 194

6.2.7 TO PIC S.....................................................................................................................195

6.2.8 ACTOR CHARACTERISATION........................................................................197

6.2.9A EFFECTS OF M 1UTARYINTERVENTION........................................................... 199

6.2.9B SOLUTION TO MILITARY COUPS......................................................................... 200

6.2.9C ADVOCACY FOR M IU TARY INTERVENTIO N................................................... 200

6.3 CROSS TABLE ASSOCIATIONS.........................................................................201

6.3.1 CHARACTERISATION/PLACEMENT.............................................................201

6.3.2 ACTOR/CHARACTERISATION........................................................................202

6.3.3 ‘O TH ER’ ACTORS/CHARACTERISATION..................................................203

6.3.4 ACTOR CHARACTERISATION/ITEM T Y PE ................................................203

6.4 QUALITATIVE ANALYSIS 204

 TABLE OF CONTENTS

6.4.1 A DESCRIPTIVE SUMMARY OF HEADLINES, CAPTIONS AND

THEM ES............................................................................................................................. 204

6.4.2 A WEAK AND INCOMPETENT PRESID EN T............................................... 205

6.4.3 IRRESPONSIBLE AND INCOMPETENT GOVERNORS AND

M IN ISTERS.......................................................................................................................210

6.4.4 SELF-SEEKING POLITICIANS AND POLITICAL PARTIES IN

DISARRAY......................................................................................................................... 216

6.4.5 AN ADMINISTRATION RIDDLED W ITH CORRUPTION.........................222

6.4.6 A FAILED ADMINISTRATION..........................................................................225

6.5 POSITIVE DEPICTION........................................................................................... 230

6.6 POSITIVE D EPICTIO N ...........................................................................................231

6.6.1 A REGIM E OUT TO FIGHT CORRUPTION..................................................231

6.7 NEGATIVE D EPICTIO N .........................................................................................232

6.7.1 A REPRESSIVE R E G IM E ................................................................................... 233

6.7.2 AN ADMINISTRATION OVERW HELMED BY ECONOMIC MALAISE

............................................................................................................................................... 235

6.8 CONCLUSION........................................................................................................... 236

 TABLE OF CONTENTS

CHAPTER SEVEN: JOURNALISTS’ PERCEPTION OF

MILITARY INTERVENTION................................................................. 240

7.1 INTRODUCTION..................................................................................................... 240

7.2 RESPONDENTS’ BIOGRAPHICS......................................................................... 241

7.2.1 GENDER.................................................................................................................. 241

7.2.2 A G E........................................................................................................................... 244

7.2.3 EDUCATION........................................................................................................... 244

7.2.4 PROFESSIONAL EX PERIENCE........................................................................247

7.2.5 PROFESSIONAL STATUS.................................................................................. 248

7.2.6 REGIONAL BA SE................................................................................................. 248

7.3 RESPONDENTS’ GENERAL IMPRESSIONS ON MILITARY RULE..........251

7.3.1 RESPONDENTS’ VIEWS ON THE DESIRABILITY OF MILITARY

INTERVENTION.............................................................................................................. 253

7.3.2 RESPONDENTS’ VIEWS ON PARTICULAR GOVERNMENTS

DESERVING AN O V ERTHRO W ................................................................................. 255

7.3.2.1 ALH AJISH EH U SHAGARI AND THE SECOND REPUBLIC (1979-83).......256

7.32.2 THE GENERAL MUHAMMADU BUHARI ADMINISTRATION (1983-85).... 260

7.3.2.3 THE ALHAJI ABUBAKAR BALEWA GOVERNMENT (1960-66)......................263

7.32.4 THE GENERAL YAKUBU GOWON ADMINISTRATION (1966-75)................ 265

7.32.5 THE CHIEF ERNEST SHONEKAN INTERIM NATIONAL GOVERNMENT

(1993)........................................................................................................................................... 266
 TABLE OF CONTENTS

7.3.3 ISSUES IDENTIFIED AS JUSTIFICATIONS FOR MILITARY

INTERVENTION..............................................................................................................267

7.3.3.1 CORRUPTION............................................................................................................268

7.3.3.2 POLITICAL D ISO RD ER...........................................................................................273

7.3.3.3 INEPT LEADERSHIP................................................................................................ 274

7.3.3.4 AILING ECO NO M Y................................................................................................... 275

7.3.3.5 OPPRESSIVE R U L E ..................................................................................................279

7.3.4 RESPONDENTS’ WILLINGNESS TO CALL FOR COUPS.........................280

7.3.5 RESPONDENTS’ VIEWS ON W HETHER POLITICIANS PROVOKE

THE MILITARY TO SEIZE POW ER...........................................................................282

7.3.6 FACTORS RELATED TO POLITICIANS’ PROVOCATION OF

MILITARY INTERVENTION........................................................................................284

7.3.7 RESPONDENTS’ REACTIONS TO REASONS GIVEN BY

INTERVENING COUP PLOTTERS............................................................................. 286

7.3.8 BENEFITS AND ADVERSITIES OF MILITARY INTERVENTION 287

7.3.8.1 RELUCTANCE TO RETURN POWER TO CIVILIANS........................................289

7.3.8.2 POOR EXTERNAL IM AG E.......................................................................................290

7.3.9 ASPECT OF NATIONAL DEVELOPMENT THAT SUFFERS MOST OR

GAINS MOST FROM MILITARY INTERVENTION.............................................. 292

7.3.10 RESPONDENTS’ POSITIONS ON OUT LAWING COUPS AND

POWER-SHARING BETWEEN CIVILIANS AND THE M ILITA RY.................. 293

7.4 CROSS TABULAR CO RR ELA TIO N ................................................................. 294

7.4.1 RESPONDENTS’ BIOGRAPHICS AND IMPRESSIONS OF MILITARY

COUPS................................................................................................................................. 295
 TABLE OF CONTENTS

7.4.1.1 T H E ‘AUTHORITARIAN'SCHOOL....................................................................... 297

7.4.1.2 THE FATALIST SCHOOL.........................................................................................297

7.4.1.3 THE UNCOMPROMISING SCHOOL..................................................................... 298

7.4.2 ASSOCIATIONS BETWEEN RESPONDENTS’ BIOGRAPHIC

VARIABLES AND THEIR PERCEPTIONS OF CO U PS......................................... 300

7.4.2.1 RESPONDENTS' OPINIONS ON JUSTIFIABILITY OF CO U PS..................... 300

7.4.2.2 RESPONDENTS’ BIOGRAPHICS AND THEIR VIEWS ON WHETHER

POLITICIANS PROVOKE CO UPS........................................................................................302

7.4.2.3 RESPONDENTS’ BIOGRAPHICS AND THEIR VIEWS ON WHETHER

COUPS SHOULD BE OUT-LAWED..................................................................................... 303

7.4.2.4 RESPONDENTS’ BIOGRAPHICS AND THEIR VIEWS ON DIARCHY. 303

7.5 CONCLUSION......................................................................................................... 304

CHAPTER EIGHT: DISCUSSION OF RESULTS.............................. 306

8.1 INTROD UCTIO N......................................................................................................306

8.2 RESPONSES TO RESEARCH Q U ESTIO N S...................................................... 306

8.2.1 DID THE PRINT MEDIA CARRY NEWS, EDITORIALS, ARTICLES

OR OTHER CONTENTS THAT CALLED FOR OR ENDORSED MILITARY
INTERVENTION?............................................................................................................ 306

8.2.2 W HAT DISCERNIBLE POSITION DID THE PRESS TAKE, THROUGH

EDITORIALS, NEWS SLANTS, CARTOONS AND ARTICLES, ON AN
OVERTHROWN GOVERNMENT?.............................................................................. 311
 TABLE OF CONTENTS

8.2.3 SIM ILARITIES BETWEEN MEDIA CHARACTERISATIONS OF

OVERTHROWN GOVERNMENTS AND JUSTIFICATIONS FOR COUPS AS
GIVEN IN COUP SPEECHES........................................................................................ 314

8.2.4 WHAT IS THE DOMINANT DISPOSITION OF NIGERIAN

JOURNALISTS TO MILITARY INTERVENTION IN PO L IT IC S?..................... 317

8.2.5 DOES THE DISPOSITION OF JOURNALISTS TO MILITARY

INTERVENTION HAVE ANY ASSOCIATION W ITH ETHNIC IDENTITY,
AGE, EDUCATION AND OTHER BIOGRAPHIC VARIABLES?........................ 320

8.3 THEORETICAL IMPLICATIONS........................................................................ 323

8.3.1 THE PREDOMINANCE OF NEGATIVE CHARACTERISATION OF

GOVERNM ENT............................................................................................................... 323

8.3.2 OTHER EXPLANATIONS OF NEGATIVITY: ROUTINISATION AND

ITS INFLUENCE ON TOPICS AND ACTO RS.......................................................... 333

8.4 THE MASS MEDIA AND THE MEDIATISATION OF CRISIS: NEWS

SOURCES AND SOCIAL C O N TR O L.............................................................. 334

8.5 JOURNALISTS’ PERSONAL ORIENTATIONS VERSUS

INSTITUTIONAL FORCES............................................................................................339

8.6 CONCLUSION........................................................................................................... 341

CHAPTER NINE: SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONS...................... 344

9.1 SUM M ARY.................................................................................................................344

9.2 CONCLUSIONS......................................................................................................... 356

9 .2 .1 A g e n d a S e t t in g and S o c ia l C o n t r o l .........................................................................3 5 7

9.2.2 AGENDA BUILDING AND SOURCE C O N T R O L .........................................359

 CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION

1.1 Preface

Ever since the attainment of self-governance more than three decades ago, Nigeria’s
journey toward a stable democracy has been continually interjected with a recurring
spate of military coups d’etat. When a group of army officers announced the first
military seizure of political power on January 15, 1966, Nigerians were persuaded to
accept the forcible change of government as a revolutionary crusade aimed principally
at forestalling an imminent descent into anarchy and subsequent demise of the new
nation-state. According to Major Chukwuma Nzeogwu, leader of the Supreme
Council of the Revolution of the Nigeria Armed Forces which executed the plot, the
targets of the revolution were:

...The political profiteers, the swindlers, the men in

high and low places that seek bribes and demand ten
per cent1, those that seek to keep the country
divided permanently so that they can remain in office
as ministers..., the tribalists, the nepotists...those that
have corrupted our society and put the Nigerian
political calendar back by their words and deeds
(Newswatch. Jan. 20, 1986, p.25).

In a more philosophical explanation of that coup 15 years later, one of the surviving
brains behind it, Ademoyega (1981), maintained that the revolution was informed by
their burning desire to introduce an ideological package in a First Republic whose
endemic political, economic and social crises have been attributed to an ‘ideological
lacuna’ (Okigbo, 1992:39). The ideological novelty which was expected to

1 This was a reference to the corrupt practice whereby prospective contractors were required to remit ten per

cent o f the total contract value to government officials or political party leaders as a pre-condition for being

awarded a contract job.

1
 CHAPTER ONE

revolutionise Nigeria’s politics, economy, educational system as well as social and

foreign affairs was dubbed ‘democratic socialism’.

In what appeared to be more of restructuring the national political configuration,

than setting an agenda of political ideals, democratic socialism in political terms aimed
at phasing out the parliamentary system adopted at independence in favour of diarchy,
and replacing the regional structure with states which would be governed by military
officers. On the economic sphere, the revolutionaries believed that in the interest of
the nation’s economic well-being, capitalism should give way to a more communal
model of productivity whereby skilled labour of all sorts, guided by a common
ideology and objective, would be pooled to produce goods and services for the entire
national community. Furthermore, when it must have been entrenched in the system,
democratic socialism was expected to reduce mass illiteracy to the barest minimum,
while the posture of the nation in foreign affairs was to become detached from neo­
colonialism and non-alignment.

Whether it was prompted by the need for a radical revolution to halt the nation’s
political drift at that time or the introduction of an ideological doctrine in the absence
of any other, the maiden coup in Nigeria easily attracted popular acclaim at first.
Omotunde (1986) is of the view that the intervention was a blessing to the majority of
Nigerians who besieged the streets in a spontaneous outburst of joy and unequivocal
declaration of support for the military take-over. The entire dispensation which must
have irked the civilian populace into such a support is discussed in detail in the next
chapter part of which reviews literature on the social and philosophical contexts of
coups in Nigeria.

Today, however, that seminal intervention in Nigerian politics is seen more in terms of
having set the stage for the persisting culture of military intervention in governance
than in terms of the revolution it promised (Agbese, 1986). Bedevilled by the plotters’
failure to implement the coup as faithfully as it had been designed, it ended in a

2
 CHAPTER ONE

misadventure which ventilated the suspicion, in many quarters, of a hidden agenda.

First of all, the constitution of the Revolutionary Council was seen to be too sectional2:
a bias which was compounded by the fact that victims of the bloody coup were from
every region but the East whereas the target had been national in the original plan
(Okigbo, 1992; Ejoor, 1993). The prime minister and the premiers of the Northern
and Western regions were among prominent Northern political and military elites killed
in the revolution while their colleagues from mainly the East survived. Whether the
survivors evaded doom by escaping or by being let off the hook, the ensuing picture of
selective killings badly rubbed off on the ecstasy that immediately greeted the coup.
The general feeling which was soon to emerge in the North was that the coup had been
staged as only a smokescreen for a subtle war of attrition on the Northern political
elite. Specifically, the claim was that the Igbos of the Eastern region had used the
coup to gain control of political power from the Hausa-Fulani ruling class of the North
(Agbese, 1986; Okigbo, 1992; Ejoor, 1993).

Secondly, the coup failed to run its full course when the plotters were overpowered by
the military establishment. A most significant turn of events following the failed
revolution was the decision of the Council of Ministers to hand over the government of
the nation to an interregnum of senior military officers; a decision which in itself added
to the logic of those who argued in favour of power usurpation by the Igbos as the
motive of the coup. Ejoor (1993:11), for example, argues that Nwafor Orizu, the
Senate President in the First Republic, and acting President3 of the Federal Republic of
Nigeria who happened to be “a prominent Igbo politician...refused to accept that the
situation in the country (after the coup had been foiled) was peaceful enough to allow
for continuation of democratic governance” but instead, handed over power to “...a
senior Igbo officer (Major-General J. Aguiyi Ironsi) who immediately assumed control
of the Federal Republic.”

2 Members o f the Council were mainly from Southern Nigeria.

3 As Senate President, Nwafor Orizu became acting president o f the Republic following the death o f the prime

minister, and in the absence o f the president, Dr. Nnamdi A zikiw e.

3
 CHAPTER ONE

Fears of Igbo domination, real or imagined, were further escalated by Ironsi’s political
reorganisation which introduced a unitary system of government in place of federalism.
In a national broadcast, Ironsi announced the promulgation of the Unification Decree
(Decree 34 of 1966), the spirit of which aimed at doing away with “the last vestiges of
intense regionalism” and “...to produce that cohesion in the government structure
which is necessary in achieving and maintaining the paramount objectives of the
National Military Government4...” It was, however, decoded in some quarters as a
centralisation of political power in the federal military government, and therefore, “ a
strategic device by Southerners to dominate the affairs of the country in business,
industry and government, to the detriment of the North” (Okigbo, 1992:83). Among
other major foci of the decree, Nigeria’s status as a federation made up of regions
changed to that of a republic of loose provinces grouped under the old regional
structure, namely the Northern, Eastern, Western and Mid-Western group of
provinces. Each group of provinces was under the control of a military governor.

While these features of the ill-fated coup have often been cited to debunk its
revolutionary claims, its ideological justification has equally been subject to questions.
Okigbo (1992:78) for instance, has pointed out that the core principles of democratic
socialism as enunciated by Ademoyega (1981) were not addressed by the broadcast in
which Nzeogwu announced the coup and its motives. He therefore wonders whether
the ideals of democratic socialism had ever been “so well articulated in 1966 or
whether they were an afterthought following the post-war oil boom experiences.”

Altogether, the preceding arguments can be said to be reflective of not only the deep-
seated impression among the military and civilian elite of the North that the January
1966 coup had ulterior motives, but also the motive of the second coup which took
place on July 29, 1966, barely six months after the first. From all indications, it was a
counter coup aimed at avenging the death of the Northern political leaders, and
regaining power (Ejoor, 1993). It has further been argued that a third motive of the

4 May 24, 1966 National Broadcast, Ministry o f Information, Lagos.

4
 CHAPTER ONE

counter coup was to lead the entire Northern region into secession from Nigeria
(Kuril, 1983). In the course of the coup, Ironsi, the architect of ‘unitarism’, was
killed, and Lieutenant Colonel Yakubu Gowon, a Northerner of the Middle-Belt origin,
became the head of state.

Even the next coup, on July 29, 1975, which terminated Gowon’s regime, has been
obliquely linked with the power tussle that sprouted from the first two coups.
According to Ejoor (1993), the first coup aimed at snatching power from the ruling
Hausa-Fulani, and placing it at the disposal of the Igbos; the second sought to regain
power from the Igbos, while the third was designed to locate the restored power back
in the hands of the original custodians: the Hausa-Fulani aristocracy. Though Gowon
could be generally classified as a Northerner, his status as a Middle-Belt Christian,
according to Ejoor, attracted “opposition from a group of powerful Northern Muslims
who saw him as representing the interest of the minority Middle-Belt” (ibid. p. 14).
Unsurprisingly, Major-General Murtala Mohammed, a prominent core Northern
Muslim and one of the plotters of the July 1975 coup became the head of state after
Gowon was overthrown. Even Mohammed’s assassination in the February 13, 1976
abortive coup by a group of Middle-Belt army officers led by Lt. Col. Buka Dimka
further strengthens Ejoor’s theory of a power struggle stretching over at least the first
three coups, for it had all the trappings of an ethnically-motivated counter coup.

Discountenancing indeterminable attempts which were nipped in the bud and never
mentioned officially, Nigeria has so far experienced not less than ten coups d’etat. In
five of these, the plotters successfully overthrew either a civilian or military regime.
They include the July 1966, July 1975, December 1983, August 1985 and November
1993 coups. The rest were abortive attempts in which plotters, in some cases,
eliminated key government leaders but failed to take over power, as exemplified by the
January 1966, February 1976, December 1985, April 1990 and March 1995 failed
coups. Put differently, the military has dominated the political governance of Nigeria
for 26 years out of the nation’s 36-year existence as an independent state, a

5
 CHAPTER ONE

dispensation which has impacted significantly on the development of the country

especially on the political front.

1.2 The Research Problem.

Beyond the recriminations and rationalisations arising from military intervention in

politics, the incontrovertible reality, accepted and espoused by even the military class,
is that the seizure of political power by the military is a political aberration that bodes a
chain of problems in any country (Nzimiro, 1983; Ihonvbere, 1996; Campbell, 1995).
Yet, due to its fluency, the situation has become an irrepressible part of Nigeria’s
political reality as of this day, so much that some observers argue that it is no longer
the exception. Agbese (1986:10) believes that when the Council of Ministers handed
over power to Major-General Ironsi following the political consternation arising from
the first coup, the expectation was for him as the General Officer Commanding the
Nigeria Army to “restore law and order, and quickly pull back to the barracks”. But
pointing to five coups and six military leaders afterwards, he maintains that “it is
outrageously out of tune with contemporary political wisdom to regard the military as
an aberration or a passing phenomenon in the political administration of Nigeria.”
Arguing in a similar tone, Okigbo (1992:1) remarks that as disruptive as it has always
been, intervention of the armed forces in government has become such “a common
feature of the prevailing political topology it has come to be accepted as nearly
normal” in Nigeria and many other developing nations. Even Shehu Shagari, a
deposed civilian president, was quoted as observing that there are two permanent
political parties in Nigeria; the army and the civilians (Newswatch. Jan 20, 1986).

Usually, the initial posture of every military clique that forces its way to power is that
of a corrective agent, and certain ills which the new regime promises to address,
especially those which tend to jeopardise the political stability and unity of the nation,
are cited as the reasons necessitating intervention (Ejoor, 1993). It is, therefore, not
uncommon for almost each military administration to advance some political novelties

6
 CHAPTER ONE

and, sometimes, economic measures which are sold on the promise of engendering a
sustainable political system. Whether such innovations are conceptualised in the
genuine interest of national development or merely canvassed to earn legitimacy
remains as controversial as the subject of intervention itself. What is less contentious
is the fact that military governments have in most cases not proved to be more goal-
oriented, more administratively astute or less corrupt than civilian administrations. In
an indictment of military rule, a prominent military officer who is credited with
participating in the plotting of most coups, and serving as chief of army staff in the
Murtala/Obasanjo regime, articulated his belief that thirty years or more of military rule
had demonstrated that the soldiers are no angels, insisting that corruption had not only
existed but had in fact flourished during the years of Nigeria’s corrective military rule.5
Ovba (1990:8) explains this vulnerability on the basis that “while successive
governments seize power to correct some (perceived) anomalies, they soon forget
their promises and get preoccupied with other goals which sometimes contradict the
people’s expectations, creating room for apathy, resentments and disillusionment”.

The plotters of the first coup identified nepotism and tribalism among other national
maladies they sought to eliminate. Though it could be argued that they did not have a
chance to implement their vision, having failed to secure power, the coup itself stirred
ethnic divisions and conflicts on a similar, if not a larger scale than the politics of
ethnicity which in the plotters’ view was at that time threatening the survival of the
country. In his own case, Ironsi believed that a readjustment of the political structure
of governance to produce a unitary system which concentrated political control in the
centre was the answer to the nation’s political problems in the mid 60s. However, as it
has been stated earlier, that singular action ended up adding more fuel to an already
heated inter-ethnic misunderstanding which precipitated not only a counter coup but a
two-and-half-year civil war.

5 This view was expressed by Retired General Theophilus Danjuma in The Guardian o f July 20, 1986.

7
 CHAPTER ONE

Gowon’s administration which replaced the Ironsi regime as well as ran the nation’s
post-war affairs threw unitarism over the board and, instead, introduced the state
structure. He had also announced his administration’s plans to restore democratic rule
by 1976, a target for which a preparatory nine-point political and social agenda was
devised at the end of the war in 1970. However, in 1974, after almost nine years in
office, Gowon reneged on the much publicised plans for “an early return to civilian
government”, explaining away the volte-face on the hazy grounds that the initial
schedule had become unrealistic, and that it would amount to a “betrayal of trust” to
adhere to it (Akinrinade, 1986:11). Apart from accusations of weak leadership and
inability to contain an alarming rate of corruption within the rank and file of his cabinet
and in the entire public life, his dithering over the transition to civil rule was identified
by the clique that toppled him as the most cogent provocation. The succeeding
Mohammed/Obasanjo regime alluded to this point in its first speech to the nation in
which Brigadier Murtala Mohammed, after assuming office, announced October 1,
1979 as the day a civilian government would be sworn in, assuring the nation that his
leadership would not “stay in office a day longer than necessary”, and certainly not
beyond the stated date (Newswatch. Jan. 20, 1886, p.20). It thus earned itself a place
in the records as the only military government that adhered faithfully to its promise to
restore civilian governance, for even though Mohammed died a few months later in a
botched coup, his compatriots, led by Lieutenant-General Olusegun Obasanjo,
decisively pursued the programmes for transition to civil rule, and inaugurated a
civilian government and the Second Republic on October 1, 1979.

Perhaps the most colossal and costliest political experimentation to distil what was
meant to be a lasting democracy was mounted by the Babangida administration for
eight years. It included the commissioning of a Political Bureau to forge a new
national political ideology, political economy and political culture for the Third
Republic, and the establishment of a Committee to draft a new constitution. It also
brought about the establishment of social regulatory bodies such as The Mass
Mobilisation for Social Justice and Economic Recovery (MAMSER), the formation
and funding of the two ‘grassroots’ political parties, the building of infra-structure to
accommodate the new political system, a series of transition programmes spanning

8
 CHAPTER ONE

over six years, and finally the general elections of June 12, 1993. The entire transition
programme is estimated to have cost the nation a whopping fifty-thousand million naira
(Ihonvbere, 1996). However, in a move that has continued to raise dust over the
political clime, the Babangida government announced the nullification of the elections
which had been acclaimed by some authoritative observers as the most successful,
freest and fairest since the nation’s history of elections.6 Not only did the cancellation
of the election plunge the nation into political chaos from June 1993 to 1994, the shaky
Interim National Government which was hastily appointed as a compromise had no
capacity to contain the worsening national discontent, a situation which was cashed
upon by the present military regime which edged out the Interim government in
November 1993.

Some analysts of the peculiarities of Third World politics have argued that the militaiy
has a relevant role to play in the governments of countries in the region. For example,
Odetola (1982:5) cites Halpem (1962, 1963), Pye (1962), Shils (1962) and Johnson
(1964) as proponents of the view that “military politicians in the Third World make the
best, the most thorough-going and perhaps the only reliable managers of social
change”, a view based on the belief that “the military is the most modernised and most
highly disciplined nation-wide institution capable of guaranteeing the political stability
so necessary for economic development” (ibid.).

Furthermore, in justifying the mission of the January 1966 coup, Ademoyega (1981)
made references to the revolutionary potentials of some armies across the globe.
These included the Ghengis Khan Army of the 13th century which unified the
factionalised Mongolian tribes of Central Asia, the Cromwellian Army of the 17th
century which dethroned monarchy and developed the parliamentary system in Britain,
the Napoleonic Army of the early 19th century which saved France from anarchy and

6 Those who gave the election a clean bill o f health include the National Electoral Com m ission, the International

Observer Team, the Presidential Election Monitoring Group, the Centre for Democratic Studies, and the

Campaign for Dem ocracy. (See Ihonvbere, 1996:199-200.)

9
 CHAPTER ONE

nurtured its unity under the principles of liberty, equality and fraternity, the Bolshevic
Army of Russia which some sources claimed to have put the proletariat in power, and
the Mao Tse Tung Army which was said to have not only unified the Chinese peoples
into a formidable country but also liberated and empowered the peasants and other
low-ranking citizens. The Cuban Army under Fidel Castro, as well as the Angolan and
Mozambican liberation Armies are among modem armies which were also cited as
having played similar roles.

However, as the brief review of the political programmes of different military

administrations in Nigeria shows, though a causal relationship between military rule
and political development is hard to demonstrate, the military has yet to demonstrate,
after 26 years, that it has the panacea for Nigeria’s political problems. While it can
neither be wished away nor dismissed as a complete fiasco, military intervention in
Nigerian politics has so far demonstrated the existence of a wide gap between the
visionary promises of coup makers and actual performance. Regardless of the
circumstances under which it has occurred in Nigeria, military intervention has merely
lived with if not exacerbated the political, economic and social problems of the nation.
The acceptance of the inability of the various military administrations to provide
leadership is clearly demonstrated in the promise of most military rulers to restore
civilian governance as soon as possible.

This is not to talk about dismal performances in other spheres of administration such as
economic husbandry and the provision of moral leadership. Anim (1990:3) observes
that since the first coup that introduced military intervention in politics, “the armed
forces have manifested all the weaknesses of the other sections of the society:
corruption, graft, indiscipline, ethnicity, disrespect for law and order”. He then
concludes that “there is an undisguised opinion that the military has failed the nation as
indeed most of Africa and wherever else they have intruded into politics...” Such
undisguised opinions are exemplified by Jason’s (1996:34) observation that,

The consequence of prolonged military rule has been

the elevation of corruption to a national culture. A
worse consequence of the rule of the jackboot has
been a devastated economy. The absence of
democracy and the rule of law has not only turned

10
 CHAPTER ONE

the dreams of the nation’s founding fathers into an

unending nightmare, it has also set the nation on the
slippery and precipitous road to destruction...The
evidence of the injury military dictatorship has done
to Nigeria can be seen in the total breakdown of
social services and utilities.

In most cases, the impact of military rule has been most glaring in the areas of civil
liberties in general and press freedom in particular. (A detailed discussion of the fate
of the Nigerian press under military rule comes in chapter three which addresses the
media scene in the country.)

Yet there has been a great deal of claims that coups are usually called for and
welcomed by the Nigerian electorate. The rationale, in most cases, is that in the
absence of a faithful devotion to the common welfare of the citizenry by either a
civilian or military regime, the people’s frustration builds up to a point where they are
only too glad for a change of leadership no matter in what direction. According to
Diamond (1990:13), the disgust of the January 1966 coup plotters with the
government of the First Republic “was shared by a broad cross-section of the
population which welcomed the coup in an effusive outpouring of joy and relief.”
Diamond went on to report that prior to the Buhari coup of 1983 which terminated the
Second Republic, the level of political decay was so unbearable that “students took to
the streets in several cities, carrying signs calling for the return of the military”, adding
that “as the rot deepened, so did popular aspiration for change... A large proportion of
the Nigerian electorate had come to favour the displacement of the political system
altogether and bringing back the only alternative, the military.”

But even more remarkable is the contention that Nigerian journalists had in most cases
led the clarion call for military intervention in politics. For example, a political
scientist, Oyewole (1991:12) alleges that “almost all journalists supported the coup
that overthrew the Shagari administration.” Similar opinions have also been offered by
writers such as Abdullahi (1990) and Yakassai (1990). Elsewhere, journalists seem to
share a similar characterisation. Mudgal (1995:2) views the “political debate on the

11
 CHAPTER ONE

media coverage of terrorism in India” as one of a “media-indictment nature”, a stance

he buttresses with the observation that “the media are often accused of adding fuel to
fire by giving ‘undue’ publicity to terrorism.” When they are not allegedly fanning the
embers of terrorism, the media are associated with stimulating military or forceful
solutions to political dilemmas as exemplified by the role said to have been played by
the media regarding the Iranian revolution (Srebemy-Mohammadi and Mohammadi,
1994), the Persian Gulf crisis (Kellner, 1992) and the Chilean political debacle
(Buckman, 1996).

1 3 Research Objectives

The major task of this work is to probe the extent to which Nigerian journalists are
pre-disposed to or tolerant of military mle as an alternative in the search for political
leadership. By examining print media contents on the offices and activities of key
government personalities in some overthrown regimes, as well as gauging journalists’
opinions on coups, this research seeks empirical evidence to situate the print media and
journalists (as influential forces in the shaping of political reality) in the entire debate
on the relevance of military intervention in Nigerian politics. The essence is to
examine, through content analysis of selected independent publications, if the nature of
characterisation given to fallen governments in such publications can be said to be
suggestive of support for or acceptance of military intervention. Such clues will also
be compared with journalists’ personal views on the desirability of military
intervention.

Having said this, the clarification must be made immediately that it is neither the
intention of this research to establish how journalists construct military intervention nor
to demonstrate whether or not they influence coups through their construction or
presentation of fallen regimes. In the first place, a study on the construction of coups
would require a participant observation. But unlike elections and other methods of
political transition, coups, even if seen as “deep-seated, well-thought-out and carefully
planned social behaviour” (Okigbo, 1992:14), are by no means predictable and open
events, not even in military circles. In Ademoyega’s (1981:55) words, “a coup is not a

12
 CHAPTER ONE

conventional operation of the army”. Its preparations are done most quietly and
surreptitiously, and not in plain language. For example, preparations for the January
1966 coup, according to him, began in 1961 and warmed up in 1965. Yet the final
hour of operation in January 1966 was dictated by situations not easily under the
control of the plotters themselves.

Furthermore, any attempt at establishing causality of coups can only be imperilled by

methodological inexactitude. As Stepan (1974:7) rightly points out, “as far as military
political behaviour is concerned, no single or isolated group of factors, whether
institutional or otherwise, can offer valid predictive answers.” Even in other areas of
political communication, the attempts by early agenda-setting studies to establish the
potentials of the media in influencing the salience of political discourse have been
debunked on the basis of new arguments which locate the influence on social control in
factors other than the mass media (Hall et al., 1978).

The following research questions, therefore, summarise the focus of the study:

1. Did the print media carry news, articles, editorials or other contents that called for
or endorsed military coups?

2. If so, how frequent were such contents, and what kind of prominence was given to
them?

3. What discernible position did the press take, through editorials, news slants,
cartoons etc. on an overthrown regime at least three months before its downfall?

4. Are there any thematic similarities between coup makers’ justification for forcible
change of government, and media presentation or journalists’ perception of the
overthrown regime?

5. What is the dominant disposition of Nigerian journalists to military intervention in

politics?

6. Does the disposition of journalists to military intervention have any association with
biographic variables such as ethnic identity, age, education, professional experience
and official rank?

13
 CHAPTER ONE

7. How do journalists’ personal views on military intervention compare with media

contents on overthrown governments?

1.4 The Synopsis of the Thesis

Having set the stage for an appreciation of the central objective of the study, the
introductory chapter gives way to a background piece which reviews relevant literature
on the political and social milieu that engenders military coups in chapter two.
Nigeria’s journey into nationhood, the evolution of political parties and systems, the
military establishment, and military politics are the basic topics explored in this chapter.

The climate of mass media operation as a political institution in Nigeria is the subject
of the third chapter in which particular attention is paid to media-govemment relations
as a necessary background upon which private media presentation of government may
be appreciated.

Chapter four dwells on a reconstruction of the relevant theoretical conceptualisations

that provide an empirical framework for the study, with particular interest in how such
theoretical approaches influence political communication in Africa and other
developing regions.

The method of study is presented in chapter five. The rationale for the use of content
analysis and a questionnaire survey for data collection is defended, and empirical
details such as scope and period of study, sampling and coding procedures, as well as
methods of data analysis are explained.

14
 CHAPTER ONE

In chapter six, the results of both the quantitative and the qualitative content analysis,
together with a discussion on major findings, are presented, while chapter seven
contains the results of the survey.

Chapter eight attempts a synthesis of the results of both the content analysis and the
survey as a prelude to a general discussion of the overall findings based on the
theoretical background and specific research questions of the study.

Chapter nine brings the study to an end with a recapitulation of major findings and a
conclusion to the research.

15
 CHAPTER TW O

NATION, STATE, POWER AND MILITARY INTERVENTION IN

POLITICS: A HISTORICAL AND PHILOSOPHICAL BACKGROUND

2.1 Nigeria: The Journey to Nationhood

Long before its contact with, and subsequent colonisation by Britain in the 19th
century, the geographical configuration which finally emerged as the present-day
Nigerian nation1 was merely a conglomeration of culturally heterogeneous peoples.
Sprawling over a land mass estimated at 923,768 square kilometres (356,000 square
miles)2, the Nigerian territory is dotted with a constellation of ethnic communities with
about 250 languages and dialects.

From this collage of cultural pluralism, however, three distinct blocs of socio-political
influence were easily discernible, each characterised by a unique social institution as
well as a system of political administration. These dominant blocs which not only
evolved into Nigeria’s tri-regional political structure from the 1950s, but have also
survived several geo-political adjustments (such as state creation), were aptly
described as having each a dual cultural constitution: a territorial nucleus inhabited by
the cultural majority and a peripheral zone inhabited by cultural minorities (Sklar,
1983).

1 With a population of 100 million people, and an area of 923,768 sq. km, Nigeria is West Africa’s
largest and most populous nation. It is at present made up of 36 States, with a new capital in Abuja,
leaving Lagos as the commercial capital. The official language is English but there are three major
languages: Igbo, Yoruba and Hausa, in addition to hundreds of dialects that reflect the multi-tribal
mix of the country. A recent (1996) publication by the Civil Liberties Organisation in Lagos ranks
Nigeria as having the “highest percentage of trained professionals in Africa”. Petroleum production
and exportation replaced agriculture as the nation’s economic mainstay beginning from the 1970s. A
Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) report (1994) indicates that Nigeria is the sixth
largest producer and exporter of oil in the world, earning over 210 billion dollars from the product.
2 Source from Federal Office of Statistics, Lagos.

16
 CHAPTER TWO

In the Northern fringe, true to Sklar’s depiction (ibid.), there was the dominant
Hausa/Fulani oligarchy at the helm of social, religious and political life while the Tivs,
Jukuns and Igalas of the Middle Belt, among other minority groups, squatted round
the edge of the region. Relative to the political administration in the North, Okigbo
(1992:4) writes that it reflected “a theocratic emirate rule involving the fusion of
political and religious authority (in the ruling sarakunas), dynastic succession to
political offices, aristocratic rule and the clientage system (with the talakawas or
commoners).”

The Eastern region, the home land of the majority Igbos and the minority Riverine
communities such as the Efiks, the Ibibios and the Ijaws, was characterised by a
pendulum of a political system that swung “unpredictably between republicanism and
socialism” (Okigbo, 1992:4). It was republican in the sense that “the people were the
custodian of their own civic rights” (Ademoyega,1981:2), and to the extent that it
stressed “individual destiny and achievement” (Okigbo, 1992:4). Its socialist system,
on the other hand, derived from its allowance of a spirit of communal collaboration for
community development. For the most part, democratic social institutions such as age
grades and clubs of title-holders were the platforms of governance.

In the West, the Yorubas had a well defined political system featuring a monarchical
rule counterbalanced by the Council of Chiefs. The king, as political head, wielded a
considerable measure of influence over his subjects but his policies and actions were
significantly subjected to checks by the council acting in legislative capacity.

The historical antecedents which led to the knitting of these three major and several
other minority communities into one nation, in particular, the commercial exploits
which first ushered the British into the Niger area by the turn of the 19th century, have
been well documented by both indigenous and international scholars of Nigerian
political history (e.g. Ezera, 1960; Kirk-Green, 1971; Amoda, 1972; Ayandele, 1979;

17
 CHAPTER TWO

Dudley, 1982; Sklar, 1983; Oyediran, 1979; Elaigwu, 1986; Diamond, 1990 etc.).
Since the purpose of this chapter is not merely to historicise Nigeria’s political
evolution, but to contextualise military intervention through a succinct reconstruction
of the socio-political background within which it has repeatedly occurred, the stress is
conspicuously on the political climate and culture that have prevailed from the run-up
to self government through more than three decades of independence.

Political historians reckon that the era of modem (as in Western) party politics was
ushered into pre-independent Nigeria with the inauguration of the Nigeria Legislative
Council in 1923, a development which conferred franchise on natives of two cities
(Lagos and Calabar) for the first time (Dudley, 1982). Bolstered by the confidence
appertaining to this political status, and in anticipation of further levels of political
participation, some indigenous political activists of the cities formed the earliest
political parties. Exemplified by the Nigeria National Democratic Party (NNDP)
formed in 1923 and the Nigerian Yoruba Movement (NYM) formed in 1938, such
initial parties were, however, said to have been more of kindred associations
(Dudley,1982).

Regardless of their very narrow base, these parties, all the same, generated some
ripples in the colonial political scenario, especially in the area of constitutional reforms
which paved the way for political independence. According to Okigbo (1992), they
provided the platform for the nationalist expressions that led to constitutional reforms
between 1946 and 1954. While the 1951 constitution modification empowered
indigenous politicians to aspire to prominent positions in regional and central
governments, the 1954 reform introduced a federal government structure in place of
the initial unitary system. The latter innovation in itself facilitated the election of
indigenous premiers for the regions in 1957.

A group of ‘second generation’ political parties soon entered the scene. They included
the three pre-independence mainstream parties, namely, the National Council of

18
 CHAPTER TWO

Nigeria and the Cameroons3 (NCNC), the Action Group (AG) and the Northern
People’s Congress (NPC) in addition to an almost innumerable host of smaller parties.
With the exception of the NCNC reputed for its multi-ethnic membership and national
political scope (Dudley 1982), the other parties were decidedly parochial in every
respect. Diamond (1990:3) describes them as “regionalist parties formed by ethnic
elites for the express purpose of winning regional power”. The Action Group, for
example, had metamorphosed from a cultural association of London-based Yorubas
(Egbe Omo Oduduwa) led by Chief Obafemi Awolowo. At its inception, the AG made
no pretences for its ethnocentric outlook as was suggested in an editorial which
plausibly set the agenda for its formation:

“We (Yorubas) anticipate an era of wholesome rivalry among the principal tribes of
Nigeria. While they must guard against chauvinism and rapid tribalism, the great
Yoruba people must strive to preserve their identity” (Daily Service. 17 October
1944).

On its part, the Northern People’s Congress, judging from its name, was equally
regionalist. Having evolved also from a cultural organisation: Jamiyyar Mutanen
Arewa (the Northern people’s Association), its base, membership and operations were
confined to the Northern region, and its narrow scope did not matter to the party
whose goal was the consolidation of power in the North.

Though they may have been introduced for administrative convenience, some of the
pre-independence constitutional reforms have been blamed for nurturing ethnicism in
Nigerian politics. The first of these was the 1946 Richards Constitution which split the
hitherto Southern Nigeria into two areas of autonomous administration: the South­
west with headquarters in Ibadan, and the South-east whose headquarters was in
Enugu (Ademoyega, 1981). Added to the North whose administrative headquarters
was in Kaduna, the two Southern regions had yielded a tripartite administrative

3 Later became National Council of Nigerian Citizens when Southern Cameroon ceased to be part of
Nigeria’s political entity.

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 CHAPTER TWO

establishment, each administered by a Lieutenant-Governor, while the overall colonial

Governor operated from Lagos.

Another political modification following at the heels of the Richards Constitution was
the eventual adoption of three regions, namely, the Northern, the Western and the
Eastern regions in the 1951 constitution which also provided for “regional assemblies
elected indirectly through a system of electoral colleges and a central legislature”
(Okigbo, 1992:43). This constitution, according to Diamond (1990:2), “made the
regions the more important locus of political life”. In deed, so important were the
regions above national government that when the NPC’s victory in the 1957 federal
elections won it the prime ministerial position, the NPC leader, Alhaji Ahmadu Bello,
whose constitutional prerogative it was to take up the position, preferred to remain the
Premier of the Northern Region, nominating his deputy, Alhaji Tafawa Balewa instead.

Okigbo (1992:9) has noted how “the British legacy has often been criticised and
blamed for much of the political accidents that befell and still afflict Nigeria”.
Regarding these constitutional reforms, one such critic, Adewale Ademoyega,
contends that in splitting the South while retaining the North as one bloc, as was done
in 1946, the colonial government “deliberately placed a greater percentage of the land
and people of Nigeria in the North” (54.5% for the North as against 20% for the West
and 23% for the East) (Ademoyega, 1981:5). By this arrangement, the British
allocated 55% of federal constituencies to the North, thus guaranteeing that “if the
NPC succeeded in maintaining its hold on the North, it would always be in control at
the federal level”(Ibid. p.6). Why would the Colonial administration install such a
structure in favour of a particular region or party? In Ademoyega’s view, it was in the
interest of the Colonial government agenda to keep Nigeria perpetually within its
sphere of influence even after independence. Another critic, Ejoor (1993:7) amplifies
this view in the argument that “the British surreptitiously groomed and encouraged a
number of the Northern elite, especially those who were in NPC, to take over from
them because Britain stood to benefit more from an independent Nigerian government

20
 CHAPTER TWO

under the political class from the North than from a regime dominated by the political
elite from the South”.4

Even if these reforms merely sustained regionalism, the delimitation of regions along
ethnic lines ensured that whatever transpired among the regions became a clash of
ethnic loyalties. In Diamond’s (1990:3) words, “given the coincidence of boundaries
between the regional and ethnic groups, it was virtually inevitable that the first national
elections would see the organisation of political parties along ethnic and regional
lines”, a hypothesis which was confirmed with the overwhelming triumph of the three
mainstream parties in their home constituencies. This, according to Diamond,
“established a close identity between region, party and ethnicity” (Ibid. p.3).

From then on Nigerian politics had become an ethnic affray whose disturbances were
not unconnected with the first and subsequent cases of military intervention in national
governance.

2.2 The 1959 National Elections and the Birth of the First Republic (1960-1966)

In the wake of rapid constitutional reforms and political developments compelled in

most cases by the agitation for independence, it was pretty obvious that the days of the
colonial administration in the country were numbered. The highlight of these
developments was the 1959 national elections which were meant to produce for the
first time a nationally elected government to rule the country at independence in 1960.

The constitution adopted for self government provided for a democracy, guaranteeing
a wide latitude of political and civil liberties. It also provided for a three-tier
government sharing power at the federal and regional levels. Patterned in many
respects after the Westminster model, the political administration in the First Republic

4 The argument, according to Madiebo (1980:3) is that the Colonial government found Northern
Nigeria, ab initio, easy to govern, as well as more friendly disposed to British interests afterwards.
This was unlike the “politically unreliable South”.

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 CHAPTER TWO

was a parliamentary system. At the head of the Executive arm of government at the
federal level was the Prime Minister who was assisted by a ceremonial President. An
elected Legislature with two chambers: the more powerful House of Representatives
and the Senate, exercised legislative functions while the Judiciary was charged with
ensuring the mle of law. Functionaries at the Executive and Legislative arms of
government were to be elected at least every five years (Diamond,1990).

With these provisions, it would, therefore, seem that ample measures had been put in
place for successful democratic elections. But as events turned out later, the old
political culture did not seem to have been influenced by the safeguards in the
constitution and the political system. If regionalism was the heartbeat of the previous
elections, it reached a frenetic pitch during the 1959 elections. Bereft of clearly
defined party philosophies or visions, the campaigns were stripped of issues. What
they featured instead, are captured in the following observation:

As with previous campaigns of the decade, the 1959

campaign was characterised by blatant appeals to
ethnic prejudice and vituperative rhetoric, which
completely drowned out the substance of party
programs and proposals. Also, violence and
repression marred the democratic character of the
campaign. Repression was most prevalent in the
north, where the NPC regularly used its control of
traditional systems of justice and administration to
obstruct, harass and punish opposition candidates
and their supporters (Diamond 1990:5).

And just as ethnicity was a key factor in the election campaigns, the results reflected
ethnic or regional bias. The NPC had a landslide victory in the North, where it won
134 seats. With 89 seats, NCNC won almost all the seats in the East, while the AG
won majority seats (79) in the West. Independent candidates took the remaining 16
seats (Okigbo, 1992). By not giving any of the parties a clear win, the results of the
election dictated the obviousness of inter-party co-operation if a government had to be
formed. Thus, the NPC which came closest to forming a governmentsought an
alliance with the NCNC. Some writers suggest that the NCNC leader, Dr. Azikiwe,

22
 CHAPTER TWO

driven by a nationalist vision, sought to use this coalition as an opportunity to build a

bridge between the ethnically divided North and South (Madiebo, 1980).

From several indications, however, it has been seen more as a marriage of convenience
and a compromise for office sharing than the much needed mutual inter-party co­
operation guided by national interests (Ezera,1960). Without establishing any
ideological rapport, The NPC and the NCNC formed a coalition government in which
the leaders of the two parties became Prime Minister and President of the new
independent nation respectively. The third mainstream party, the AG, receded into
opposition. It was, therefore, on this rather shaky premise that the First Republic5 was
bom on October 1, 1960.

Before long, the NPC/NCNC coalition had begun to crack. It was so weak that even
extraneous developments which had no direct bearing on the partnership were
interpreted and treated in a manner that accelerated the collapse of the coalition. One
such development was the political misunderstanding in the AG. An attempt by the
leader of the AG, Chief Obafemi Awolowo, in 1962 to remove his deputy, Chief
Akintola, from the premiership of the Western Region for ‘anti-party’ behaviour
generated a bloody crisis for which the Federal Government suspended the Regional
Government and declared a state of emergency.

Later in the year, Chief Awolowo and 27 other party associates were arrested and tried
for training rebels in Ghana, illegally importing arms, and planning to overthrow the
Balewa government. They were found guilty of treasonable felony and jailed in 1963.
With the AG in disarray, and most of its leaders in prison, the Western Region became
so vulnerable to the other parties, in particular, NCNC, which sought to gain more
political grounds in that region. Incidentally, at this period, the Federal Government
had carved out a Mid Western Region from the old West in a bid to defuse political

5 The period 1960-1966 is generally referred to as The First Republic although Nigeria became a
Republic only in 1963. Republic in this sense denotes the short-lived civilian regimes: 1960-66 and
1979-1983.

23
 CHAPTER TWO

tension which was thought to have caused the crisis in the Region. The new Region
easily fell under the control of the NCNC. But as Okigbo (1992:54) noted, “the NPC
was not prepared to watch the NCNC expand its territorial control from the East
through the new Mid-West to the West”. The Prime Minister, therefore, dramatically
lifted the state of emergency in the West and restored Akintola as Premier.
Furthermore, the NPC sensed that for the sake of survival, Akintola who now
controlled a tiny fraction of the AG (which he renamed United People’s Party) might
be forced to seek an alliance with the NCNC, the only party besides the AG with a
reasonable number of seats in the Western Region Legislative Assembly. The NPC
then advised Akintola to form a new party called the Nigerian National Democratic
Party (NNDP). Hurt by the implementation of this strategy which effectively
diminished its gains in the Western Region, the NCNC began to rethink its association
with the NPC.

Further developments which finally culminated in the collapse of the coalition had to
do with political competition preparatory to the 1964 general elections. Long before
then, in March 1961, the Federal Government had ordered a national census.
Tentative results were said to have indicated that the South had a larger population
than the North. If accepted, the new figures would fault the colonial estimates, end the
population majority of the North and compel the creation of more federal
constituencies in the South.

Either threatened by the political implications of these possibilities or deferring to

claims that the figures were grossly inflated, the Balewa administration cancelled the
census figures and rescheduled another count for 1963. But this too was dogged by
controversy, for it gave the North a population majority, and was bitterly contested by
the regional governments in the South. Led by the NCNC, these regions prayed the
courts to void the census results which the NPC had passed into acceptance by
parliamentary fiat. When the court upheld the results, the NCNC pulled out of the
coalition on the eve of the 1964 elections, and from then on, the resumption of
extreme ethnic struggles in national politics became pronounced.

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 CHAPTER TWO

In Larry Diamond’s (1990:10) view, “the national census crisis not only heightened the
salience of ethnicity and region in politics, it also marked the beginning of fiercely
polarised competition between the NPC and the NCNC”, for as he noted elsewhere,
“when every election and political conflict became a struggle for supremacy not just
between parties but between ethnic groups and regions as well, everything was at stake
and no one could afford to lose” (ibid. p.33). Reminiscing on the conduct of past
elections, Diamond writes that “With the entire distribution of national power and
resources at stake, electoral conflict became more abrasively tribalistic and more
violent than ever before, featuring organised political thuggery and official obstruction
and repression of opposition campaigners” (Ibid. p.l 1).

Pandering to the passion for political supremacy, the parties engaged in a series of
gambits which produced two major alliances on the eve of the 1964 election. From the
West, Akintola’s NNDP teamed with its mentor, the NPC, to form the Nigeria
National Alliance (NNA). The NCNC joined forces with the AG and the Northern
Elements Progressive Union (NEPU) and came out as the United Progressive Grand
Alliance (UPGA). The formation of these two alliances was a major factor that
propelled the nation’s wheels as it cascaded downhill on its way to disintegration.
Kurfi (1983:20) put it most bluntly when he remarked that “stripped of their
ideological pretences, the formation of the alliances set the stage for a political battle
between the (Hausa/Fulani of the) north and (the Igbo of) the south, making the
campaign for the 1964 election bitter and violent”.

The election campaigns were said to have been badly marred by organised political
thuggery, official obstruction and repression of opposition campaigners
(Diamond, 1990). Protesting what it claimed to be the flouting of electoral rules, and
therefore, its faithlessness in the process, UPGA boycotted the elections in the entire
Eastern Region, and partly in the West, Midwest and Lagos. The results of the
elections were released all the same, and NPC clinched a landslide victory in the North
as usual while the NNDP was declared the winner in the West. Raking up the scores

25
 CHAPTER TWO

of its ally (NNDP) in the West, NPC claimed victory, waiting in the wings to be re­
inaugurated. But the President (and NCNC leader) whose constitutional job it was to
usher in a new cabinet declined to do so, arguing that UPGA had rejected the results
on the grounds that the elections were not free and fair. The ensuing stalemate
reached an awkward point where both President and Prime-Minister-elect had to seek
the counsel and support of the head of the Armed Forces, then a British. The Army
Chiefs verdict was that the NPC should form a cabinet, upon which the President
appointed it to do so (Okigbo, 1992).

Though the new government did come into being, the short stalemate that preceded its
inauguration has been argued to have further sharpened the consciousness of the
military toward their significance in the country’s political administration. Okigbo
(1992) asserts that the political leaders’ consultation with the armed forces sensitised it
to its political roles and thus paved the way for the first military coup in January, 1966.

Besides the electoral manoeuvres which intensified at the inception of the First
Republic, and weakened its democratic foundation, the eventual demise of that
Republic was accentuated by a succession of crises which cast serious doubts on the
credibility and legitimacy of civilian democratic governance. One such crisis was the
June 1964 workers strike over paltry remuneration at a time politicians were
wallowing in financial irregularities, extravagant consumption and glaring corruption
(Diamond, 1990). But even more devastating was the October 1965 Western Regional
election. Its conduct, and impact on the break-down of the First Republic is most
succinctly put:

Hated for its corruption, extravagance, neglect, and

collaboration with the “oppressor”6 of the Yoruba
people, the Akintola regime was compelled to
employ massive coercion as a substitute for
legitimate authority. Still it had to resort to
wholesale electoral fraud to salvage a claim to re­

6 After the imprisonment of the AG leader and political icon of Western Nigeria, Chief Obafemi
Awolowo, for treason, most Yoruba people felt alienated from Nigerian politics. To them, the NPC
and its leaders which had meddled in the politics and government of the Western Region was an
oppressor.

26
 CHAPTER TWO

election. With the announcement of this

preposterous result, the western Region erupted into
popular rebellion. The wave of violence and
destruction made the region effectively
ungovernable (Diamond 1990:12).

By December 1965, law and order had, without any reservation, given way to a
combination of arson, looting and ‘operation wetie’, a sordid form of lynching in
which the victim, usually a political opponent, was doused in petrol and set ablaze.

Perhaps, another state of emergency and a care-taker administration pending the

conduct of proper elections in the Region might have provided the antidote to the
crisis, but the view has been expressed that the Federal Government was reluctant to
apply that measure only because it did not want to hurt the NNDP with whom it allied
(Madiebo, 1980; Ademoyega, 1981). As the tension peaked, the Government waved
the mayhem aside as normal political rivalry, and paradoxically preoccupied itself with
hosting a Commonwealth Conference on the political future of what was then White
Minority ruled Rhodesia, now Zimbabwe. On 15th January 1966, a few hours after the
conference delegates had departed, the announcement was made over the national
radio network of the take over of government by a group of ‘young revolutionary
officers’.

2.3 The Concept and Philosophy of C o ups d’Etat

For a proper appreciation of military intervention in politics, it does not appear to

suffice to merely trace the political and historical antecedents of the first military coup
and its impact on subsequent ones. An attempt is, therefore, made here to
contextualise military intervention within the various political and philosophical
paradigms of power struggles.

23.1 The State. Power and Political Control: A Philosophical Framework

Political philosophers have devoted considerable effort toward analysing not only the
structure and functions of the State, but also the dynamics of power relations within it.

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 CHAPTER TWO

Worried about the fate of the individual bom free but shackled by society, the French
philosopher, Jean Jacques Rousseau, as far back as the 18th century, enunciated The
Social Contract.7 In it, he spelt out the responsibilities of the State towards
guaranteeing the security and survival of individuals and groups that make up the State
without subjecting them to any loss of personal freedoms. Rousseau had also
identified democracy, monarchy and aristocracy as the three forms of government
under which such a contract could happen. In his opinion, the ideal form was a
combination of democracy and aristocracy (elective aristocracy) in which the populace
freely elected rulers from among the most enlightened, the most qualified or the most
experienced.

Nevertheless, thinkers such as Thomas Hobbes and Niccolo Machiavelli, as well as the
proponents of fascism, would rather espouse the supremacy of the State over its
constituents, and the adoption of absolute State powers in dealing with them. In The
Prince. Machiavelli (Prezzolini,1967) theorised that the common good, the highest
ideal to which the individual could aspire, was only attainable within the ambit of an
organised State. Arguing that human beings are prone to selfish behaviours which
were likely to endanger both the common good and the survival of the State, he
prescribed the adoption of strict measures to hold the individual in check, and,
therefore, to preserve the State. And such measures, he reasoned, could only come
from a centripetal political administration with full and absolute powers. On his own
part, Hobbes’ endorsement of absolute State powers was pegged on the need to guard
society against degenerating to a state of nature (anarchy) (Hobbes, 1909).

Governments bearing a semblance, if not an exact design of this model can be found
today in dictatorial regimes in Africa and other developing regions. An incontestable
example is the Buhari military administration which overthrew a civilian government in
Nigeria in 1983. The social background prior to the coup was that of a debt-ridden
and badly pilfered economy, as well as widespread political disenchantment. In the

7 See The Social Contract or Principles of Political Rights in the Essentials of Rousseau (1974).
Translated by Lowell Bair, New York: Mentor Books.

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 CHAPTER TWO

view of the military, the economy as the index of the common good had been badly
undermined by a corrupt, selfish and undisciplined political class, and the growing
discontent was a threat to national security. From the time it assumed power up until
it was edged out in another coup in 1985, this administration was unpretentiously
Machiavellian in its approach to national issues. It launched a full-scale war against
indiscipline and corruption in which repression was let lose on the nation. Ihonvbere
(1991:607) said of the regime, “...the attack on popular organisations, notably trade
and student unions, as well as the detention of journalists, labour leaders, and social
critics, progressively pitted the public against the Buhari/Idiagbon administration...”

The question of power relations and roles of the different classes that make up society
dominated the attention of philosophers such as Plato and Karl Marx. Of these two,
the Platonic model of role differentiation in governance as set out in The Republic8
relates closer to the present attempt to locate the philosophical backgrounds of
military formation in States, as a prelude to the examination of military involvement in
politics. Defined as a fusion of families and kinships for the realisation of the common
good, the perfect State in Plato’s Republic comprised three formidable organic
segments, each with a clearly defined and distinguished role. These are the workers
who produce the material needs of society, the warriors who see to the protection of
property and territorial boundaries, and the wise who provide leadership. Good
government in Plato’s estimation was about providing or promoting the common good
(the collective welfare of the people), a task which he maintained could best be
achieved by the wise, hence he advocated aristocracy as the ideal system of running the
State. By his classification and assignment of roles, Plato provided a philosophical
foundation for the widely adopted political ideal in today’s Western liberal
democracies (and some developing nations) in which governance is accepted as the
exclusive domain of politicians operating from the platform of organised political
parties. Distanced from political struggles, the military in these democracies engage
purely in national defence, the exception being the remnants of Socialist States which

8 See Plato, (no date) The Republic (Jowett Translation), New York: Vintage Books.

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 CHAPTER TWO

adopted the Marxist centralisation of social roles (including the military) in the State
bureaucracy under a unitary political leadership based on the working class ideology.

2.4 The Emergence and Specialisation of Military Roles in Pevelopin 2 Nations

Even if they lacked the bureaucratic sophistication and technological superiority of

modem military institutions, military formations in pre-colonial African States were a
prominent arm of traditional social institutions. Old African dynasties such as those of
the Zulu, Songhai, Ashanti, Oyo and Benin had a reputation for strong armies which
were deployed for territorial protection or expansion (See Onwubiko, 1972).

But the traditions of the present day military bureaucracy were introduced in Africa
through colonialism. According to Ukpabi (1972:9), “military forces were the main
instruments used by the European powers for the expansion and consolidation of their
territories in Africa during the 19th and 20th centuries”. By the turn of the 19th
century, a period in which British trading companies intensified trade links with Africa,
the United Africa Company (UAC) later renamed the Royal Niger Company (RNC)
wielded such a strong presence in the Niger area (then, one of the fragments of British
territories) that it was granted a British government charter in 1886 to maintain peace
and orderly government. It then set up a regiment of armed officers; the fore-runner of
the present Nigeria Armed Forces.

In a dual typology of the military in Third World countries, Ikenna Nzimiro (1983:11)
classifies the Nigerian army under “the fragile hegemony of indigenous elites nurtured
and put in place by the colonising powers during the colonial period and ...reinforced
during the transfer of power which led to independence”. The second type of military
forces emerges from “the mobilisation of peasants, workers and others in armed
struggle for independence” or “the defence of a revolution and its ideals from foreign
and domestic foes of change”.

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2.5 Military Involvement in Politics: Theoretical Explanations

While it may be said without contradiction that the armed forces of most independent
developing nations, raised at independence, were primarily charged with national
security, and later, peace-keeping operations, the sometimes ill-suiting political
superstructures inherited or adopted by these nations at independence tend in most
cases to have made them vulnerable to political aberrations which arose in response to
crisis management. One sure instance of this situation is the involvement of the
military in politics, for as Riggs, (1993:204) rightly observes, “a coup normally takes
place during a crisis of confidence”.

Since military intervention in politics is of several types and outcomes, I have, for
purposes of clarity, thought it expedient to shed some light on the various forms of
intervention that I shall be discussing in the rest of this chapter. Riggs (1985:116-125)
offers a taxonomy that distinguishes different levels of such involvements. In this
classification, coups d’etat are forcible changes in government in which a group of
military officers successfully overthrow a constitutional regime and introduce a
bureaucratic polity. Before going any further on types of interventions, it is equally
necessary to clarify the use of regimes and bureaucratic polities in this context.
Generically, bureaucracy refers to all appointed public officials and the “organisational
apparatus through which they operate” (Riggs, 1993:228), and examples of sub-sets of
it include the civil-service and the military. Bureaucratic polity is adopted in reference
to military-run governments, since other sub-sets cannot seize power. Unlike a regime
defined in the Lasswellian sense as “a political system with a legitimising formula” in
the form of a constitution (Lasswell and Kaplan, 1950), military juntas or bureaucratic
polities are political systems without a regime: in the sense that they are governed not
with constitutions but by the logic of power. Lacking constitutional legitimacy, they
depend on violence and coercion for survival. This suggests, therefore, that there is
nothing like the term military regimes as it has been widely used in most literature.

To continue with levels of military intervention, putsches are failed or abortive coups,
while purges, a less conventional form of intervention, represent coup-like situations in

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which a faction of the ruling class aims at eliminating rival factions. There are also
covert coups, which as the description suggests, are not easily recognised by the public
as an intervention. Very common in Latin America where they are termed
pronunciamiento, they constitute a silent but effective arm-twisting in which some
military officers exert pressure on civilian leaders to effect far-reaching political
changes (including the replacement of the chief executive in some cases) in the interest
of the officers. Although the constitution is untampered with, a sort of quasi regime
emerges, for real power is tacitly transferred to a military pressure group acting from
behind the scene. Even when such pressures are not directly exerted, another form of
a covert coup arises from real or imagined fear of coups which compels civilian leaders
to either initiate actions to placate the military or cave in to specific military demands.

Masked coups occur when a military group sacks an elected civilian government,
suspends the constitution, but appoints a popular civilian to lead the new government.
The change of government in Fiji in 1987 typifies this kind of intervention.

In the case of monarchical regimes, the displacement of the reigning monarch is

referred to as a palace coup. Some historians of coups in the Third World have,
however, tended to adopt the term in referring to non-violent changes in which it is
alleged that the incumbent government, military or civilian, discretely agrees to hand
over power to a contending coup group.

Riggs also points out the need to distinguish between primary and secondary coups.
While the former, the most common in developing countries, denotes interventions in
which democratically elected civilian regimes are illegally and unconstitutionally
dismissed by a cabal of military officers, the latter refers to the replacement of one
military government by another group of coup plotters. Sometimes, the replacements
happen in very rapid successions. Nigeria has been the venue of a succession of
secondary coups in addition to two primary coups.

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During the decade of the first coup in Nigeria, in January 1966, the forceful
replacement of elected civilian governments by military juntas was an endemic blight in
the Third World. From May to December 1960, democratically elected civilian
governments had been overthrown by the military in Turkey, Congo, Laos, El
Salvador and Ethiopia. The following year was ushered in with another coup in El
Salvador in January, and from April through to December of the same year, Algeria,
Brazil, Syria and Ecuador had joined the growing league of nations whose political
administration had been jolted or hijacked by the military.

By and large, Africa seems to hold the record for the most frequent military seizure of
political power. In addition to the incidents of 1960 and 1961, the years 1963-1966
marked a watershed in coups d’etat on the continent. In January 1963, the
government of Togo was taken over by a clique of army officers, and in 1965, Algeria,
Benin and Zaire each witnessed a coup. A few weeks before the military struck in
Nigeria, in January 1966, Upper Volta (now Burkina Faso) and Central African
Republic had also fallen into military rule. Alan Rake (1984:24) estimates that by
1984, not less than 60 successful coups had taken place in Africa since independence,
beginning from the 1960s. With the statistics not significantly diminished at present,
the frequency of these coups ranges from one coup in 30 independent African nations
to two or more in 14 nations; with Nigeria, Ghana, and Benin leading on the league
table. The threat of military intervention to democratic governance is depicted in
Rake’s observation that even those African States under civilian rule are in danger of a
coup “should a group of soldiers feel that a change of power is required on the
grounds of efficiency, ideology or simply because they feel that they can run things
better than the politicians.” (Ibid. p.24).

Literature and statistics on coups, country-by-country are documented in the Banks

and Europa series, as well as in the works of researchers such as Clapham and
Philip,1985; Finer,1988; Fitch,1977; Janowitz,1977; Kelleher,1974; Kennedy,1974;
Linz and Stepan,1978; Loveman and Davies, 1978; Perlmutter,1977; Perlmutter and
Bennet,1980; Stepan,1988; Taylor,1983; Thompson, 1973; and Zimmerman, 1978/79.

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It should be noted, however, that the fluctuations in democracy: as some countries

under military rule revert to constitutional regimes, and those under civilian rule are
forced into military bureaucracies, make such statistics easily out of date. For
example, between April and October, 1997 alone, three African countries: Zaire, Sierra
Leone and Congo have been rocked by a military coup.

Ibeanu (1986:45) has observed that “reasons usually adduced for military intervention
in government...almost encompass all that could be said to be wrong with the society
and body politic”. It is worth reiterating here that attempts to locate the causes of
coups in one or more specific factors at any given time remain exercises in futility,
considering the myriad and intertwining factors most of which are not easily
recognisable as contributory vectors of military seizure of political power. But this
does not by any chance suggest that military intervention is a myth far beyond
reasonable explanations. A safe alternative in the analysis of coups, therefore, is to
contextualise it, for as Ibeanu rightly remarks, an understanding of the historical
development of the socio-economic setting in which the phenomenon occurs, appears
to be the most reliable point of departure (ibid. p.53).

Having earlier cited the claim that the political and economic superstructures inherited
by African nations at independence are largely responsible for stimulating the recurring
cases of military coups, I shall, at this juncture, focus attention on some political
theories which have been adduced either in favour or disavowal of that thesis. They
are basically aimed at the examination of political culture, the economic basis, the
military bureaucracy and political institutional structures of the nations in question.

2.5.1 Political Culture

After independence, the administration of the political superstructures put in place, for
the most part, by the departing colonial bureaucrats became the responsibility of an
indigenous political class and bureaucracy, politically known as the petty bourgeois.
As stated earlier, bureaucracy in this context refers to appointed public officials

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charged with responsibilities such as enforcing the law, implementing public policies,
and carrying out administrative duties, but keeping off political roles. It also applies to
the institutions through which these officials operate (Riggs, 1993). Political roles as in
leadership, formulation of policies and control of the entire State machinery were
exclusively assigned to a constitutionally elected political class. The political systems
adopted by new States in Africa for the discharge of such roles were patterned after
three foreign regime types, namely, the European parliamentary system, the American
presidentialist model and the Soviet style of one-party authoritarian regimes. A few
new States retained or adopted varying forms of monarchical rule.

Political scientists, or modernisation theorists as Ihonvbere (1991) calls them, such as

Finer (1962; 1988), Huntington (1968) and Perlmutter (1977) who dwell on levels of
political culture in the analysis of factors precipitating the fragility of democratic
regimes in developing nations argue that the inability of native politicians and
bureaucrats to institutionalise a sustainable political process generates crises and
factionalisation of the State so badly that the new regimes easily lose legitimacy and
credibility, making violent change an attractive option. Finer, for example, strongly
believes that “where civilian associations and parties are strong and numerous, where
the procedures for the transfer of power are orderly, and where the location of
supreme authority is not seriously challenged, the political ambit of the military will be
circumscribed...” (Finer, 1977:219).

However, Riggs (1993) has argued repeatedly that indigenous bureaucrats most of
whom played prominent roles in the agitation for self rule, and who eventually
inherited the government of the new States in the Third World moved swiftly to
appropriate the most attractive and rewarding offices to themselves, easily betraying
their interest in enjoying the perquisites of office much more than in serving the real
needs of the people whose mandate they were supposed to be exercising. Another
weakness with which the native bureaucrats were identified is their insensitivity to the
real needs for nationalisation. Riggs accuses them of not worrying about reforming

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public administration to suit the needs and conditions of the new States. They rather
simply maintained the old imperial bureaucratic structures (Ibid.).

The inordinate rush for the gains of office rather than an acceptance of, and devotion
to the responsibilities of public service, in Riggs’ view, has always produced
“bureaucrats (of the new States) who became increasingly corrupt, nepotistic, inept,
power hungry and oppressive” (Ibid. p.204). These features are identified by political
theorists as sure sign-posts towards praetorianism: a social dispensation “in which the
military tends to intervene and potentially dominate the political system” (Ibeanu,
1986:51). The political scenario which continued to unfold in Zaire at the time of this
study typically offers the most current praetorian dispensation. Having imposed a
personalised dictatorship on Zaire following his forceful seizure of political power in
1965, Joseph Mobutu clung tenaciously on to power for more than thirty years,
shedding his military rank in preference for civilian presidency, but not giving away an
inch of tolerance to any form of opposition. Worse still was the brazen manner in
which he frittered away the wealth of the nation in foreign safe havens, presiding over
a country whose citizens are classed among those living below the poverty margin. A
Channel Four documentary aired in June 1997, authoritatively estimated the amount of
Zaire’s wealth Mobutu had stolen and squirreled away in foreign safes, especially
Swiss Banks, at four billion US Dollars.

Plagued by economic impoverishment, unemployment and an uncertain future, many

Zaireans joined underground movements agitating for a change in government.
Backed by his American allies, Mobutu’s legendary spell over a loyal agency of state
coercion meant there was little or nothing such groups could achieve from within. For
a long time, however, an external rebel army led by Laurent Kabila, and said to be
backed by revolutionary regimes in China and Cuba, and by neighbouring countries
such as Uganda and Rwanda, all favourably disposed to the termination of the Mobutu
government, mounted a serious assault on the Mobutu government. On May 16,
1997, after negotiations brokered by President Nelson Mandela had failed to produce
any desirable results, and abandoned by his allies, Mobutu finally handed over the

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political administration of government to his hand-picked parliament and fled into

exile. Weeks later, the Kabila-led forces took over power. Depending on how the
new government handles the other rebel factions, and how much commitment it
devotes to the restoration of broad-based democracy, Zaire may yet remain on the grip
of praetorianism.

Arguing on the basis of the praetorian thesis, Huntington (1968, cited in

Ibeanu, 1986:50) posits that the inability of a regime to institutionalise its political
organisations and procedures promotes a system that “lacks the qualities of
adaptability, complexity, autonomy and continuity.” The ensuing discord and loss of
political control encourages all sorts of social forces and groups, especially arms of the
bureaucracy conventionally forbidden from political roles, to become covertly involved
in political protest. Conspicuous groups such as academics and students, labour
unions, civil servants, and even the clergy and military exert pressures in their
respective styles. The tendency, as Huntington points out, is for the unions to strike,
students to demonstrate, mobs to riot, and ultimately, for some military officers to
seize political power.

Apart from its ethnocentric bias in maintaining the position that praetorian military
bureaucracies exist only in developing nations (while conveniently regarding similar
interventions in Western nations e.g. Hitler’s Germany and Spain in the 1970s as
‘revolutions’), the praetorian hypothesis has been criticised for not taking on board the
fundamental social and economic forces that influence political institutions and
cultures, namely, modes of production, exchange and distribution (Ibeanu, 1986).

Otherwise, the hypothesis yields a great deal of insight on the failure of democratic
governance in most African States, especially Nigeria at the nascent stage of
independence and in the Second Republic as well. Riggs’(1993) characterisation of
bureaucrats of the new nations as being more interested in appropriating the
perquisites of public office than in discharging its responsibilities, finds a spitting

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image in the self-seeking petty bourgeoisie group, in particular, the political class that
took over government at the departure of the imperial powers in 1960.

The constant clashes for political advantages, as stated earlier in this chapter, gave rise,
first to the factionalisation of the polity through the politicisation of ethnicity9. And
when that failed to yield comfortable political supremacy over rival groups, the urge
for political profit gave birth to superficial and incompatible political alliances which
were clearly aimed at forming governments and sharing political offices rather than
bringing about a gradual unification of the country and nationalisation of its political
process. The proof of verisimilitude of Huntington’s10 hypothesis (that military
intervention in the political process is a manifestation of a regime’s inability to
institutionalise its political organisations and processes) in the Nigerian situation can be
argued in the country’s failure to attain political stability after more than three decades
of independence and experiments with both parliamentary and presidential systems of
government.

The non-institutionalisation of an orderly and coherent political process translates to

the adoption of an imperially designed bureaucratic structure based on capitalist
development which has been blamed for “standing in direct contradiction to the
aspirations of a majority of Nigerians for rational economic independence and socio­
economic progress” (Ibeanu, 1986:9). Writers such as Taiwo (1995), Nzimiro (1983),
Riggs (1993) and Ake (1985) have traced the incurable culture of corruption among
the political class and highly placed bureaucrats to this kind of political economy. And
in the true praetorian fashion, the intense display of disenchantment by the Nigerian
masses, as shown in the demonstrations that precede, or the jubilations that greet most
coups, has provided coup groups with justifications for intervention.

9 A detailed treatment of the role of politics in heightening ethnic divides in Nigeria can be found in
Nnoli Okwudiba (1978), Ethnic Politics in Nigeria. Enugu: Fourth Dimension Publishers.
10 Huntington, S.P., o p . cit.

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2.5.2 The Military as a Dominant Sub-set of State Bureaucracy

Widely available in most Western literature on military intervention in politics is the

assumption that the military, whether in developed or developing nations, is a
“sophisticated and competent arm of the State” (Ibeanu, 1986:46). Seen as a modem
institution comprising well trained personnel and a rich tradition of technological
expertise, centralisation of authority, military discipline, public service, bureaucratic
astuteness and structural and ideological cohesion, the military institution is ranked as
a conspicuously competent, organised and formidable part of the State bureaucracy
“capable of competing for the formulation and implementation of policies”, (ibid.
p.46) As part of the bureaucracy, however it is not supposed to play significant
political roles. But proponents of this approach to the explanation of military
intervention argue that when the political class fails (or is seen to have failed) to
execute its self-appointed tasks, “conditions necessary for the modernisation and
stability of the country are threatened, ambiguities of national loyalty set in, and the
regime suffers a loss of confidence” (Ibeanu, 1986:17). Consequently, the military,
exuding characterisations of competence and sophistication, in addition to their
monopoly of the State coercive apparatus to act authoritatively and forcefully,
intervene to preserve the State especially when highly politicised or sensitised to
political roles as in the Nigerian situation.11

Critics of this approach argue that it does not reflect the situation in developing
nations; an argument blandly based on the miscalculated premise that military
institutions in developing nations are not as sophisticated as those of industrialised
nations (Ibid. p.48). If at all, the remark about the non-sophistication of armed forces
in developing nations can only apply at the incipient stages of their formation, at
independence. Today’s armed forces, even in the poorest nations, have benefited from
foreign technology and training in terms of equipment and personnel development.
Riggs (1993) writes about military officers’ training abroad12 as part of aid packages

11 Examples include the First Republic leaders’ reliance on the army to resolve the political impasse
following the 1964 elections and the politicisation of the army through ethnically biased selection and
promotion.
12 Most Nigerian army officers, for example, have attended military courses at the Royal Military
Academy, Sandhurst, or at Warminster and in the United States.

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provided by the more industrialised countries, mutli-nationals and private foundations

to assist new states with major government development programmes.

Which brings us to a more practical perspective in the analysis of the military

bureaucracy. Though it may not be entirely true to attribute the acquisition of political
and revolutionary ideas by military officers to such training, the vital observation has
been made of how graduates of such foreign institutes have utilised their ‘old boy’
networks to regroup and plan for coups13 (ibid.). Considering also that arms supplied
to new States through foreign aid, as well as those supplied by illegal dealers, have
facilitated the seizure of power by disenchanted military officers, Carino (1991:58-73)
has argued about the “significant contribution of foreign aid to the growth of
bureaucratic power and the breakdown of constitutional regimes”. Other theorists
who have concentrated on the armed forces as prime movers in coups include Janowitz
(1977), Kennedy (1974), Finer (1975), Thompson (1973) and Perlmutter and Bennet
(1980).

A more substantial criticism of the ‘military sophistication’ approach comes from those
who argue that if technological sophistication or bureaucratic expertise or
organisational competence or ethos of public service were to be relied upon as an
explanation for military coups, countries in Europe and North America, the supposed
quintessence of military sophistication, but which are not exempt from political
incompetence, should all be under military rule once in a while. Furthermore, Riggs
(1993) has pointed out that it is always a cabal of army officers, and not the entire
military institution, that conspires to seize political power. Discourse on military
intervention based on sophistication of the military class, is, therefore a misnomer for
individual or group conspiracy. Riggs thus advocates that a proper appreciation of
coups should pay less attention on the behaviour, attitudes and ambitions of military
men, for as he argues, “the normal assumption that military officers have arrogantly
and ambitiously seized power and displaced civilian rulers is over-simplified, and masks
the institutional dynamics of a coup” (Ibid. p.201).

13 For example, the seven majors who eventually executed the first coup in Nigeria, as well as those
who initiated and hatched the revolutionary ideas were either classmates at Sandhurst and other
foreign military institutes or enlisted in the army the same year.

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The shift of emphasis towards contextual and institutional factors looks at the relative
capacity of constitutionally established regimes to govern effectively. Like Finer
(1988), Riggs believes that bureaucrats cannot seize political power in an effective and
viable political regime. Viability here refers to a regime’s ability to make feasible
policies in the interest of the common good, and to control and monitor the entire
bureaucracy to carry out administrative functions effectively in the implementation of
such policies, and in the hope of meeting the needs of the various social groups in the
State.

2.5.3 The Institutional Approach

By most definitions, military governments have no constitutional legitimacy, and are

therefore not regarded as political regimes. And herein lies the short-coming of the
institutional dynamics approach which focuses on the viability or otherwise of political
regimes: the institutional approach can apply to only primary coups, leaving secondary
coups unaccounted for. Nevertheless, closely related to the political culture approach,
its explanations on military intervention are very relevant in the Nigerian situation if
not many other developing nations.

The institutional approach focuses on formal structures of government based on

constitutional provisions. The explanation is that when leaders of a regime do not play
according to the mles of the constitution, they render the regime fragile and vulnerable
to either suspension or forceful replacement by an unconstitutional bureaucratic
(usually military) government. Riggs (1993), a key proponent of this approach, argues
that even though bureaucrats in modem political regimes are not expected to play
significant political roles, they do have interests, and most often, the bid to protect
such interests lures them into politics, especially when the State does not seem to be
capable of living up to expectation. A major feature of inherited bureaucracies which
often makes the exercise of political power attractive to it is what Riggs (1993:202)
describes as its ‘salariat’ character. Bureaucracies are staffed by full-time officials who
depend entirely (at least in principle) on their salary for survival. Whenever “the
constitutionally mandated constitutive system cannot secure the resources needed to

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support officials, some strategically placed officials (especially in the army and civil-
service) see that their best, perhaps only hope is to capture the government and
displace the politicians” (ibid.).

Why do military officers more than any other sectors of the bureaucracy such as
academics or civil servants play a conspicuous role both in the ousting of regimes and
in the leadership of the emergent bureaucratic polity? Bereft of constitutional
legitimacy, political bureaucracies as exemplified by military governments do not have
the kind of institutionalised formula for selecting leaders as in constitutional regimes.
The only option is for rulers of bureaucratic polities to emerge from among the most
powerful in the bureaucracy. Thus leaders of such polities must always be the military
officers, specialists in violence, power and coercion, the same weapons needed for
unconstitutional polities to remain in power. And because they expect the new system
to make good the interests that the regime failed to provide, the other sectors of the
bureaucracy always extend active support to the military.

The focus on the military as dominant players in coup scenarios must not blot the
equally significant role of civilian bureaucrats. Writers like Diamond (1990), Oyewole
(1991) and Ihonvbere (1996) have lamented over the short-sightedness of members of
the political class (mostly the opposition), academics, career civil servants and even
civil rights proponents who invite the army to intervene in the political process
whenever the State is undermined by political and economic problems. Journalists, as
stated in the introduction, have also been accused of joining, if not leading the call for
military rule in most cases (Oyewole, 1991; Buckman, 1996). As an influential group
in the shaping of political consciousness in Nigeria, print media journalists’
predisposition to military intervention will be of significant impact in the sustenance or
containment of military rule. Which is why this study has chosen to examine the
position of journalists in the entire discourse on military intervention in Nigerian
politics.

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2.5.4 The Political Economy Approach

So far, the argument has tilted heavily towards military intervention as symptomatic of
the fragility of neo-colonial political superstructures. But the political economy
approach to the study of military intervention in developing nations goes an extra
length to investigate the fundamental socio-economic forces that fuel the continued
fragility of the new states. It focuses on the relationship between modes of production
and power domination within the various segments of a society. The central thesis
here is that if the segment or class that controls state power does not equally control
the means and system of production, its power easily becomes brittle and subject to
inordinate struggle since it cannot effectively enunciate sustainable economic policies
let alone implement programmes toward the generation of resources needed to stabilise
and consolidate State power (Ibeanu, 1986). Usually, the direct consequence of this
kind of establishment is the rabid inter-class rivalry for the control of State power, and,
therefore, for the control of resource production and distribution. A typical scenario
was the Bolshevik revolution that was claimed to have brought about the economic
and political dominance of the proletariat in the former Soviet Republics.

The applicability of this hypothesis in developing States lies more in the immensity of
political power and the lack of sustainable (democratic) traditions for its sharing or
alternation among the various segments competing for it. Without any constitutional
or democratic mandate, military leaders such as Colonel Gamal Abdel Nasser of Egypt
(1954-70), General Park Chung Hee of Korea (1961-79), and Field Marshal
Mohammad Ayub Khan of Pakistan (1958-69) had almost perpetuated themselves in
office. Civilian record holders in protracted stay in office include presidents Kamuzu
Banda of Malawi and Mobutu Sese Seko of Zaire.

The hypothesis also mirrors the lack of institutionalised restraint on the abuse of
power. As enormous and formidable as it can be in developing States, most of which
espouse democratic ideals, but are at best quasi democratic polities, political power has
been a predominant means of acquiring influence, social security, and wealth in the
shortest possible time. Most unfortunately, it has also been the source of domination

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and repression of classes outside the corridors of power. The likes of Idi Amin of
Uganda, Kamuzu Banda of Malawi, and Bedel Bokassa of Central Africa Republic
exemplify dictators who unleashed raw brutality on citizens of their countries.

It is in the light of the inordinate quest for power that writers like Nnoli (1981), Ake
(1983) and Lofchie (1972) have strongly argued that politicians in developing nations
not only invest heavily in the business of power control, expecting short-term material
tum-overs, but also go about political contests in battle gears. The violent campaigns
and bloody crises following results of certain elections in Nigeria as mentioned
previously in this chapter, without any doubts, reflect the commodification of electoral
contests and the extent to which the petty bourgeois class could go in an all out bid for
political power.

An even more significant issue in this discourse is the suitability of such violent, non­
rule derived quest for power to military intervention in politics. This can be gleaned
from the works of political analysts such as Ibeanu (1986) and Nnoli (1981) who
have identified the military class as a prominent faction of the elite, and which is not
left out in the contest for the control of state power. During such struggles which are
euphemistically termed political campaigns, or the protestations over their outcomes, a
band of officers usually acting on behalf of the military institution (which, as part of the
State bureaucracy, is barred from political contests) merely stands aloof, waiting for
the auspicious moment to disband the feuding civilian contestants and to declare itself
the interim custodian of State government, a situation enormously assisted by the
inability of most political regimes in developing nations to assume a firm control over
the coercive apparatus of the State. Such an opportunity has been repeatedly offered
to such ambitious military officers in the Nigerian Army in the endemic economic,
political, and leadership problems that have beset the various political administrations
in the country. Even when it is not inter-class faction as in the army versus the
political class, the struggle for political control can be intra-class, mostly responsible
for the wave of secondary coups in which one military administration is unseated by
another cabal.

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2 .6 The Climate o f C oups d’etat in Nigeria

Having attempted a review of some of the relevant theoretical frameworks adopted in

conceptualising military intervention in Nigeria and other nations offering examples of
military-dominated bureaucracies, it is apposite to present, at this juncture, a brief but
comprehensive overview of the cycle of military coups in Nigeria. Apart from
assessing how the preceding theories fit into the Nigerian context, this overview is
dictated by the need to compare the proximity between historical documentations
regarding coups, and the climate of opinion among journalists whose predisposition to
coups was examined in the survey that forms part of the method of data collection for
this work. Such predispositions, presented in chapter seven, shall, in conjunction with
this overview, also influence the framing of discussions on the entire results of this
empirical investigation.

2.6.1 The January 15.1966 Coup

It may not be implausible to argue that the maiden coup that displaced the Tafawa
Balewa regime and set a precedent for the militarisation of governance in Nigeria up
until today, had its roots in the very conception and birth of the Nigerian State. A
critical look at the political and social problems that encumbered the First Republic,
repeating themselves as the nation’s political system prevaricated from one model to
another, points to the initial exercises that culminated in the creation of Nigeria as a
British colony. This point of view has been insistently reiterated in major works by
both Nigerian and Western analysts of Nigeria’s political history ( Kirk-Green, 1971;
Moyibi, 1972; Ayandele, 1979; Dudley, 1982; Taiwo, 1990; Ihonvbere and Vaughan,
1995).

Tracing the political background to Nigeria’s failed democracies, as witnessed in its

frequent coups and a thirty-month long civil war (1967-70), most writers point
accusing fingers on the imperially-engineered fusion of the culturally incompatible
peoples that make up the present-day Nigeria. Madiebo (1980:3), for example, insists

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that “the Federation of Nigeria, as it exists today, has never really been one
homogeneous country, for its widely differing peoples and tribes are yet to find any
basis for true unity”. The colonial power, he maintains, disregarded “this unfortunate
yet obvious fact...to keep the country united in order to effectively control its
(colonial) economic interest”. It is perhaps, in line with this contention that
Ademoyega (1981:1), while admitting the credits of the colonial government, argues
that Nigeria’s political problems sprang from “the care-free manner in which the
British took over, administered and abandoned the government and people of Nigeria”.

Though Nigeria became independent in 1960, the imprint of colonialism seemed to

have been etched on its political, social and economic future. Riggs’ analysis of why
most new States soon became fragile and incapable of effective self rule is true of
Nigeria. He points out that in contradistinction to the more industrialised nations in
Europe and North America which had over a long time evolved a political culture for
the control and utilisation of State bureaucracy in achieving the tasks of public
administration, policy implementation, and national security, developing States
attempted to put such infrastructure in place only on the eve of independence “after the
imperial powers for whatever reasons decided to hand over power” (Riggs, 1993:200).
Nigeria’s First Republic, constitution and system of government were based on the
British parliamentary model: its army was not only oriented towards monarchical
militarism but was also run by the British several years after independence.
Furthermore, the entire bureaucratic apparatus was purely Western. The seeds of
instability sowed by these borrowed systems and institutions only needed time to
germinate and bear fruit.

The introductory chapter, as well as the present one, has highlighted the blooming of
such fruit by tracing how the political culture of ethnic considerations over national
interest, political violence in the contest for power, electoral fraud, political corruption,
and a self-seeking political class rendered the First Republic a non-viable polity. It is
instructive to recall, at this point, that preparations for the first coup in 1966 were said
to have begun as early as 1961 when the military trio of Chukwuma Nzeogwu,

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Adewale Ademoyega and Emmanuel Ifeajuna met to compare notes about their
revolutionary visions for the salvation of the new nation (Ademoyega, 1981).

In the first five years of the First Republic, writes Diamond (1990:8), “the political
system was buffeted by a succession of five major crises which heavily eroded the
popular legitimacy of the regime”. Helped by the opportunistic conduct of the political
class, these crises arose basically from intra-party feud, ethnic and sub-ethnic political
mobilisation, politicisation and manipulation of national demography, neglect of
masses’ welfare, and ultra-violent electoral conflicts. Of all these, perhaps, the most
volatile were the 1964 workers’ strike which paralysed the economy, and the Western
Regional election fiasco in 1965. All along, elections14 had remained an irrepressible
index of Nigeria’s false claim to a democratic status. As Diamond put it, they exposed
“the shallow commitments of political elites to democratic norms of tolerance and fair
play, showing the First Republic as a quasi democracy struggling to establish a fully
democratic government” (Ibid. p.8).

Not even the fine liberal ideals of the first constitution could guard against the assault
on democracy. Though it guaranteed a wide range of political and civil rights, the
constitution in the First Republic had the dangerous loophole in the form of the
provisos which rendered each of those rights subordinate to laws that were
“reasonably justifiable in a democratic society...in the interest of national security,
public order” and other indefinite public rights. By a simple majority of votes in
parliament, for example, the Federal Government could impose a state of emergency
on a Regional government. If applied judiciously, and in national interest, there was
nothing wrong with such powers. But its abuse by the government was clearly
demonstrated in its arbitrary imposition and withdrawal in the Western Region in 1962
purely on political grounds, and in the same government’s deliberate refusal to declare
an emergency in the same Region when it was most expedient in 1965, again for
political considerations.

14 And even when a free and fair election in 1993 was expected to have paved the way for the
institutionalisation of a much needed democratic polity, the military administration of General
Babangida nullified the results, and plunged the nation back into the throes of military dictatorship.

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While believing that the anarchy that arose from the uncontrolled election crisis in the
West in 1965 created a conducive atmosphere for military intervention, I agree with
Okigbo’s (1992:73) thesis that such political problems constituted sign posts, and not
“necessary and sufficient causal factors” of the January 1966 coup. Other
(predisposing) factors have been identified as having influenced that coup even if
remotely.

One such factor was what some writers see as a politically unwise consultation with
the higher ranks of the Nigerian Armed Forces following the 1964 political stalemate
over the formation of cabinet. As stated previously, the 1964 national elections had
been boycotted by UPGA, but the electoral commission had, all the same, declared
NPC the winner. The then President of the Federation, and Leader of one of the
prominent parties in the UPGA refused to invite the NPC leader who was the
incumbent Prime Minister to form a government. As the impasse persisted, both
President and Prime Minister turned to the armed forces for endorsement. This was
seen as a dangerous precedent, for it was thought to have sensitised the army to
political roles.

Supporting this opinion, Okigbo (1992:66) argues that “there was no indication that
the Nigerian Armed Forces had any political desires prior to that constitutional crisis”,
while Nzimiro (1983) says that the officer corps developed into a military oligarchy by
1965 having been courted and encouraged by civilian politicians.

Without completely rejecting this line of argument, it is necessary to remind its

proponents of the possibility that most officers of the Nigerian Army in the First
Republic had already acquired political and revolutionary ideals even before being
commissioned. According to Adewale Ademoyega who enlisted in the Army in 1962,
and was one of the three initiators of the first coup, initial recruits were not well
educated, but a new era dawned from 1962 when “more and more educated (university

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graduates), politically conscious and revolutionary Nigerians joined the officers corps
of the army” (Ademoyega, 1981:28).

Apart from the presence of such ‘political officers’, the politicisation of the army
through the skewed selection and promotion of officers volunteers another piece of
evidence that the army had political instincts earlier than most observers thought.
Before the first coup in 1966, Nigeria had 19 military installations, 12 of which were in
Kaduna alone. With two more in Zaria, and one in Kano, the North had a total of 15
such installations, leaving the South with only four (three in the West, and one in the
Eastern Region). This concentration also reflected the quota of recruitment into the
Armed Forces: 60% for the North, 15% for the Western and Eastern Regions each and
10% for the Mid-west.15

Madiebo (1980) argues that the concentration of both installations and population of
the army in the North was more deliberate than it could be thought to be coincidental.
He contends that the North, having been convinced by the Colonial Government that
only the group that controlled the army could aspire to run a stable government in
Nigeria after independence, first accepted British-supervised installation of major
military units in the north, and then struggled to gain control of the army by securing
an absolute majority within its rank and file.

If these were the foundations of military politicisation, its actualisation, at

independence, came through the promotion and career advancement of officers based
on political patronage rather than on established indices of merit. As a measure aimed
at securing the loyalty of the military institution, this strategy was very successful, for
most officers were said to have closely identified themselves with political parties and
leading politicians in search of favours. Madiebo has accounts of how the struggle for
the leadership of the army after the departure of the last British Commander in 1964
drove the Commander of the First Brigade, Brigadier Ademulegun into identifying

15 See Madiebo (1980:9-10).

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with and serving the needs of the ruling NPC, even if it meant flouting military
procedures in the bid to demonstrate his loyalty to the party. The other contestant to
the position, Brigadier Aguiyi Ironsi was also said to have sought political patronage, a
situation which split the army into two political camps. Those who remained neutral,
according to Madiebo, eventually saw a coup as the only means of restoring normalcy
in the political and military institutions of the new nation (ibid).

That coup came eventually on January 15, 1966 when Major Chukwuma Nzeogwu, on
behalf of the Supreme Council of the Revolution of the Nigerian Armed Forces,
announced, in a nation-wide broadcast, the suspension of the constitution, the
government and elected assemblies at federal and regional levels, the declaration of
martial law, and the banning of all political, cultural, tribal and trade union activities.
Declaring their targets as political opportunists, corrupt politicians and bureaucrats
who had made a high art of graft and abuse of office, as well as tribalists and nepotists
who had sponsored ethnic rivalries for selfish political gains, Nzeogwu stated that “the
aim of the Revolutionary Council is to establish a strong, united and prosperous nation
free from corruption and internal strife. Our method of achieving this is strictly
military...” 16

Incidentally, in the 1960s, a great part of Africa, as in Asia and Latin America, seemed
to have embraced the culture of military displacement of civilian regimes17, a fad which
has also been considered in the discourse of factors which pre-disposed the Nigerian
Army to the revolution.

2.6.2 The .July 29.1966 Counter C o u p

Up to the point at which it brought the civilian government in the First Republic to an
abrupt end, the January military revolution was a success. If anything, it disbanded the
‘self-seeking and corrupt politicians’ whom it described as the targets of the coup.

16 The full text of the speech can be found in Appendix 3.1

17 The following nations, for instance, were overtaken by military juntas: Togo - 1963, Algeria, Benin
and Zaire - 1965, Upper Volta (now, Burkina Faso) and Central Africa Republic - 1966.

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 CHAPTER TWO

However, for the inability of the revolutionaries to take full control of government,
which actually swung into the hands of ‘reactionary officers’ headed by the General
Officer Commanding the Nigerian Army, Major-General Aguiyi Ironsi, the coup ended
up a mere putsch. Tricked into conciliatory talks for power-sharing, after they had
failed to capture Lagos, the seat of the federal government, leaders of the revolution
were rounded up and herded into detention, and that too spelt the death of the
revolutionary ideals.

Whether he seized the opportunity to take over the government18 or the remnant of
the civilian Council of Ministers mandated him as the most senior military officer, and
in the absence of a normal political cabinet, to take care of governance, Ironsi became
Nigeria’s first military ruler. But it was a position he was not destined to hold. Being
an Igbo from Southern Nigeria was already enough logic for those who peddled the
propaganda about Southern, (Igbo) domination of national politics as the aim of the
January revolution. Ejoor (1993), for example, argues that the Igbos sought to use
their advantaged position in the army to take control of political administration of the
country which eluded them through the normal process of democratic elections in the
1950s and early 1960s. It will be recalled that a majority of the revolutionaries were of
Southern origin, and moreover, the victims were mainly Northern political and military
elites.

Debunking the Igbo domination thesis, Jason (1990, quoted in Okigbo 1992:75)
argues that first of all, the constitution of the Revolutionary Council must have been
based on like-minded officers who shared the common ideal for a change, and not
necessarily on the need to reflect national character or regional balancing. Secondly,
“the Igbos were at the commanding heights of public and business affairs in Nigeria in
1966, and so there was no rational excuse (for them to crave more than any other
group) to change the status quo”. An additional perspective in the argument against
Igbo domination is the complicity of officers from the North. Ademoyega (1981:108)

18 Some observers of the First Republic such as Ejoor (1993) imply that the situation after the coup
was still normal for continued civilian governance.

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 CHAPTER TWO

has expressed misgivings that “when allegations of tribalism and sectionalism were
mounted against us, and abuses hurled at us, no mention was made of any Northern
officers or men. It was made to seem as if they had neither taken part nor approved of
the actions, whereas many Northern officers and men did not only take part and
approve of the coup, but were extremely jubilant and most vociferous that the
revolution should continue”. He recounts, as an instance, that Lt. Col Hassan
Katsina, a prominent Northern senior officer who became the governor of the
Northern Region after the revolution had been neutralised by Ironsi, made a speech in
praise of the revolution, lauding its selflessness and principles, and promising to stand
by such principles.

Nevertheless, these explanations were not acceptable to the proponents of the Igbo
domination theory. And to compound an already volatile situation, Ironsi envisioned
the unification of Nigeria only in terms of abrogating federalism in preference for a
unitary system of government, which meant an extreme centralisation of power in the
federal government. The announcement of the Unification Decree (no. 34 of 1966),
seen as a politically unwise move (Ihonvbere, 1991) was like a tinder that set the
nation ablaze. Added to the lop-sided coup killings, the decree was interpreted as the
empowerment of a South-controlled government for further hostilities against the
North. Some expatriates as well as academics, especially, at the Ahmadu Bello
University, Zaria have been accused of not only leading the anti-Igbo crusade as a
means of re-establishing political power in the North, but also inciting students from
the North against those from the South (Madiebo, 1980). The regionally-controlled
media such as Radio Kaduna and the New Nigerian have equally been accused of
joining in the campaign of hostility against Southerners in general and Igbos in
particular by April of 1966. A month later, the sentiments had exploded into killings
and destruction of property, with Southerners residing in the North as casualties.
After a week of such hostilities, three thousand lives had already been lost (ibid).

Ironsi was said to have failed to read the ominous signs, shunning the tension,
uncertainty, wanton killings and destruction of property while embarking on a nation­

52
 CHAPTER TWO

wide tour to sell the unitary system of government. Capitalising, therefore, on the
climate of confusion, a faction of the army comprising mainly Northern officers led by
Lieutenant-Colonels Murtala Muhammed, Yakubu Gowon, and Theophilus Danjuma
began what was clearly a mission of vengeance on July 29, 1966. They arrested the
Head of State who was then in the Western Region, and killed him and his hosting
Regional governor, Lt.Col. Fajuyi. Other victims of the counter coup were mainly
officers from Southern Nigeria (Ademoyega, 1981).

On August 1, 1966, a few days after the killings, and when no official announcements
had been made regarding the fate of Ironsi and other missing government officials, one
of the leaders of the secondary coup, Lt.Col. Yakubu Gowon, announced himself as
the new Head of State and Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces, a development
which was to spark a fresh and persisting wave of political unrest. Arguing that the
head of state’s position was not vacant for as long Ironsi’s death had not been officially
announced, and that Gowon was not the most suitably qualified for the post both by
experience and seniority19, some of his colleagues, championed by the then Governor
of the Eastern Region, Lt. Col. Odumegwu Ojukwu, refused to recognise the new
Head of State. This very disputation, combined with the continued killings of
Southerners in the North despite the abrogation of the much hated Unification Decree,
and regardless of the killing of Ironsi and several Igbo army officers, generated feelings
of insecurity and mistrust among the people of Eastern Nigeria. And after a series of
negotiations and peace accords most of whose agreements20 Gowon had failed to
honour, the Eastern Region announced its secession from Nigeria, declaring itself the
Republic of Biafra on May 27, 1967. If allowed, more regions were very likely to have
gone their own way, while the North, land-locked and bereft of natural resources to
stand on its own, would have been the loser (Ademoyega, 1981). The Federal
government was, therefore, not willing to let the Eastern Region set this ‘dangerous’
precedent. The bid to foil the secessionist move plunged the nation into a 30-month

19 Brigadier Ogundipe who was then next in command to Ironsi, and a couple of other officers senior
in rank to Gowon were still around.
20 An example of such broken agreements was the ‘Aburi Peace Accord’ reached in Ghana.

53
 CHAPTER TWO

long civil war which depleted lives in millions, in addition to economic and social
losses.

When the war finally came to an end in January 1970, Gowon had to his credit, the
unification of Nigeria, and with his major antagonists who fought on the Biafran side
edged into either exile or submission to the new dispensation, he had no further
challenges to his authority as head of state.

Nine years in office, Gowon was the longest serving of both military and civilian rulers
of Nigeria. His immediate action plan was a populist programme of reconciliation,
reconstruction and rehabilitation. The eventual take-off of the 12-State structure of
government which had been announced shortly before the commencement of the civil
war, as well as the mammoth revenue from oil sales, especially during the 1973
Middle-East crisis provided Gowon with the political popularity and economic means
he needed to return the nation to peace and prosperity.

But it was clear, or so it seemed, to the military officers running the government that
their rightful place was not in the government house. In fact, Gowon had, on assuming
office, promised to put plans in place for an early return to civilian democracy in 1976,
a pledge he repeated in every major speech. These plans were contained in a nine-
point programme of action whose highlights included the reorganisation of the army,
curbing of corruption, an outlay of the second national development plan, a social
welfare package for war-displaced citizens, and preparations for drafting a new
constitution. In an independence anniversary broadcast in 1974, however, Gowon
raised not a few eyebrows when he announced an indefinite postponement of the
transition to civil rule, claiming that 1976 was no longer a realistic date. He explained
this detour on the basis that “those who aspired to lead the nation on the return to
civilian rule have not learnt any lessons from past experience. It would therefore be
utterly irresponsible to leave the nation in the lurch by a precipitate withdrawal which

54
 CHAPTER TWO

will certainly throw the nation back into confusion,” he argued (Newswatch , May 21,
1990).

Some of his close associates dismiss this claim as a watery defence from one hard
pressed for a justification of an unpopular and ill-motivated decision. Ejoor (1993),
for example, has tried to prove what he believes to be the true motive of the change.
He quotes close aides of Gowon as asserting that the Head of State was persuaded by
influential political interests in the North led by the Sultan of Sokoto to reverse the
1976 date. The North had yet to select and groom Gowon’s successor from among
the Hausa-Fulani political oligarchy. Ejoor’s belief in this assertion was strengthened
by the fact that Gowon’s announcement of the postponed transition came shortly on
his return from a tour of the Sokoto emirate.

Public confidence in the credibility of the Gowon administration further plummeted

with widespread allegations of abuse of office and financial impropriety levelled against
his cabinet, State Governors and Commissioners. By 1971, barely a year after the civil
war, oil production and export had replaced agriculture as the mainstay of the
economy. The production rate then was put at 2 million barrels of crude oil per day,
making Nigeria the seventh world’s largest producer and exporter of oil in the 1970s21.

The ensuing boom from petroleum revenue inclined Nigeria to an unprecedented

culture of extravagance, waste and corruption. In fact, the Head of State was once
quoted as having stated that his problem then was not knowing what to do with
money. A classic case of financial waste and official corruption was the 1974/75
cement importation scandal. Following a Federal Government order for the supply of
20 million tons of cement from abroad without adequate ports facilities to handle
vessels, not less than 450 ships loaded with cement berthed for months waiting to be
off loaded. And Nigeria was paying a demurrage of 0.5 million US dollars daily
(Ibeanu, 1986). In addition, Nigeria lost a whopping 113,610,000 dollars in over­

21 At present, Nigeria ranks sixth, according to Nigeria National Petroleum Corporation publications,
1994.

55
 CHAPTER TWO

invoicing between 1974 and 1975 (ibid.). Yet the actual needs of the Ministry of
Defence which requisited for 16 million tons of the entire supply was said to be only
2.9 million tons22. An inquiry into the scandal after Gowon’s administration had been
overthrown found a majority of the officials connected with the ministry and the
contract, especially, permanent secretaries, guilty of corrupt self enrichment among
other charges.

At home, governors, commissioners and others closely associated with the government
had a field day awarding highly inflated contracts for white elephant projects through
which they were believed to have amassed stupendous wealth which they also flaunted
to the exasperation of ordinary citizens. The Head of State was either weak or morally
moribund to check the excesses of his subordinates. In fact, in some cases, such as the
celebrated Aku versus Gomwalk23 contention, he covered suspected officials while
individuals or media organisations which questioned their probity faced harsh reprisals.
Ihonvbere (1991:605) captures the mood of that epoch in the following remarks:

Unfortunately, the years after the civil war witnessed

the highest levels of corruption, waste,
mismanagement, non-accountability, irresponsibility
within the ranks of the army, and misplaced
priorities. Gowon’s military governors abused their
powers, looted their respective treasuries, and
engaged in all sorts of extravagant jamborees. In the
vain belief in his own popularity as orchestrated by
sycophants, Gowon neglected the demands of non-
bourgeois forces for accountability, discipline, basic
human needs, a sense of direction, and a check on
corruption and waste.

It was no surprise when all but one of the 12 governors that served under Gowon were
found guilty of corruptly enriching themselves, and made to forfeit assets to the
government after the overthrow of Gowon.

22 This disclosure was made at the Justice Belgore Tribunal on Cement Importation in 1975 by Mr.
Latkin-Smith, the officer in charge of Army Development Projects of the Ministry of Defence under
Gowon’s government.
23 Aper Aku, a citizen of the then Benue-Plateau State, swore an affidavit, accusing Joseph Gomwalk,
the military governor of the state, of corruption and gross abuse of office. Gowon declared Gomwalk
innocent, and Aku was found guilty of libel.

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 CHAPTER TWO

But before then, the lop-sided situation in which a couple of governors and their close
associates plundered the oil wealth while the Head of State refused or found himself
unable to either probe or drop them, created disaffection in the army, among many
senior officers who were either starved of their own chance to have a go at wealth
acquisition, or simply disgusted with the rot.

Adding a number of other shoddily executed national plans, in particular, the 1973
census which was marred by irregularities, as well as continued media criticisms, it did
not come as surprise when a junta headed by Gowon’s close associates in the Supreme
Military Council announced the fall of Gowon’s nine-year rule on July 29, 1975 while
he attended an OAU meeting in Kampala, Uganda. According to Diamond (1990:13),
“the express intentions of that coup were to clean out the massive rot of corruption
and economic waste that had settled during the Gowon years and to make good the
pledge Gowon had indefinitely deferred, to return the country to civilian democratic
rule.”

Headed by an uncompromising Brigadier Murtala Mohammed, the new military

government had a reputation for instant and decisive action, especially in its crusade
against corruption, indiscipline, inefficiency and the lack of probity in public office. An
initial indication of the seriousness of this administration was the immediate removal
from office of all of Gowon’s twelve governors, most of whom were subsequently
retired from the army with ignominy, and made to forfeit assets to the federal
government following their indictment in a panel of enquiry on the conduct of
government officers under Gowon’s administration. Following also the
recommendations of several other panels which probed scandals and assets of public
officers, almost every public sector had a share in the ‘purge’ in which many thousands
of bureaucrats were relieved of their positions for one misconduct or another24.

24 According to Oijiako (1979), over ten thousand civil servants were sacked for abuse of office.

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 CHAPTER TWO

By far, Mohammed’s dynamism was most manifest in the political front. In his
independence anniversary broadcast to the nation on October 1, 1975, he announced
October 1, 1979 as the precise date for the restoration of civil rule, emphasising in a
manner that had come to characterise his unwavering stance, that his administration
would on no condition stay longer than the set deadline. In preparation for that date,
he announced a four-year programme that included the drafting and review of a new
constitution, creation of new States, and reorganisation of local governments.

It is the view of writers such as (Ejoor, 1993) that Mohammed, in his sanitisation
exercise, must have upset so many interests within the military and entire national
bureaucracy, regardless of his popularity with the masses. On February 13, 1976, he
was assassinated in a failed coup led by an incoherent25 Lt.Col. Buka Dimka. But
Mohammed’s loyalists who easily squelched the ill-planned coup produced a
replacement from their ranks. He was Major-General Olusegun Obasanjo,
Mohammed’s next-in-command, who faithfully implemented the transition programme,
climaxing in the conduct of elections in August 1979, and the inauguration of a civilian
regime on October 1, 1979. This was also the inception of Nigeria’s second Republic.

2.6.3 The December 31.1983 Coup and the Fall of the Second Republic

The constitution of the Second Republic provided for the US-styled presidentialist
model of government, with an elected executive president and vice president heading
the executive arm of government, a bicameral legislature comprising the senate and the
house of representatives, and an ‘independent’ judiciary26. It also had a generous
allowance for fundamental rights as well as regulatory bodies such as the Code of
Conduct Bureau and Tribunal to ensure adherence to such provisions. Considering the
above provisions in addition to the express requirement of broad ethnic and religious
mix as a condition for the recognition and registration of political parties, as well as the
creation of an autonomous Federal Electoral Commission (FEDECO) to conduct the

25 See Dimka’s coup speech in Appendix 3.4.

26 Some critics have, however, wondered how independent the judiciary can be when the supreme
court justice, and federal high court judges are appointed by government.

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 CHAPTER TWO

1979 elections, some observers were optimistic that the Second Republic was going to
take off on a strong foundation (Diamond, 1990).

The problem, however, lay with implementation. Although the transition programme
had evolved over a four-year period, there was no time for the development and
socialisation of political parties and parties in line with the desired ideals of the new
constitution. When the ban on politics was lifted in October 1978, political
associations had only three months to apply for registration. Of a motley crowd of
about 50 parties that clamoured for recognition, only 19 managed to file registration
papers, out of which only five were registered.

Remarkably, these parties emerged as re-incamations of the First Republic parties, led
by the same actors, and confining their bases in particular ethnic areas. The National
Party of Nigeria (NPN) (whose presidential candidate, Alhaji Shehu Shagari was a
cabinet minister in the NPC government in the sixties) was basically Northern-based,
and, therefore, a new edition of the NPC. Led by Chief Obafemi Awolowo, the
opposition leader in the First Republic, and based in the West, the Unity Party of
Nigeria (UPN) was undoubtedly the AG in a new mould. The same could be said of
the Nigeria People’s Party (NPP) relative to the old NCNC, for both old and new were
led by Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe, and based in the East. The radical opposition to the
feudalist Hausa-Fulani Oligrachy, the Northern Peoples Element (NEPU) reproduced
itself in the People’s Redemption Party (PRP) led by Mallam Aminu Kano. Its fold
included a number of self-proclaimed radical socialists such as Balarabe Musa and
Abubakar Rimi. The fifth and only party that did not seem to have any roots in the
First Republic was the Great Nigeria People’s Party, a break-away faction of the NPP
(Ake, 1983).

Ignoring the inherent culture of appeal to ethnic sentiments, intra-party disputes, and
electoral malpractices, the campaigns for the 1979 elections were described as

59
 CHAPTER TWO

relatively peaceful (Diamond, 1990). But the results, as usual were dogged by
vehement protests which threatened to stall the take-off of the Second Republic.

First of all, the electoral law had stipulated that a presidential candidate was required
to secure 25% of votes cast in two-thirds of Nigeria’s 19 States to become President.
At the end of polling, the NPN which came top won 25% in 12 States. But it was
declared winner by FEDECO which interpreted NPN’s 25% votes in 12 States plus
two-thirds of 25% votes in a thirteenth State as the equivalent of two-thirds of 19
states. The UPN which was the runner-up challenged FEDECO’s decision in court but
was defeated. Thus, the stage was set for the bitter confrontation that marked NPN-
UPN relations all through that Republic.

NPN’s second problem arose from its not having a clear majority in the federal
legislature, a situation which forced it to seek an alliance with a willing partner for the
sharing of offices in exchange for legislative support. As in the First Republic, it was
Azikiwe’s NPP that went into a short-lived alliance of convenience with the NPN. It
was obvious that the NPN’s primary interest in this alliance was for legitimising its
control of the government, especially in the face of unrelenting opposition from the
UPN, and latter the ‘Progressives’.

Some sources have observed how the NPN failed to consult its ally in major critical
issues of national interest, for which the NPP pulled out of the accord in 1981. With
the collapse of the accord, NPP governors joined nine other governors of the UPN,
PRP, and GNPP in a formidable opposition to the NPN government. A climate of
tension and intolerance which were the first signs of rupture in the Republic became
precipitate, and its first remarkable outcome was the political deadlock that ended in
the impeachment of Balarabe Musa, the radical governor of Kaduna State in June
1981. Elected under the PRP for his populist ideals, Musa had a legislature that was
dominated by the NPN. Ideologically, both parties were poles apart, for while the
NPN represented the core emirate tradition of land-based class privilege and power,

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Musa was an apologist of socialism, a leaning he demonstrated through his mass

literacy programmes, abolition of ‘exploitative’ taxes and radical reformation of land­
owning systems. His impeachment by the NPN-dominated State Assembly was seen as
undemocratic, and as Diamond (1990) argues, it was a blow to the legitimacy of the
Second Republic.

In neighbouring Kano State, Musa’s fellow ideologue and PRP governor, Abubakar
Rimi was more fortunate in not being hemmed in by an NPN-dominated legislature.
But he was also facing the same aristocracy that Musa was out to diminish in Kaduna
State. Rimi’s attempt to suspend the Emir of Kano in July 1981, for ‘acts of disrespect
to the State government’ sparked serious rioting in which public buildings were
torched and lives were lost. From these conflicts, the culture of political violence had
gradually returned, intensifying as the 1983 elections approached. In one State27 alone
39 people lost their lives, 99 were injured and 376 others were arrested in connection
with repeated inter-party clashes in 1981 (ibid).

Another political feature which undermined the legitimacy of the Second Republic
under Shagari’s first term inhered in the manifest opportunistic and self-centred
carriage of elected officers and their collaborating technocrats. For almost the
duration of the first term, legislators, for example, engaged in a protracted debate over
their salaries and allowances, as well as manoeuvres to be appointed to Committees
that promised access to stronger influence and richer perquisites. And as the 1983
elections became more imminent, the political landscape got even rowdier with
desperate politicians defecting from one party to another, with State legislators
threatening impeachment of Speakers or Governors at the slightest disagreement.

Economically speaking, the Shagari government had little to offer. At a time a global
economic recession had begun to adversely affect revenue from export trade, the
regime formulated a grandiose fourth national development plan (1981-85) involving a

27 See Diamond (1990:24).

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projected capital expenditure of about 82 billion naira28. The projection was based
largely on oil revenue (2 million barrels a day at 40 dollars per barrel). The
government then embraced all manner of costly projects, not the least, the Steel Plant
at Ajaokuta and the development of a new Capital city in Abuja. Accordingly,
recurrent expenditure continued to rise geometrically year after year: from 2,900
million naira at the inception of the administration in the 1979/80 fiscal year to 6,022
million naira in 198029.

Unfortunately, true to the economic down-tum, the price of oil fell to less than 30
dollars per barrel for several months between 1982 and 1983, and worse still, at this
price, Nigeria could sell only one million barrels a day (Newswatch. June 10, 1985).
Undoubtedly, the consequences of this decline in estimated revenue were very grave.
Within two years of the administration, several industries shut down , employment
figures rose, inflation soared by the day and even the most essential commodities had
gone out of the reach of the ordinary citizen. Like Gowon, Shagari did not seem to
possess the political will to arrest the fast degrading situation. The only measure his
administration thought fit at the time was the recourse to reckless borrowing and mass
importation of food. With such a fire-fighting approach, he managed to survive his
first four-year term, and then went ahead in a re-election bid.

Beginning from the registration of voters in August 1982, the 1983 elections were
burdened with controversies. The preliminary register of voters was contested by
opposition groups which felt the ruling NPN had influenced FEDECO to manipulate
the register in its favour. The election proper featured political intolerance, intrigues
and violence. Deploring the conduct of the elections which he saw as the most
controversial in the nation’s history, Ohwahwa (1983:9) depicted its dismal
implementation thus,

Violence swept across the country. Electoral fraud

was reported from every state of the federation.
The police was used in harassing, intimidating and

28 See Akiyode, Toye, “Harsh Days are Here”, National Concord. Dec. 29, 1981.
29 See Waziri, Mahmud, “1984 Budget: A Shot in the Arm”, National Concord. Dec. 23,1983, p.3.

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arresting opponents of those in control of the

coercive machinery. To crown the perfidy,
FEDECO officials allowed themselves to be bought
by unscrupulous politicians in order to subvert the
people’s expressed will. Naira notes were
exchanged to effect falsification of results in favour
of unpopular candidates.

Regardless of the abysmal performance of the Shagari regime, and the growing public
discontent30, Shagari was declared re-elected, this time with a decisive majority in the
legislature. Moreover, the NPN had increased its governorships to thirteen (from
seven in the first term). The surprise felt by the nation at the outcome of the election is
captured in the following remarks,

Certainly no one was prepared for the scale of the

NPN landslide, and even the most hardened sceptics
were astonished by the degree of electoral fraud.
Ballots were obtained in advance and thumb-printed
en masse... Although all the parties engaged in
malpractices, those by the NPN were the most
systematic and brazen (Diamond, 1990:29).

In an isolated case, a UPN gubemartorial candidate who protested his defeat by an

NPN candidate was found by a court to have actually won by more than a million
votes (Ibid.). The mass of other protests, especially, the claims by the leaders of the
NPP and UPN that the NPN had stolen victory from them were futile. In some
(Yoruba) states, the shock of the election outcome degenerated into violence.

Once again, Shagari went into another term in a climate that was charged with political
recriminations and uncertainty. Nor was the economy getting any better. The decline
in oil revenue, from a peak of 24 billion Dollars in 1980 to 10 billion Dollars in 1983
(Diamond, 1990) demanded the most prudential planning and management. Ironically,
this was an era in which Shagari saddled government with an over-sized cabinet in a
bid to reward party loyalists. Some ministries such as education and finance had three

30 Prior to the 1983 elections, an opinion poll in Kano State showed a majority of the state’s
electorate, and two-thirds of voters in Kano city favoured a change in government even if by military
coup (Diamond, 1990).

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 CHAPTER TWO

ministers, all of cabinet rank, doing the job of one. And in the most ludicrous
duplication of roles, there was a minister for commerce and industry and another for
industry and commerce (Guardian. 25/11/83). It was also a period in which unbridled
mismanagement and looting became the preoccupation of government officials.
Referring to what he called “the unending succession of scandals and exposes
concerning corruption in government”, Diamond (1990:25) writes that,

In 1983 alone, these included the mishandling of 2.5

billion Dollars in import licences by the Minister of
Commerce, the alleged acceptance by legislators of
large bribes from a Swiss firm, the rumoured
apprehension in London of a Nigerian governor
trying to smuggle millions of Naira into Britain, and
the revelation by a federal minister that the country
was losing close to a billion dollars a year in payroll
fraud.

To cover these scandals, a number of public buildings housing vital documents relating
to such shady deals were systematically set on fire, as exemplified by the blaze that
completely gutted the 37-storey headquarters of the Nigeria External
Telecommunications in Lagos in January 1983.

The effects of corruption and mismanagement, so rife in all levels of government, but
most specially among political leaders and contractors, plunged the already declining
economy into further trouble. With more vehemence than in the first term of the
Shagari regime, closure of factories starved of raw materials, retrenchment of workers,
inflation, and a climate of despondency among the populace descended on the nation.
A survey by the Manufacturers Association of Nigeria (MAN) indicated that in June
1983 alone, 7,000 workers had been laid-off while another 20,000 had been
temporarily put out of work for periods ranging from one to three months (National
Concord. December 29, 1983). A separate statistic put the inflation rate at 55%
(Ihonvbere,1990). “Everywhere one turned in 1983, the economy seemed on the edge
of collapse”, remarked Diamond (1990:26).

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Yet the Federal and State governments embarked on a borrowing spree whose
attendant international indebtedness further hurt the depressed economy. By the end
of 1982, Nigeria’s debts were put at 2,594.7 million Naira, attracting a debt servicing
of 674.6 million Naira or 6.7% of Nigeria’s foreign exchange reserve in the same year
(Waziri, 1983). Most of the borrowed money went into highly inflated contracts
through which government officials, their political parties and close associates,
especially contractors, squirreled away money for personal accumulation and party
funding.

A most fitting depiction of the non-viability of that regime was made by Ihonvbere
(1991:606) who said,

The Second Republic, 1979-83, under Alhaji Shehu

Shagari was a major disaster in Nigeria’s political
history. Intolerance of opposition, planlessness,
waste, repression, and harassment of non-bourgeois
forces by the secret police and security agents,
vulnerability to all sorts of foreign pressures,
political manipulation, and the encouragement of
divisive tendencies characterised the civilian
administration...It was clear to all that the military
was bound to intervene: students did not receive
their scholarships, workers were unpaid at the state
and federal levels for several months, food and
essential commodities became scarce, armed robbery
increased, and there were daily demonstrations,
riots, strike actions, and attacks against the agents
and agencies of the state.

Similarly, Okigbo (1992:110) regretted that “at the end of 1983, Nigeria had sunk to
such a low level of civil disorder and the machinery of government was so arbitrarily
used by selfish officials and interest groups that collapse and eclipse were inevitable”.
That collapse which brought the Second Republic to an end came on December 31,
1983 when another cabal of military officers announced the sacking of the Shagari
regime, and the installation of Major-General Muhammadu Buhari as Head of State.

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In their initial pronouncement, the coup clique stated their mission as salvaging the
nation from “the grave economic predicament and uncertainty that an inept and corrupt
leadership has imposed” on it31. Furthermore, the new Head of State, in a world press
conference, described the specific objectives of his administration as putting the
economy back to its feet, eliminating abuse of office and corruption, recovering ill-
gotten wealth, and instilling discipline among all ranks of the citizenry (Okigbo, 1992).

2 .6 .4 T h e A u g u s t 2 7 .1 9 8 5 C o u p

Inheriting a badly pilfered, empty and debt-ridden treasury, the Buhari administration
predictedly put its accent on a medley of economic programmes aimed at turning the
economy round, basically counter trade and austerity measures. Most visible,
however, was the administration’s obsession with programmes aimed at curbing
corruption and indiscipline (WAI-C), but which saw the flouting of basic civil rights,
the unleashing of repression and the churning out of retroactive decrees to back up
coercion. These included Decree 13 which disempowered the law courts from hearing
any civil proceedings brought against government regarding any of its acts done under
or pursuant to any decree or edict, and Decree 8 which dissolved all political parties
and forbade political activities. But even more fascist was Decree 2 which empowered
the Chief of General Staff and second-in-command in the administration to arrest and
detain, indefinitely and without trial, any person seen to be a threat to the
administration, as well as Decree 4 which made it an offence punishable by
imprisonment without an option of fine for any person or organisation to publish any
false accusation against the government and its officers. Many Nigerians, in particular
political detainees and journalists, languished in detention on account of the two
decrees.

On August 27, 1985, a faction of the cabal that ushered Buhari into power edged him
out, accusing him of inefficiency masked in high-handedness, and violation of rights.

31 See full text of the coup speech in Appendix 3.5.

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‘The ruling body - the Supreme Military Council - has progressively been made
redundant...and the concept of collective leadership has been substituted by stubborn
and ill-advised unilateral actions, thereby destroying the principles upon which the
government came to power”32, the spokesman of the faction declared. Referring to the
dictatorial and monopolist style of Buhari and his second-in-command (Tunde
Idiagbon), the coup plotters described the former as “too rigid and uncompromising”,
while Idiagbon was said to “arrogate to himself absolute knowledge of problems and
solutions”, and acting “in accordance with what was convenient to him, using the
machinery of government as his tool”. The Buhari administration was also accused of
the inability to contain the economic and social crises it inherited from the Shagari
days, and mismanagement of resources.

The new government headed by Major-General Ibrahim Babangida, in a bid seen

basically as the courting of public support, moved swiftly to release detainees, repeal
Decree 4, abolish counter trade, promise the restoration of human and civil rights as
well as popular debates on IMF negotiations and some other economic recovery
measures.

The major economic package of the administration was the implementation of an IMF-
and World Bank-supervised Structural Adjustment Programme (SAP) in 1986. This
involved the establishment of a foreign exchange market for weekly sales of foreign
currency to bidding banks and business entrepreneurs, the devaluation of the Naira, the
abolition of import licences, the deregulation of the economy, and the gradual
withdrawal of fuel subsidies among other socio-economic measures. Temporarily,
these measures provided a relief to Nigeria’s debt problems, but on a wider scale it
brought untold suffering to, and alienation of, the masses.

Purely adopted as ‘monetarist recommendations’ (Ihonvbere, 1991:612) which

bordered most on exchange rates and devaluation of the local currency, SAP
precipitated the collapse of many small- and medium-scale indigenous business
enterprises which found it increasingly difficult to raise considerable foreign exchange

32 See full text of speech in Appendix 3.6.

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to stay afloat. The immediate results of that decline were the scarcity of essential
goods and inflation, in the face of reduced wages occasioned by devaluation of the
local currency. These hardships were compounded by the removal of petrol subsidies
and high tariffs on imported vehicle spare parts, which of course made public
transportation a costly luxury. Summarising the impact of SAP on the citizenry, an
analyst of the Babangida years surmised,

It is a sad fact that while peasants are finding it

difficult to feed their families, while workers are
facing job insecurity and not being paid regularly,
and while students have to drop out of school, top
military officers, senior public servants, traditional
rulers, drug pushers, currency traffickers,
transnational corporations, and the banks are
reaping huge benefits from the SAP (Ibid. p. 613).

The private print media, the Labour Congress, the Manufacturers Association of
Nigeria, and even a past military head of state33 were among the voices which
questioned the efficacy of SAP in solving the nation’s economic problems, highlighting
its predatory effects on the standard of living, well being and dignity of the people.
But the administration was unrelenting in its resolve to soldier on with the measures.

Fond of reiterating that his would be the ‘last military government’, Babangida, in
1986, announced a seemingly enduring and comprehensive transition programme that
would lead to the restoration of democratic civilian governance in 1990. On
assumption of office, he had departed from the tradition of past military rulers being
addressed as Head of State. He, instead chose to be called a president, an innovation
that was meant to portray him more as a democrat than a military autocrat.

The initial phase of the programme saw the establishment of preparatory organisations
such as a Political Bureau which was charged with forging a locally suitable and
sustainable political philosophy, system and structure for a lasting democracy in
Nigeria. Other such organisations included the Constitution Review Committee, the

33 In a public lecture, Gen Olusegun Obasanjo called for ‘SAP with a human face’.

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Directorate for Food, Roads and Rural Infrastructure (DFRRI), the Directorate for
Mass Mobilisation, Social Justice and Economic Recovery (MAMSER), the National
Orientation Movement (NORM), the Centre for Democratic Studies (CDS), and very
importantly, the National Electoral Commission (NEC).

Regardless of the gradual but significant impact of these bodies on the political culture,
especially in raising consciousness on democratic values, there were serious doubts in
many quarters about the genuineness of Babangida’s intention to hand over power to
civilians. First of all, while romanticising the ideals of democracy, Babangida was
becoming more and more dictatorial in his approach to governance. Beginning from
1989, he began a systematic personalisation of government which saw him take
additional portfolios such as Defence Minister, Chairman of the Police Service
Commission, chairman of the National Council of States, the Armed Forces
Consultative Assembly, and the Council of Ministers. Additionally, the Central Bank,
the State Security Service (SSS) and MAMSER Directorate were put under the
Presidency (Campbell, 1995). He had earlier sacked the Armed Forces Ruling Council
(AFRC) in February 1989, edging out colleagues who commanded influence in the
army, and replacing them with junior and loyal officers.

Then came the first crucial test to the transition time-table: the registration of political
parties. After a series of screening exercises, the National Electoral Commission,
supposedly, an autonomous body, had approved the registration of six prospective
political parties selected from among over 50 political associations. But the military
government, rejected all six parties, and in their place, created two parties. The one
party, the Social Democratic Party (SDP) was supposed to be “a little to the left” while
the other, the National Republican Convention (NRC) was to be “a little to the right”.
And that was all that differentiated both parties as far as ideology was concerned. The
government then appointed technocrats to draft constitutions and manifestos for both
parties even before they had any registered members. It also built party offices at
federal, state and local government levels, in addition to appointing administrative

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officers to set up the parties’ machinery. These patronisations were to bear fruit in the
bleak results of the 1993 elections.

An even less discreet act that strengthened the rhetoric of those who had begun to
speculate increasingly about Babangida’s ‘hidden agenda’ (tinkering with the transition
programme) was the extension of the transition deadline from 1990 until 1992, as well
as the autocratic and erratic banning and unbanning of certain constituents of the
political class, especially those regarded as the ‘old breed’ (politicians who had held
national office since independence) (Ihonvbere, 1991).

The above manipulations reflect the controversial and unpredictable style of the
Babangida administration which had earned him the sobriquet, “Maradonna”. Some
analysts interpret the hidden agenda as Babangida’s “cunning desire to install himself
as Nigeria’s first life president”34 either by a one-party dictatorship after the likes of
Kamuzu Banda of Malawi and Mobutu Sese Seko of Zaire, or by succeeding himself in
a civilian government after divesting himself of his military garb after the example of
Ghana’s Jerry Rawlings. Others maintain that the transition programme was merely a
smokescreen for a military diarchy in which the military retained effective control of
power while civilian politicians and bureaucrats merely serviced the machinery of
government through ministerial and legislative portfolios (Campbell, 1995).

Suffice it to say that either way, the suspicion was not unfounded as evidenced by the
dramatic outcome of the election. After a series of government manipulations and
dictations to the Electoral Commission, and a second extension of the transition
deadline to August 27, 1993, the presidential election did finally take place on June 12,
1993, with two Muslims and wealthy business magnates, Chief Moshood Abiola and
Alhaji Bashir Tofa who emerged victorious in the ‘Option A4’35 presidential primaries

34 See Major Gideon Orka’s failed coup speech, April 22,1980, Appendix 3.7.
35 An electoral novelty involving the elimination of candidates on a knock-out basis, beginning from
local wards up to the national party convention. It was adopted after the cancellation of two
successive primaries in August and September 1992 due to electoral fraud involving the sale of votes
by delegates.

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as the presidential candidates of the SDP and NRC respectively. Earlier, elections had
been held in 1991 for State Governors and State Legislators, and in July 1992 to
produce a National Assembly.

On June 23, 1993, however, Babangida stunned most Nigerians and international
observers with the announcement of the cancellation of the Presidential election, the
suspension of the National Electoral Commission, and the abrogation of all decrees
relating to the election. This action was explained in a national broadcast on June 26
on the basis that “there was in fact a large array of election malpractices virtually in all
the states of the federation before the actual voting began”, (West Africa. 5-11 July,
1993) among other incoherent claims.

Yet it was an election that was hailed by disinterested observers as the most closely
scrutinised, the most orderly, peaceful and open contest ever since independence.
Among groups and individuals who endorsed the election as remarkably free and fair
were a three-thousand-strong Presidential Election Monitoring Group (PEMG), a team
of Commonwealth and international observers, the Centre for Democratic Studies, and
the Campaign for Democracy (Campbell, 1995). It must be noted, however, that
certain groups, allegedly sponsored as part of the hidden agenda to stall the elections,
had gone to a federal high court to obtain injunctions for the stoppage of the
declaration of the election results which was in progress at the time Babangida
cancelled it. Notable among them was the Association for Better Nigeria (ABN).
Counter groups had also gone to another high court to allow the continued release of
results. Albeit, NEC, enjoying a decree empowerment not to be interrupted by
judicial restraint, went ahead with the release of election results. It would, therefore,
seem that Babangida’s annulment was a mere intervention to prevent political disorder.

According to the tentative details of the election results, the SDP won convincingly in
19 out of 30 states and in Abuja with 58% of votes cast (ibid.). The NRC had 42%.
Had the results been upheld, the June 12 1993 elections would have marked a radical

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change in the traditional North-South political struggle. It would have brought in a

Southern president. It would also have marked the beginning of ethnicity-free politics,
considering that the SDP candidate, a Yoruba of South-western Nigeria, according to
the results, won in most Northern States including Tofa’s home State of Kano and its
neighbouring Kaduna State.

Viewed from the perspective of the cancelled election, an additional aspect of the
hidden agenda emerged as the pressure from both military and other interests to
prevent power from slipping out of the North (Ibid.).

Whatever the motive of the cancellation was, the act not only lent credence to a hidden
agenda, but also plunged the nation into social unrest that was not far from a civil war.

As Ihonvbere (1996:200) put it,

Since then, things have practically ‘fallen apart’ in

Nigeria with the centre clearly unable to mediate
conflicts, provide leadership, and put in place an
agenda for national unity, political liberalisation, and
military disengagement from politics. In fact, the
constituent units of the nation, determined on the
basis of ethnicity, region, and/or religion, have
moved further apart than at any other time in
Nigeria’s political history.

The metaphor of things falling apart was, of course, a reference to the violence that
broke out especially in Lagos and other Western states, the campaign of civil
disobedience called by pro-democracy groups, and the general strike by several trade
and student unions. Following the muzzling of the independent press, as well as
intimidation, bribery, and systematic factionalisation of opposition groups, it was
impossible for the several groups to sustain a united front to crusade for the upholding
of the election. Shortly before the elections, Babangida had introduced a special
coercion squad called the National Guard, most of whom were deployed to intimidate
any opposition. Most protesters were shot by soldiers or killed in inter-ethnic scuffles.

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Campbell’s (1995) estimate of those killed by tanks and armours ranges from 30 to
100.

Even then, splinter groups of the opposition, the private media which were yet to be
closed, in conjunction with a growing underground press, and foreign-based groups
mounted the campaign for military disengagement and installation of Abiola as
president. Reportedly, there was also an internal pressure from high ranking officers
who resigned their commissions in protest over the cancelled election, and members of
the Defence and Security Council who convinced Babangida that his stay in office
beyond August 27, 1993 was not in the interest of the reputation and unity of the
army. Obviously bowing to such pressure, and in view of the unabating political crisis,
Babangida, after an eight-year rule, announced his decision to “step aside” on August
26, and handed over government to a last-minute political contraption named the
Interim National Government (ING), an ad hoc cabinet comprising his loyalists within
civilian and military circles.

2.6.5 The Ill-fated ING and the November 17.1993 Palace Coup

The 32-member ING had a curious mixture. It was headed by Chief Ernest Shonekan,
a reputable entrepreneur who was appointed more for lending some credence to the
cancelled election and the ING, given his fine records in business administration as well
as his kinship with Chief Abiola (who should have been the elected president). Its
members included six members of Babangida’s cabinet including General Sani Abacha
who was also vice-chairman of the Interim Government. Most Nigerians had no
doubts about the masked mission of the ING and, therefore, its non-viability. As a
scholar of Nigerian military politics put it,

The Interim National Government was doomed from

the beginning. Apart from the fact that it had been
established by a decree signed by Babangida after he
had ceased to be President, it was not recognised
either internally or externally. The ING simply could
not function as it was largely seen as an attempt to
divert attention from the June 12 mandate, to create
an opportunity to continue military rule in the name
of an interim arrangement, and to allow conservative

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political interests to regroup (Ihonvbere, 1991:204-

205).

Even more perplexing was its basic mandate: to organise fresh presidential elections in
March 1994. It must have been very clear to Shonekan himself that such a task was
utopian, given the prevailing climate of frayed nerves over the election cancellation.
As he would admit, the ING “was conceived in crisis and bom into crisis” (Tell.
October 12, 1993). Even though the violence that erupted earlier had been
considerably quelled, the campaign by Abiola and the pro-democracy groups to
dismantle the ING and install Abiola as a duly elected president was in full force. It
dealt the ING a hurting blow when Abiola was granted a petition by a Lagos High
Court which declared the interim administration illegal.

To further complicate the problems of the ING, State governors who were
sympathetic to Abiola’s cause refused to co-operate with the Shonekan administration.
Thus the administration could not formulate any coherent and solid plans to deal with
the increasing political and economic problems of the nation. As the economy
continued to deteriorate, Shonekan’s only recourse was to raise the price of fuel by
700% (Campbell, 1995). But this was an instant time bomb that exploded into a total
economic eclipse as oil workers and the entire Nigeria Labour Congress embarked on
a protracted nation-wide strike that completely paralysed what was left of the
economy.

Seizing the opportunity created by the declaration of the ENG as illegal, as well as the
saturated political and economic tension, General Sani Abacha took over the
government on November 17, 1993, bringing to six the number of military
administrations which have ruled Nigeria for 20 out of her 36 years of independence.

Nothing could be more apocalyptic than Ihonvbere’s (1996:215) remarks regarding the
entry of Abacha. “Nigeria has recently witnessed a return to the dark ages: the
triumph of irrationality, corruption, mediocrity, and the negation of all norms of

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dialogue and consensus”, he wrote about the new junta. Lacking the ability to deal
with Nigeria’s economic, social and political problems, Abacha is reputed for his
manipulative and repressive measures to remain in office. Apart from manipulating the
Constitutional Conference into not adopting a fixed date for the exit of his
administration, Abacha has used decrees (eight of these were promulgated in
September 1994 alone) to silence those pressure groups (e.g. NADECO, NLC, CD,
ASUU, Students Union) he sees as threats to his survival in office, especially those he
could not neutralise by co-option or factionalisation.

Of course, his paranoia with opposition was brought to international limelight in the
hanging of Ken Saro Wiwa and eight other leaders of the Movement for the Survival
of Ogoni People (MOSOP) on November 10, 1995. MOSOP was campaigning for
military government and Shell Petroleum Company to live up to their social
responsibility by providing Ogoniland with basic infrastructure in return for the
exploitation of its oil wells, and to compensate inhabitants for decades of
environmental pollution and health hazards.

Earlier pointers to his autocratic style included the indefinite detention of Abiola on
charges of treason, the jailing of 40 Nigerians including former military government
operatives, journalists and democracy activists accused of attempting to overthrow his
administration in March 1995. Some writers (e.g. Ihonvbere, 1996) believe the jailed
persons were only framed.

During the tortuous transition programme mounted by the Babangida administration,

Ihonvbere (1991:608) observed that “even now as Nigerians prepare for another
transition, few believe that the Third Republic (1992-?) will survive longer than the
First (1960-6) and the Second (1979-83)”. What he could not imagine then was that
the Third Republic would not even be bom, having ended in a fiasco after an eight-
year transition programme that drained Nigeria’s treasuries to the tune of 50,000
milhon Naira (Ibid.). In the same vein, what no one can say with certainty is whether

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the current military junta led by Abacha will ever quit in 1998 as announced by it. And
even if they do quit, the unsolved political dilemma of the June 12, 1993 election casts
a shroud over the future and stability of democracy in Nigeria.

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 CHAPTER THREE

THE NIGERIAN MEDIA SCENE

3.1 Introduction

Viewed from both its specific objective: the examination of the possible predisposition
of the Nigerian press to military intervention, and its macro perspective: an analysis of
the role of the mass media as social and political institutions, this study compels a
historical background of media evolution as a necessary lead. Regardless of the
changes they might have weathered over the decades, mainly due to technological
innovations, political transitions and economic fluctuations, the culture (especially the
structure and roles) of the present day media in Nigeria cannot be clearly divorced
from the social and political climate within which they originated. This point will
become more demonstrable in the discussion of media-govemment relations later in
this chapter.

In order to provide an approximation of the entire media scenario, other prototypes of

the mainstream media of mass communication, namely, radio and television have also
been included. Beside other purposes, it will reinforce the reality of the inseparable
interface between politics and the media in Nigeria. However, the focus remains on
the independent private print media which, unlike the political party- or government-
owned media, exercise the freedom to report and comment freely on issues of the day.

3.2 The Print Media

Mass communication, through the printed media, was introduced in Nigeria with the
founding of Iwe Irohin in 1859 in the south-western Nigerian town of Abeokuta.
Published initially as a bi-weekly vernacular paper1 by the Reverend Henry Townsend

1 It later became a bi-lingual paper, published in English and Yoruba languages.

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of the Church Missionary Society, Irohin was primarily a didactic medium dedicated
first to the promotion of literacy, and later, to evangelism (Omu,1978).

Prior to the appearance of this publication, Nigeria, like most African social settings,
had traditional means and methods of information-sharing which were distinctly devoid
of the present day models of Western communication influenced by the vicissitudes of
science, technology and political economy. Characterised by a plurality of tribal,
cultural and linguistic groups with not less than 250 languages and dialects, all of
which were encapsulated in one geo-political entity through colonialism, the Nigerian
population of that era had to rely on communication that was heavily personally
mediated for the maintenance of social and political order in nuclear and macro social
organisations.

Realising, therefore, the influence of literacy in reducing the inherent linguistic

diversity, as well as in enhancing readership, especially through the promotion of a
lingua franca, it was an essential preamble for Iwe Irohin and other early publications
such as The Anglo African (1863) and The Eagle and Lagos Critic2 (1883) to devote
considerable space to literacy enhancement. Before its demise, following the tribal
wars that raged across Yorubaland in the 19th century, Iwe Irohin. along with other
contemporary publications, had set the ball rolling for what Mytton (1983) described
as the confrontation of traditional oral forms of communication by a new form based
on the new technology of print.

The birth and growth of successive newspapers in Nigeria at the turn of the 19th
century benefited a lot from the exploitation of the transformation resulting from that
‘confrontation’. These were a generation of newspapers devoted to the expression of
informed native opinion, mostly criticism of colonial government policies. Reputed to
have been an outspoken critic of colonialism for 39 years, John Payne Jackson’s Lagos
Weekly Record (1891-1930) was the flagship in this regard. In its well articulated

2 It declared its mission as encouraging ‘natives’ to cultivate the fondness of reading for its own sake.

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features, incisive stories and pungent editorials, it was unrelenting in criticising

imperialist and discriminatory policies of government. It also exposed government
scandals and crusaded for the civil rights of citizens. One of the authoritative
chroniclers of the pioneer press in Nigeria, described the Weekly Record publisher as
“an uncompromising tribune of the people, a great evangelist of social and political
reform, matchless propagandist and an acknowledged Nigerian patriot” (Omu,
1996:4). Other critical newspapers of that era included the Lagos Times (1880),
Lagos Observer (1882) and Lagos Standard (1894).

Just as the enhancement of literacy paved the way for the survival of this generation of
critical publications, criticism of government was later on to metamorphose into a
strong wave of nationalism at the dawn of the 20th century. Thus, a third generation
of newspapers in pre-independent Nigeria comprised nationalist publications identified
as organs of revolution and dissent. As the agitation for self rule swept the length and
breadth of Africa south of the Sahara, the native elites leading such movements,
lacking access to radio and television, saw in the ownership of private and party
newspapers an essential key to successful political campaigns. According to Martin
(1983:321) who studied Africa as part of the survey of the world’s mass media, “an
English language press in British West Africa united the African elites”, giving them
“outlets to vent their grievances against the colonial power and a means for fanning
nationalist aspirations and building political support”.

In Nigeria, Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe’s formidable West African Pilot, founded in 1937, led
a chain of publications under the Zik group of papers, and other newspapers, notably
the Lagos Daily News. The Daily Service. West African Nationhood, and the Nigerian
Tribune in the advocacy for independence. The Pilot, for example, declared its mission
as being the “sentinel of popular liberty and guardian of civilisation”3, a mission which
it pursued through a combative campaign against imperialism, and erudition in
presentation of the ideology of racial equality and the restoration of the dignity of the
black race. Omu (1996:8) describes the impact of the entire nationalist press of that

3 See West African Pilot, November 22, 1937.

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era when he characterises them, especially Zik’s papers, as “a new journalism that was
the spearhead of modem Nigerian nationalism which expressed itself in the rejection of
established traditions of dependence and token political participation, and in favour of
popular struggle for political emancipation and independence”. In fact, he expresses
the belief that “the achievement of independence was...a triumph of journalism” (ibid.
P-9).

The brief historical reconstruction so far given in this chapter indicates, for the most
part, the interface between politics and the development of the print media in Nigeria
starting from the colonial period. It will also set the stage for an appreciation of the
factors which have influenced the further development, ownership patterns, control,
roles and preoccupation of the Nigerian press from the attainment of political
independence to date. Most significantly, it gives an insight into the origin and
persistence of the culture of robust political discourse among the independent media in
the country.

Owing largely to a multi-party political establishment upon which Nigeria’s First

Republic was founded, there was a remarkable upsurge in the establishment of new
publications or the resuscitation of old ones at independence. Mytton’s (1983:117)
observation regarding the central position of the press in the new democratic
dispensation is very apt. “Just as the press gave African nationalism its primary means
of dissemination and propaganda, so today, along with radio and television, it gives
politicians their prime means of reaching national audiences and of attempting to
secure a national following”, Mytton reckons.

Nigerian politicians and nationalists who later emerged as rulers of the new
independent nation were ever so mindful of the indispensability of information
management not only for the acquisition of political power, but also for its
preservation. While government looked upon the press to help strengthen the new and
tender polity, opposition groups sought to have a voice in government. The end

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product was the proliferation of government, private and political party newspapers, a
situation which must have prompted Mytton’s argument that “the primary motivation
for producing a newspaper in Nigeria is political rather than commercial” (ibid.) As it
was stated earlier, at independence, NCNC had ten papers while AG published
fourteen. Enjoying a monopoly of the broadcast media which were also more suitable
for mass information, the Federal and Regional Governments did not seem initially to
have any noticeable interest in the printed media outside a couple of papers and public
relations magazines. Much later, however, the creation of States awakened
government’s interest in newspapers. Beginning from the first dozen States which
came into existence at the end of the civil war in 1970, up to the present thirty-six,
each State has always been keen on setting up its own daily and weekly newspapers.

The seizure of political power by the military, and the imposition of military rule on
Nigeria beginning from the maiden coup in 1966 had a debilitating effect on the
political character of Nigerian newspapers. Apart from dismantling all democratic
apparatuses, and banning political activities, military rule introduced stringent decrees
which whittled down the numerical strength and freedom of the Nigerian press
(Ekwelie, 1979).

It was not until the return to democratic rule in 1979 and the beginning of a short-lived
Second Republic that untrammelled political journalism returned. In addition to older
publications which had weathered the adversity of military rule in the early sixties and
seventies, a crop of new publications, hard to count, sprang up as the Second Republic
politicians of the six political parties campaigned for power. Referring to the sporadic
involvement of the media in party politics, Mytton (1983:118) notes that “there is a
considerable amount of heated dispute in Nigerian politics” and that “much of this is
conducted through the news media”.

The relationship between the government and the press shall be discussed in section
3.4 of this chapter, but it is important to note here that regardless of the failure of the

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Second Republic, the re-entry of military dictatorship, and the frequent wave of
repressive laws, policies and actions, the independent press in Nigeria at present has
clung tenaciously to its crusade for democracy and civil liberties (Nwosu, 1996).

It is hard to keep an accurate count of newspapers published in Nigeria today, due

mainly to the rapid appearance and disappearance of many publications, especially
during military administrations and periods of political activism. Thus different sources
ranging from UNESCO surveys to individual writers have given dissimilar figures at
different times regarding print media statistics in Nigeria. A most recent and realistic
statistic built from compilations by the Nigeria Press Council and the Directory of
African Media (1995) shows there are about 101 newspapers (among them, 41 dailies
and 56 weeklies) and 42 magazines duly registered and published regularly in Nigeria
at the period of this study. Of the entire lot, the Federal Government owns one (The
New Nigerian) wholly, and retains 60% shares and a major control of a second (Daily
Times). State Governments own about 44 dailies and weeklies. The rest are privately
owned and run by business interests, politicians and religious organisations. A detailed
presentation of the classification and frequency of these publications can be seen in
table 3.1. Relative to the general media climate in Africa, a clue of how the Nigerian
print media compares to those of other nations is given by Maja-Pearce (1995:54) who
writes that “the size and diversity of the Nigerian press dwarfs that of any other
country in the African continent except South Africa”.

Table 3.1 Classification of the Print Media in Nigeria

Newspapers Ownership Frequency Population
Federal Govt. Dailies 2
Weeklies 2
State Govts. Dailies 22
Weeklies 22
Private Dailies 19
Weeklies 33
Bi-weeklies 4
Total 103
Magazines Federal Govt. Monthly 4
Private Weekly 19
Monthly 19
Total 42
Source: Independent Research, 1996.

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Present-day Nigerian newspapers have been significantly influenced by the fluctuations

in Nigeria’s political system. The more genteel ones, conscious of the political
ambitions of the military elites, and regardless of harsh intimidatory laws, have
consistently campaigned for government accountability and respect for civil rights.
Some have, however, been forced into sudden death by government harassment and
stringent decrees. One other remarkable feature of today’s print media in the country
is that unlike publications of the 1960s which were entirely political tabloids, they have
tended towards a business orientation more than ever before (Nwosu, 1996). Titles
such as the Daily Times. National Concord, and the Guardian are run as part of a
flourishing business empire, and employ stringent economic factors in determining
editorial policies, staffing, contents and promotional strategies. Due to the lack of
authentic statistics, the actual circulation figures of individual papers are hard to come
by. It is, however, reckoned that most papers have an average of 100,000 circulation4.
The more popular ones such as the Concord and the Guardian claim circulation rates
of 200,000 and 250,000 respectively5.

But even at that, revenue realised from cover price has not been able to pay for the
unit cost of production. At the same time, the appalling economy diminishes the
chances of these papers relying on advert revenue. For their solvency, therefore, most
of these publications have vigorously embarked upon diversification of resources, the
most common being investment in commercial printing and property development
(Mytton, 1983; Dare and Uyo, 1996).

Some other factors which have influenced the Nigerian newspaper and magazine
industry today include technology, professionalism, competition and an increasing
clientele in search of useful news and informed opinion. Unlike the lack-lustre look of
earlier publications, most present dailies and weeklies which can afford computerised
printing technology, have used it to improve graphics. The availability of well trained
and experienced journalists has equally enhanced the quality of publications just as the

4 Africa Media Directory. 1995

5 ibid.

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need to impress and keep readers has driven most papers and magazines into a
continuous search for excellence (Jason, 1996).

Leading publications include one of the oldest, Daily Times, and relatively young
publications such as the National Concord, the Guardian. The Sunrav. Vanguard.
Punch and Champion. Of these, the most remarkable has been the Guardian which
revolutionised newspaper journalism in Nigeria when, in 1983, it introduced an elite
press that had never before existed in Nigeria or even the entire African continent. A
more detailed description of the individual papers, in particular, those selected for
content analysis in this study, is given in chapter five.

3.2.1 Magazines

Published for government public relations and tourism goals, magazines had a
restricted beginning at Nigeria’s independence. Today, however, the industry has
grown geometrically. While a few magazines have retained the age-long government
propaganda and image-making roles, the majority are privately owned. Four major
classifications define private magazines published in the country today. The most
popular are general interest magazines, which are usually weeklies. Conceptualised
after Western news magazines, these offer in-depth reports and analyses of issues of
national, continental or global relevance (Omu, 1996). Apart from carrying cover
topics which serve as the theme of each issue, this class of magazines features columns
written regularly by some reputable staff or guest writers, light-hearted matters,
cartoons and society tit-bits. Newswatch. African Guardian. African Concord. TSM.
and Tell are leading examples of this genre. There are, also, specialised magazines
which aim at specialised audiences especially in money markets, business circles and
professional groups. A third class, easily the most flourishing, and widely known as
soft-sale magazines, is devoted to celebrities, sensational issues, gossip and vane living.
Quality. Hints. Classique. Fame. Mr and Poise belong in this category. A fourth
classification can conveniently be called the adversarial, sometimes underground,
publications which, largely sponsored by opposition groups, civil rights groups, and
even politicians, join outspoken newspapers in an abrasive expose of government

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wrong-doings (Africa Media Directory. 1995). Usually featuring articles and

opinionated reports, they have always been on a collision course with military
governments, especially the Babangida administration, and when banned, they operate
underground. A resounding name in this class is Tempo.

3.3 The Broadcast Media.

As was the case with the printed media, the establishment and growth of radio and
television in Nigeria have been tremendously influenced by political considerations.
As the nation prepared for self rule, the ability of radio to break the barriers of distance
and illiteracy, and the availability of affordable transistor sets prompted the
establishment of radio stations “as a medium for rallying the population or for long-
range mass education” (Martin, 1983:216). Put differently, these motives fitted
perfectly into Nkrumah’s model of media exploitation in the new States for collective
organisation, mobilisation and education (Nkrumah, 1965).

While the Nigeria Broadcasting Service (NBS) (renamed NBC in 1956) was set up in
1951 for the above purposes, the first television station in Nigeria, Western Nigeria
Television (WNTV) was established later in 1959 as a medium of political expression
by the federal opposition party, the Action Group, which also controlled the former
Western Region. Among those who have argued that the entire African media are
politically conceived, nurtured and manipulated, Mytton, (1983:123) argues that a
typical Nigerian political scene is one in which “everyone wants to be heard, each party
wants a platform, and each government wants a mouthpiece”. True to this culture,
more stations came into existence along regional and political lines. The Eastern
Nigeria Broadcasting Service (ENBS) began operations in 1960, followed two years
later by the Radio Kaduna Television (RKTV) which was set up by the Broadcasting
Company of Northern Nigeria (BCNN). The Federal Government, lacking its own
television, established the Nigeria Television Service (NTS) in 1962. By this period,
broadcasting was within concurrent legislation which empowered federal and regional
governments equally to establish and operate broadcast stations.

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The sudden collapse of the First republic in 1966, as well as the 30-month civil war
(1967-70) brought a lull in politics, which in turn halted the expansion of the broadcast
media industry. The end of the war, the change from regional to State structure, and
the post-war economic boom occasioned by oil revenues lifted this lull, as new stations
were set up in the former Mid-West, Benue-Plateau, Kano, Rivers, East-Central and
North-Western States (National Broadcasting Commission Report, 1994).

Following the creation of seven more States in 1976, the Federal Military Government
introduced a monopoly on broadcasting, taking over all television stations from State
governments, which were merged under the Nigeria Television Authority, with
headquarters in Lagos. Under this new dispensation too, the Nigerian Broadcasting
Corporation was dissolved and replaced with the Federal Radio Corporation of Nigeria
(FRCN) in 1978. This change conferred on FRCN the status of a corporation headed
by a director-general who was assisted by board members appointed by the Federal
Government. FRCN had a central station in Lagos, and satellite stations (which
formed a network) in the former regional capitals: Enugu, Ibadan, Kaduna, and the
new Federal Capital Territory, Abuja. It also ran the Voice of Nigeria (VON), an
external service aimed at Africa, Europe, the Middle East, and the Americas
(Martin, 1983).

Deferring to what a National Broadcasting Commission document (1996) saw as the

need to “affirm federal presence in the new States while respecting the cultural
diversity of the nation”, each new state Government was encouraged to establish its
own radio station on the medium wave band. (The short wave frequency has remained
the exclusive property of national radio stations.) Thus while the FRCN served as the
mouthpiece of the Federal Military Government, State radio stations served the
information needs of State Governments.

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Characteristically, the return to democratic rule in 1979 brought with it renewed

pluralism in political parties, pressure groups and governments. It also brought about
an increased scramble for mass media publicity. Though they were supposed to be run
as public corporations through a board, NT A and the FRCN depended a lot on the
NPN-controlled Federal Government for their policies, funding and operations. Soon
after the 1979 elections, there arose claims and counter claims of broadcast media
manipulation to favour either the Federal or State Government. The NTA and FRCN
were accused of concentrating coverage on NPN activities while ignoring non-NPN
governments and actors. In 1981, governors elected under the NPP, GNPP, UPN and
PRP issued a communique complaining about the deliberate policy of the federal media
to ignore or at best play down news favourable to them. Not only were the governors
irked by inadequate coverage, they were afraid that the motive of the NPN-led federal
government in monopolising control of the federal broadcast media was to thwart
democracy by using them to announce false election results, and thus, keep itself
perpetually in power (Mytton, 1983).

As the situation prevailed, these governors went all out to establish State television
stations. Aided by the reinstatement of broadcasting in the concurrent legislative list of
the 1979 constitution, State governments, led by Lagos State in 1980, managed to
establish stations, even if they were restricted to the UHF band which limited
transmission geographically and affected reception, as most television sets available
then had no provision for the UHF band.

Mytton (1983:117) observes that “during 1980-81, Nigerian spending on development

projects was at the rate of about 30 million dollars a day.” A significant proportion of
this expenditure, he estimates, found its way into the mass media field, undoubtedly
referring to the 12 State governments that strove to set up a television station each.

In a counter claim, federal government accused these particular State governments of

always using State-owned media to criticise its policies. Except in States where the

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FRCN had local stations, and these were few, the Federal Government complained that
its programmes were not given any coverage. It, therefore, decided in the early 1980s
to establish an FRCN local station in each State. These very stations, considered to be
white elephants, were shut in 1983 at the inception of the Buhari military government.

Even with the collapse of the Second Republic and the resurgence of military rule from
1983 to date, some form of political engineering such as state creation has continued.
In 1992, the Babangida government created 11 new States to bring about a 30-State
structure, while in October 1996, the Abacha administration announced six more.
These geopolitical adjustments bring with them the demand for more media outlets.
According to National Broadcasting Commission statistics, there were over 44
television stations and 35 radio stations in Nigeria in 1990, all owned and controlled by
Federal and State governments.

3.3.1 The Dawn of Private Broadcasting.

Prior to 1992, characteristics shared by all radio and television stations include
government ownership, funding and control, in addition to serving as government
mouthpieces, and becoming highly politicised and partisan during civilian governments.
Furthermore, their programmes were easily monotonous and drab, with most television
stations relying heavily on foreign programmes, especially films and documentaries, to
fill air time. Ola Balogun (1985) puts foreign content in Nigerian television
programmes in the 1980s at 63 per cent. The lack of current technology and soft
ware, as well as inadequate funding have often been blamed for the decline in technical
and creative standards in locally made programmes (NBC document, 1996. p.3).

For those viewers, mostly city dwellers, who could afford the cost, declining
programme output made the switch to home videos and cable and satellite television all
the more irresistible. Celebrated in some circles as the dawn of the global village, such
a switch was, however, seen by government as a threat to national security and
 CHAPTER THREE

potential erosion of national culture and values, a dilemma which precipitated the
revolutionising of radio and television ownership and operation in 1992.

A National Mass Communication Policy formulated in 1990 agreed that if national

security considerations were to be addressed while at the same time ensuring that the
broadcast media satisfied audience gratifications, there was an immediate need to
deregulate and democratise broadcasting6. By Decree 38 of 1992, therefore, the
National Broadcasting Commission (NBC) was created to monitor, co-ordinate and
regulate both government and private broadcast media. Among an array of specific
duties, NBC was empowered to issue, renew or revoke broadcast licences, to set the
national broadcasting code on acceptable content and quality of programmes broadcast
on radio, television, satellite and cable stations in the country. It was also charged
with the responsibility of enforcing standards and regulations through the imposition of
sanctions.

By June 1993, NBC had granted licences to 14 proprietors for the establishment of
private television stations and to 13 cable/satellite transmission operators. Out of
these, only seven had begun transmission at the time of this study. In addition, two
private radio stations licensed by the NBC in 1994 and 1995 to transmit on the FM
band have since been in operation.

According to the terms of licensing and national broadcasting code, the electronic
media are expected to strive for professionalism, and to promote national cohesion,
national security, respect for human dignity and family values, as well as religious and
communal differences. Stations are also required to broadcast a minimum of 60%
local content, and a maximum of 40% foreign content. But the more foreign-oriented

6 While granting that “everyone shall be entitled to freedom of expression, including freedom to hold
opinions and to receive and impart ideas and information without interference”, and that “every
person shall be entitled to own, establish and operate a medium for the dissemination of information,
ideas and opinions”, section 36 of the Nigerian (1979) constitution provided that “no person other
than the Government of the Federation or of a State or any other person or body authorised by the
president, shall own, establish or operate a television or wireless broadcasting station for any purpose
whatsoever”.

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cable and satellite stations must carry at least 20% local materials (NBC Guidelines,
1996).

Though deregulation has introduced another milestone in broadcasting in Nigeria, and

regardless of statutory denial of licences to religious bodies and political
parties/associations, there are arguments that the high cost of owning and operating a
private radio or television station will ultimately put independent broadcasting in the
hands of wealthy entrepreneurs or surrogates fronting for hidden powerful interests.
As Mytton (1983:15) comments, “due to the complexity of the mass media and
expense involved, the mass media are almost everywhere owned or controlled by
governments, large public or private corporations or wealthy individuals.” It has been
estimated that a mere FM station with only 150 kilometre range of transmission would
require not less than 200,000 US Dollars (about 16 million Naira) for equipment only
(Maja-Pearce, 1995).

There is, of course, a couple of other organisations that makes up the communications
industry7 in Nigeria such as the News Agency of Nigeria, Nigeria Telecommunications
(NITEL), Nigeria Post (NIPOST), film, book publishing, advertising and public
relations. This brief summary has, however, been restricted to the mainstream mass
media (in terms of availability to the majority of the populace) because the essence of
this overview is to place the independent press in Nigeria in a context where their role
in the political discourse of the nation can lend itself to a clearer understanding.
Simply put, unlike the situation in most African nations which adopted a one-party
state political system, or where the press exist only as government propaganda
channels, the origins of journalism in Nigeria, in an era in which the quest for
sovereignty nurtured robust media criticisms of colonial government, as well as the
nation’s present pluralistic attributes, are among the factors which have helped sustain
the tradition of press liberty and boldness. It must be noted, however, that such
traditions do not necessarily translate to the promotion of democracy, for as has been

7 Restricted, at the moment, to a few international organisations’ representatives, the internet has yet
to attract a national or popular clientele in Nigeria and other developing nations (UNESCO Sources,
1 9 9 6 ).

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mentioned earlier in the statement of the research problem in Chapter One, many
writers have argued in favour of the propensity of the mass media to frame government
in a way it becomes justifiable for the military to dismantle democratic institutions.
This argument will be examined in detail as part of the discussion of the overall results
of this study in relation to the theoretical approaches that form its background.

However, before even attempting such an examination, there is a compelling need to

recall the nature of the relationship between government and the mass media from
colonial times till date, with a view to establishing any link between the past and the
present. In this case, considering the role of government-owned press and broadcast
media as “more or less government lap dogs and megaphones, towing and defending
government positions in almost every issue or situation” (Nwosu, 1996:26), the
emphasis shall be on the independent private press.

3.4 Media-Government Relations

Though they have lost some of their original perspectives in both political and
economic changes of modem times8, the four theories of the press (Siebert et al, 1963)
remain highly relevant in the analysis of relationships between society and the mass
media. Not only do they prescribe certain roles for the media, they also suggest that
the performance of such or any other roles by the media is circumscribed by social,
political and economic factors.

The authoritarian model, easily older than the other three, rests on the philosophy of
the monopoly of wisdom and tmth by the rulers on the one hand, and the irrationality
of the ruled on the other. To prevent the irrationality of the masses from causing the
disintegration of the state, individuals or institutions that are in a position to empower
the people through information and education must be controlled. Thus in a typical
authoritarian dispensation, the media are expected, even where there are no open

8 The Soviet Communist theory, for example, has been rendered less relevant with the collapse of
communism as witnessed by the disintegration of the USSR in the late 1980s, as well as by the
increasing vulnerability of the remaining communist nations to the forces of international capitalism.

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encumbrances such as licences or patents, to serve the interest of those in authority.

Any act of deviance or disloyalty was frowned upon, and often earned serious
reprisals.

Much later, with the advent of libertarian philosophers who espoused the idea of the
public sphere as a free marketplace of ideas in which falsehood should not be hindered
from engaging in contention with truth, and in which it was expected the latter would
always emerge victorious, the media were expected to assume the role of promoting
the free exchange of news and views as a means of safeguarding personal liberties and
subjecting government to scrutiny for purposes of accountability and responsibility.

The roles of the media as social institutions were further prescribed in the social
responsibility theory which sought to strike a balance between libertarianism and
responsibility. Such roles, as highlighted by Nwosu (1996:22) include:

1. Servicing the political system by providing information, discussion and debate on

public affairs.

2. Enlightening the public so as to make it capable of self government.

3. Safeguarding the rights of the individual by serving as a watchdog against

government.

4. Servicing the economic system, primarily by bringing together the buyers and
sellers of goods and services through the medium of advertising.

The relationship between the media and government in Nigeria can best be seen in the
context of the diametrically opposed aspiration of government to manage information
by both direct and subtle control of the mass media, and the desire of the mass media
to fulfil the roles listed above. As stated earlier in this chapter, to a large extent, this
situation precludes the government-owned media which operate in the mould of the
communist philosophy of the media as a vital part of government. The observation
must, however, be made at this juncture that government newspapers are not
monolithic supporters of official government position per se, especially during civilian
regimes. Due largely to a multi-party political arrangement, the reality is that the

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Federal government newspapers lean towards the ruling party while State government
newspapers, where opposition candidates or parties are in power, support the State
government while often criticising the Federal government. In some cases, the Federal
government papers have been found to have flayed the actions or policies of one State
government or another, in particular, those that are ruled by opposition parties.
Influenced almost totally by ownership and political motives, such a diversification of
loyalty among government publications still differs markedly from the independence of
private publications (as exemplified by the three selected for this study) which show no
obvious allegiance to any party. This, once more, accounted for the exclusion of
government newspapers in the content analysis. I shall now return to the historical
examination of press-govemment relationship under review.

Beginning from the colonial era, the relationship between the governments and the
independent media has constantly remained frictional if not adversarial9, and there
seems to be a correlation between increasing media criticism or scrutiny and the
intensification of such tensed relationship. For example, pioneer newspapers in the
country such as Iwe Irohin and The Anglo African were, at first, reticent on political
issues, having preoccupied themselves with either literary or religious promotions.
There was no record of any complaint from the colonial administration at that early
period of the press until Iwe Irohin waded into politics, condemning land acquisition
by foreigners, criticising the lack of elective representation of Nigerians in both
legislative and executive councils of the Crown Colony, and siding with the Egba
community in its disagreement with government in the 1860s. The government was
said to have “gone on the offensive”, with officials not only complaining to London but
also attempting to introduce taxes that would discourage the publishing of subsequent
newspapers (Omu, 1996:1).

The complaints and subtle threats from government were to mature into the first string
of harsh press laws in the colony as more critical newspapers entered the scene. This

9 Omu (1996:14) agrees that “press-govemment relations (in Nigeria) have been characterised by
conflict.”

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was the era of militant journalism by both politically disinterested publishers and
nationalists crusading for self rule. As pointed out earlier in this chapter, newspapers
like the Lagos Weekly Record, the West African Pilot, the Nigerian Times and the
Lagos Observer devoted all their attention toward government misrule as manifested
in its inability to provide basic social services such as roads and water, disrespectful
treatment of native chiefs, exploitative taxation, and most of all, discrimination against
educated natives in the civil service. The Weekly Record (February 26, 1910), for
example, carried an editorial on the autocratic system of colonial rule in which it
maintained, among other things, that:

One cannot refrain from speculating upon the

bankruptcy of the New Imperialism and the apparent
decay of British Imperial genius, so long as Great
Britain continues to transcend the limits of political
righteousness; to harbour the colour prejudice...and
to remain indifferent to the wishes of her subject
dependencies.

The West African Pilot’s (November 1, 1943) editorial was equally spiteful of the
same matter. ‘The present Crown Colony system of government with official majority
in the Legislative Council and with virtually no (native) representation in the Executive
Council is obsolete and must be abrogated,” it charged.

Reminiscing on the nature of newspapers at this period, Ekwelie (1979:2) points out
that “the shrillness of their attacks and the growing politicisation of the local
population brought about the first newspaper law in the country”. That maiden law
which aimed at ‘tagging’ the press was captioned the Newspaper Ordinance (No. 10)
of 1903. It made it mandatory for publishers to swear an affidavit indicating the title
of their newspapers, the publishing address, the names and addresses of the
proprietors, printers and publishers. But the real spirit of the law was betrayed in the
additional requirement of the publishers to execute a bond for £250 and to secure a
surety to the effect that they would pay whatever penalty the government may impose
on them at any time (even when the offence had yet to be committed).

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Finding the press unrelenting in the growing “tradition of fearless and energetic
political journalism” (Omu, 1996:4), and fearing the possibility of a political uprising,
the colonial authorities enacted the Seditious Offence Ordinance in 1909, making it
punishable by imprisonment, the publication of any matter that had the potentials of
bringing government into disrepute or causing disaffection among the people or
inciting feelings of enmity between different classes of the community. Between 1916
and 1920, the government added more press laws including the criminal code,
statutory provisions on defamation and contempt of court, official secrets and
censorship.

Unsurprisingly, editors and newspapers which displayed the most daring disposition of
militancy were the first and consistent victims of these laws. John Payne Jackson, the
publisher of the ‘irreverent’ Weekly Record was quick to criticise the sedition law, and
was the first to face prosecution under the law (Ekwelie, 1979). From then on, it
would appear that the battle line had been drawn between the authorities and the
journalists. In 1916, another reputable editor, J.B Davies, was fined £100 for
expressing the hope that Nigerians would some day be liberated from what he called
‘the iron rule of Lugard’s government’(Omu, 1996:15). Six months later, he was
jailed for six months for contempt of court. Thomas Horatio Jackson, who inherited
the Record on the death of his father, J.P Jackson, was equally hunted by the laws. In
1925, he was jailed for two months for contempt. Other proprietors who were
prosecuted under one ordinance or another in the 1920s and all through the pre­
independence era included Herbert Macaulay of the Daily News and Anthony Enahoro
of the Daily Comet. Ewkelie (1979:3) sums up the climate of press operation during
the colonial era:

Judging from the number of times Azikiwe’s

newspapers were in court, for civil or criminal libels,
counting official clamp-downs on that group,
including bans on publications, denial or removal of
advertisements and other official harassments, the
period, 1859-1959, was a difficult one for Nigerian
editors and publishers.

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3.4,1 The Press at Independence

At the threshold of independence, the ferocity of nationalism in the press boiled down
to political party cross-fire. Almost all the proprietors of the nationalist press were
staunch members if not leaders of one political party or the other. Believing in the
enormous impact of their press crusades on the demise of colonial rule, it was a
necessary recipe for victory in the imminent elections into the new indigenous
government for the publisher-turned politicians to convert their publications into party
organs. For example, the Pilot became the organ of the NCNC led by its proprietor,
Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe; Herbert Macaulay’s Lagos Daily News promoted his party, the
NDP, while the Daily Service supported the NYM and later, the AG (Mytton, 1983).

The alignment of newspapers to political parties, mainly at the behest of their

proprietors, was said to have extended to the period of the short-lived First Republic
(Omu, 1996). Apart from fanatical adherence to party whims, most papers were
employed in the criticism of the new indigenous government, the major focus of such
criticism being the first national development plan (1960-66). Other issues for which
government received unflinching battering from the press included the proposed 1962
Anglo-Nigeria defence pact and plans to introduce a preventive detention act all of
which had to be shelved in the face of overwhelming press and public agitation
(Ekwelie, 1979).

Some of the colonial statutes which the federal and regional governments had adopted
at independence included the Criminal code act and the seditious offence ordinance.
The latter was said to have been very useful in checking a possible subversion of the
new government as press denunciation regarding the fiasco of 1963 national
population census, the rigged regional elections and other sensitive national issues
mounted. In 1961, a mathematics lecturer, Dr Chike Obi, published a pamphlet in
which he scorned politicians as oppressors of the poor and exploiters of the weak, who
obsequiously went round at election time seeking the people’s votes only to treat them
like dirt after the booty of election victory had been appropriated among themselves.
He then asked the electorate not to vote for such tricksters in the next election. He

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was charged with causing hatred toward government, and jailed under the amended
sedition law. Several others, especially academics, who wrote articles criticising one
government plan or the other were to join Dr. Chike Obi in prison afterwards (ibid.).

As was the case in the colonial era, the more the press laws were churned out at
independence, the more vibrant and forceful government opposition and indictment in
the papers became. Thus the government had to look for even more lethal sanctions
such as the 1961 emergency powers act whose letters empowered the federal
government to impose a state of emergency whenever it felt that any part of the
federation constituted a threat to peace, order and good government. Its danger
derived from its arbitrary use in the detention of political opponents and suspension of
opposition governments in the regions. A more direct sanction on the press came in
the 1964 newspaper amendment act. It made the publication or reproduction or
circulation of any statement, rumour or report in any newspaper punishable by a fine of
£200 or imprisonment for one year, if such matter was false. Its debilitating effect lay
in its onus on the press to pay for any iota of inaccuracy that might be found in a story
due perhaps to deadline pressures or source misinformation. It was also a restraint on
investigative reporting, and therefore, an effective weapon against the scrutinisation of
government officials by the press. The govemment-press confrontations either excited,
or was exacerbated by, the intense political crisis that culminated in the first military
seizure of the political leadership of Nigeria on January 15, 1966, and, therefore, the
end of the First Republic.

At the inauguration of an even shorter Second Republic in 1979, the political climate
did not seem to have undergone any significant change from that of the First Republic.
Political parties and elections remained ethnically oriented, with political party
newspapers mushrooming once again. Campaigns for power were executed as
warfare, and once in government, most politicians openly manifested gross abuse of
office, corruption and disregard for the interest of their electors (Diamond, 1990).
Accordingly, newspaper pages, especially those of opposing parties inundated readers
with countless scandals and government blunders.

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The most visible reactions of government officials to such publications were the
imposition of the official secrets act and sedition law. The governor of the then
Anambra State, Chief Jim Nwobodo, was the most enthusiastic in the litigation for
sedition. The publishers of the Trumpet, an opposition newspaper, which in 1982
accused the governor of profligacy in spending public money and the publisher of a
critical booklet titled How Jim Nwobodo Rules Anambra State were all sued for
sedition, while at the federal level, the late Dele Giwa, then editor of the Sunday
Concord, was arrested and detained for weeks in 1983 for publishing secret documents
(Ekpu, 1996).

Another mode of government reaction to press criticism in this era included the use of
state law enforcement agencies to harass reporters and editors, and the ‘arraignment’
of editors before parliament to answer for ‘offensive’ publications. In 1980, Tony
Momoh, then editor of the Daily Times was ordered by the senate to appear before it
to explain the source of an article in which he accused some senators of dereliction of
legislative duties while using their privileges to canvass for government contract jobs.
Two years later, it was the turn of Innocent Adikwu, Punch editor. The House of
Representatives invited him to disclose his source in a report that involved members of
the house. One remarkable feature in most of these Second Republic affrays between
government and the press was the intervention of the high courts most of which ruled
in favour of the press, maintaining that the scrutiny and criticism of an elected
government was essential in a democratic polity (Momoh, 1996). This will be further
examined in the discussion chapter.

3.4.2 The Press in Military Administrations

By far, the most tensed press-govemment relations have existed during dictatorial
military administrations. Unlike rule-derived changes in government which are based
on well-defined constitutional provisions, military coups are not only non-rule derived
but highly authoritarian. Because they impose themselves on the electorate by sheer

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might and coercion, military rulers tend towards absolutism. Characteristics of military
rule which shed light on why govemment-press relations in military administrations are
most sour are aptly put by Lipson (1970:217):

The ruling group will organise to maintain its

supremacy and will repress opposition. It will
employ techniques of intimidation and coercion.
Not daring to allow any challenge to its pre­
eminence, it will use the police, prisons, and army as
the central organ of administration.

At the inception of the maiden coup in 1966, the independent press was said to have
followed the new military administration with some caution. As Ekwelie (1979:7) put
it, “government activities were reported without comment or cheered without
reservation”. Furthermore, the administration seemed to have demonstrated some
measure of press liberalism in introducing Decree Number 2 of 1966 which made it an
offence for any person or group to prevent or restrict the circulation of any newspaper
in any part of the country10, as well as in its silence to the first series of press criticism
regarding the appointment of certain persons into government positions. The press
was said to have misread these initial stances as victory, for when the tradition of
unrestrained comments and reports on government resumed in full swing, the military
barred its fangs. In addition to inherited statutes such as the 1961 defamation act, the
1962 Official Secrets Act, the 1964 Newspaper Amendment Act and the Criminal
Code, all of which were aimed at muffling the press, the military promulgated decrees
as the situation warranted to deal with press incursion into its authority.

Earliest decrees enacted by the first military administration under Ironsi included the
defamatory and offensive publications Decree Number 44 of 1966. Coming at the
wake of ethnic bickering, mostly inspired by press comments, over the hidden motives
of the botched maiden coup, it aimed at checking publications which were likely to
incite disaffection in any part of the country. Another such decree was the Newspaper
Prohibition of Circulation Decree Number 17 of 1967. In a sudden turn from their
more benevolent Decree Number 2 of 1966, the military authorities were said to have

10 Prior to the coup, the banning of opposing papers by civilian regional authorities was widespread.

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aimed this decree at those they “regarded as mischievous journalists” (Ekwelie,

1979:8). It empowered the head of state to single-handedly prohibit the sale or
circulation of any newspaper in any part of the country if he felt such a newspaper was
prejudicial to public interest. It further prescribed a fine or imprisonment for not less
than six months for culprits.

It is not possible to recount every single decree or other extra-legal measures

employed by the military in its dealings with the press during its 26-year strangle-hold
on Nigerian politics. In most cases, new military administrations had adopted old
decrees from predecessors or amended them to suit their own peculiar needs. The
most controversial of the lot, some of which are still in force today, include the
following:

1. The State Security Detention of Persons Decree Number 2 of 1984 (originated as

Number 11 of 1967) - empowers the head of state or chief of staff, supreme
headquarters to arrest and detain indefinitely, without trial, any person or group of
individuals who, in the estimation of the authorities, constitute a threat to national
security. Most widely used during the Buhari government, its victims were mainly
journalists and political activists.

2. Public Officers (Protection Against False Accusation) Decree Number 4 of 1984

(originated from Decree Number 11 of 1976) - the most obnoxious decree ever in
Nigeria’s press law history, it was enacted and used by the Buhari government to
intimidate the boldest of investigative journalists. It made it a crime punishable by
imprisonment (without an option of fine) for at least two years for any person, as well
as a corporate fine of not less than N 10,000 for a publication to publish any report or
comment “calculated to bring the Federal Military Government or the Government of a
State or public officer to ridicule or disrepute” (Federal Republic of Nigeria Official
Gazette. April 4, 1984, p.53). Deferring to public pressure, this decree was abrogated
in 1985 by the Babangida administration which toppled the Buhari government.
Paradoxically however, it was during the Babangida administration (1985-1993) that
the worst calamities befell the press as manifested in the following decrees,

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3. Newswatch (Proscription) Decree of 1987 - enacted specifically to silence one of

the most authoritative magazines in the country for publishing reports of the Political
Bureau on political reforms before they were approved by government.

4. Offensive Publications (Proscription) Decree Number 35 of 1993 - empowered the

Head of State to seize or ban any publication seen as a threat to State security or
public order

5. Newspapers Decree Number 43 of 1993 - by all means a re-invention of

authoritarian patenting, this decree was the most explicit attempt at press control. It
sought to subject all existing and future publications to registration and licensing by a
board appointed by the military government. Under the decree, all newspapers were to
pay a registration fee of N250,000 and a non-refundable deposit of N 100,000 in order
to obtain a licence to stay in circulation (Ogbondah, 1994). Even more offensive was
the section of the decree which stipulated that the licence was subject to annual review,
with renewals granted to only those publications which, in the estimation of the board,
had been of good behaviour.

6. The latest addition to the above is the Newspaper etc. (Proscription and
Prohibition from Circulation) Decree Number 48 of 1993 with which the current
military government closed several publishing houses in the wake of the continued
political turmoil that followed the cancellation of the June 1993 presidential election,
and the appointment of the Interim national Government thereafter.

For the most part, these decrees have led to the imprisonment of journalists, the
seizure or outright banning of newspapers and magazines, the closure of publishing
houses and the extraction of fines from publishers. However, as if those are not
enough, military governments have in most cases resorted to incessant harassment of
journalists, a situation which often results in unwarranted and indefinite arrests and
detentions, so much that any reporter or editor who has yet to be initiated into such a
‘baptism of fire’ hardly exists.

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It has also degenerated to brutal assaults, torture and death of journalists. The classic
cases were the Amakiri and Giwa episodes. Minere Amakiri, a newspaper reporter
representing the Observer in Rivers State in 1973 filed a story indicating an imminent
strike by teachers in the State who were unhappy with their conditions of service.
The story was said to have spoilt the State (military) Governor’s fun, for it appeared
on his birthday, and for his ‘irreverence’, Amakiri was summarily whisked away by the
Governor’s aides, had his head shaved with a rusty blade and his bare back chastised
with 24 strokes of the cane. As Ekpu (1996) rightly observed, though Amakiri was
awarded damages, an indictment on military autocracy, the scars of that ugly incident
have remained indelible in the press-govemment relations in Nigeria.

But even more deplorable was the assassination of one of the vocal journalists of his
time, Dele Giwa, in October 1986. Dele Giwa and three other formidable writers had,
in January 1985, established Newswatch. Nigeria’s leading news magazine of the
1980s. Its mission was to report and analyse issues of national and international
significance with the kind of professional touch and authority associated with high­
brow magazines such as the Newsweek (Omu, 1996). In its first year it firmly
established its roots as the doyen of investigative journalism in the country, even
though it was one of the most harassed publications of the time. Beginning from
October 17, 1986, Newswatch editors were regularly harangued by the State Security
Service (SSS), the intelligence unit of the Babangida government. They were
questioned in connection with government allegations that the Newswatch was in
collaboration with labour union leaders to foment a socialist revolution, and to import
arms for the said mission. On October 19, Dele Giwa, the editor-in-chief of the
magazine, received a letter said by an unidentified despatch rider to be confidential and
from the presidency. It turned out to be a letter bomb which killed Giwa as soon as he
opened it. Nigerian citizens and journalists alike were united in the denunciation of the
novel style of journalists’ harassment, and the government, which condemned the
killing, promised to catch the culprits. Till this day, no official word has been heard
about the matter, and independent attempts to prosecute the SSS bosses, suspected to
have masterminded the plot, were stifled by government.

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The latest touch to the intimidation of the press has been the torching of newspaper
and magazine houses and the vandalising of their equipment by unknown assailants.
Examples of victims include the Guardian and The News whose publishing houses
were burnt down in separate incidents in 1996.

3.5 Conclusion

As can be seen from this review, the evolution of the independent press in Nigeria,
whether in the colonial era, or in civilian governments at independence, or during the
endemic military dictatorships, has been marked by a constant tradition of press
freedom and vigorous press debates regardless of invidious attempts by the various
regimes to keep press scrutiny and criticism at bay. In the case of civilian
administrations, the situation has been a constant check on the performance of the
executive, legislative and judicial branches of government regarding constitutional and
administrative obligations which government owes the people. In military regimes
which, admittedly, are forceful impositions on Nigerians and which owe accountability
to no one, the Nigerian press has taken the challenge to act as the alternative
parliament, believing that unscrutinised power, no matter how autocratic, could slip
into even worse tyranny. Incidentally, the consistently dismal performance of
government authorities in both democratic and military administrations, which has been
the subject of political instability in Nigeria, seems also to nurture the climate of
ceaseless press onslaught toward government. As Jason (1996:33) put it,

‘The purpose of fighting the colonial government

was to establish democratic self governance...After
independence, most governments, especially the
military which have been in power for 26 years have
been no less tyrannical than colonial rule. The press
has, therefore, been lured into the trap of adversary
journalism. It has been drawn into a continuous
battle for the fundamental rights of Nigerians and the
rule of law. It is not out of choice but out of
necessity that the press has continued to stand up,
even if vehemently, against military dictatorship”.

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On the side of the government, the excessive enactment of press laws has been
defended on the real or imagined disintegrative powers of the press. In developing
countries like Nigeria where the tradition of press freedom is so firmly rooted that it
can hardly be suppressed by even the most dictatorial authorities, government expects
the independent press to contribute to what has become adopted as the development
journalism paradigm. Under this model of media role, the press is required to show its
relevance to societal growth by identifying with and contributing to its social and
economic development efforts (Nwosu, 1996). Even though it is not often voiced, an
imperative of this expectation is for the press to pay less attention to sensitive political
matters which, in the opinion of political and military leaders in developing nations, can
jeopardise national unity, given the social and cultural peculiarities, in particular the
political fragility, of developing states, as opposed to well entrenched democracies in
developed nations. According to a former Singaporean minister of culture, “...it is
futile to try to draw a comparison between the case of the New York Times and a
newspaper in Singapore. In the US riots can happen everyday and everywhere and yet
the country remains stable and prosperous. But in Singapore, one bloody riot will
wreck the whole country” (Chen and Kuo, 1970:37).

Without wading into the debates and justifications on either side of the press-
govemment confrontation, the essence of this chapter has been to provide a
background upon which the presentation of the two governments (chosen for this
study) in the independent press might be appreciated, in addition to other factors which
might shape such framing (as will be seen in the discussion of results of this study in
chapter eight). The usefulness of linking the past with the present can be gleaned from
Omu’s (1996:2) assertion that “political campaigns of early newspapers foreshadowed
the endemic confrontation between the press and the government in Nigeria”. In other
words, this is a justification for the deposition at the beginning of this chapter that the
structure, tradition and role of the present day mass media in Nigeria cannot be clearly
divorced from the social and political climate within which they originated or the roles
they had to play then in view of such a climate.

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THEORETICAL BACKGROUND

4.1 Introduction

Regardless of the historical or geographical setting, social or ideological

underpinnings, politics has always been about the interlocking complexities involved in
the negotiation, acquisition, control and dominance of power. Whether it was in the
Hobbesian state of nature (where anarchy sustained the survival of the fittest) or the
entry of mankind into the political state (where authority, through one form of political
arrangement or another, was invested in the sovereignty), the interest in the control of
means of production, and allocation of resources has been central to group or
institutional involvement in social organisation and governance. Referring to this
universal, all-time phenomenon, Karl Marx deposed in the Communist Manifesto that
“the history of the human race is the history of class struggle”.

As political scientists and philosophers engage in scholarly efforts to either explain the
ideologies and philosophies upon which political systems are founded and sustained, or
analyse the structure and dynamics of politics in different regions of the world, the
question must always arise, even if obliquely, about how the thesis and antithesis,
conflicts and consensus that form the nuclei of the entire power struggle and
negotiation are mediated within and between groups or institutions involved in the
political process. Military intervention in the political process, the subject of this study
and the dominant factor in Nigerian politics, offers a curious example of such power
struggle.

This chapter reviews some of the relevant theoretical approaches through which the
role of the mass media in the dynamics of power struggle, as in military seizure of

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political power in Nigeria, can be reasonably analysed. Of particular interest to such an

analysis is the plausible role of the Nigerian press and journalists in the presentation of
political issues that are thought to have stimulated or triggered military intervention in
politics. This shall be against the background of studies in political communication
dwelling on media roles in framing conflicts.

The centrality of the mass media in the political process does not appear to be in
doubt, more so in contemporary polities most of which are characterised by a mass
society and liberal democratic principles. It is in this light that Boyd-Barrett
(1995:246) appropriately refers to the print and electronic media as “central political
institutions”. The need to reflect the multitude of viewpoints (Gerdes, 1993) within
such democratic entities, and the accessibility of mass communication to all the people,
even if only in principle (Splichal, 1993) can be gleaned to be a common argument in
most intellectual writings on the role of the media as mediators of the political process.

However, while the general agreement is that the media do occupy a strategic position
in political structures and processes (Graber, 1989; Mudgal, 1995; Negrine, 1994;
Blumler and Gurevitch, 1995; Dalghren, 1995), their specific roles and the extent to
which they are carried out have remained the contentious subjects of continuing
research. Perhaps, the nebulous nature of the entire debate is captured in Singh’s
(1995) remark that such roles are determined by variables such as type of medium,
political setting, importance of event, organisational and ownership structure of the
medium, journalists’ integrity, social and cultural environment of the media, among
others.

It is the unanswered questions ensuing from this research problem that have triggered
the flurry of interest among political communication scholars and researchers. Blumler
and Gurevitch (1995) refer to this situation in their remark that the political impact of
the media have generated so much activity for mass communication research. The
resulting avalanche of investigations of the problem, in turn, has given rise to the

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paradigms and theories reviewed hereunder as intellectual beacons for the conduct of
the present study.

Two of such theoretical approaches considered apposite for the examination of the
predisposition of Nigerian journalists’ to military intervention are the sociology of
news construction and agenda setting. These have been so judged and chosen not only
because they share common grounds, but more so, because of their relevance to the
analysis of the processes and functions of the mass media in the construction of the
issues that form social reality, as well as the probable impact of such constructions on
the audience. In this particular case, such issues relate largely to the factors identified
with military coups such as crises and instability. Even in a more general sense, Cobb
and Elder (1983:14) identify such issues as the products of the “conflict between two
or more identifiable groups over procedural or substantive matters relating to the
distribution of positions and resources”. The appropriateness and usefulness of both
approaches, especially in the context of the present study, is further attested to by
Nwosu (1996:21) who identifies them to. be “among the dominant theoretical
perspectives or models that have been very useful in analysing the role of the press.”

As this review progresses, it will become clearer that the questions relating to what or
whose issues get media or public attention, and how such publicity affects social
change (in the political sphere) are vital theoretical questions in the contention on
whether the press in Nigeria deliberately or inadvertently promote military intervention
in politics. Thus, in the first place, such an enquiry can hardly ignore the factors that
shape media contents in general. Secondly, the contention on whether the media
precipitate crisis through news framing fits most appropriately into the agenda setting
debate.

4.2 The Sociology of News Construction

Naturally, every new day brings in its wake a wave of events out of which a plethora of
issues arises. But the media do not possess the capacity to feature all of these. The

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curiosity regarding decisions on which issues are selected for publication and which are
ignored is pivotal to studies on the processes of news selection as an elemental stage of
the news construction discourse.

Even if considered simplistic today, Park’s (1922) observations about the editor’s
choice of ‘interesting and important’ news for publication and the consignment of
others to the waste basket must have influenced the formulation of gate keeping as a
research tradition which, in the main, seeks to unravel the personal, professional,
institutional and social values and pressures that shape the collection, selection and
display of media contents. But White’s (1950) Gate keeping function of the mass
media can be said to be one of the earliest theoretical constructs which enkindled
interest in studies on news construction. Based on his observations of a telegraph
editor at work, "White deposed that the whole idea of selecting or discarding stories
was influenced by ‘idiosyncratic and subjective perceptions’, the explanation being that
the editor as the gatekeeper usually passed “only those stories that he as the
representative of his culture believed to be true” (Okigbo,1990: 17).

Using modified methodologies, other communication researchers thronged the arena,

probing the under-currents that impacted on news definition and selection in the media
of mass communication. Researchers such as Gieber (1956), Snider (1967), Buckalew
(1969), Bailey and Litchy (1972), Waxman (1973) and Peterson (1979) all returned a
unanimous verdict - that “all kinds of media and news agency personnel served as gates
who could restrict or enhance the transmission of news” (Okigbo, 1990:10).

Regardless of methodological variations, gate keeping offered a limited approach to

the analysis of news production. By focusing attention on media and news agency
personnel, gate keeping studies seemed to have lost sight of the influence of other
factors within and outside the mass media organisations which, in fact, tend to be the
real determinants of news selection and display. It is for this reason that Boyd-Barrett
(1995) sees news construction as a more comprehensive concept in the appreciation of

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the process of news selection and presentation since it goes beyond individuals
responsible for news selection to look at the overall context within which news
selection and presentation occurs.

It is no surprise, therefore, that subsequent studies on news production tend to have

discredited past enquiries whose scope of investigation was as parochial as dwelling on
only one operative as the determinant of news selection, the argument being that the
results of such constricted studies had merit only in the distant days of ‘egocentric
journalism’ when newspaper production was a small-scale business with very skeletal
manpower (Davidson et al, 1976).

Beyond the results which spoke of singular regimens of influences such as owners,
editors or reporters, several factors have been found to jointly exert influence on news
content of print and electronic media. In some cases, these findings have been built
into models. For example, while Schudson (1996) and McNair (1996) both identify
three broad approaches to the study of news production as political economy,
organisational, and cultural approaches, Davidson et al (1976) propose a two-tier
model of factors affecting news construction, namely, environmental and internal
factors. In the Davidsonian model, environmental factors represent all influences
exterior to the news organisation while the internal include all ramifications of
influences emanating from the organisational structures of the mass media as well as
from personnel input.

Reasoning along similar lines, Gans (1979) came out with an expanded model to
explain why certain stories were selected as news while others were not. One aspect
of Gan’s four-pronged model dwelt on media operatives, especially journalists. A
major thesis of this model is that whatever finally emerges as the news of the day can
be viewed as the product of professional judgements of journalists whose services are
guided by rules such as objectivity and balance among others. A second aspect of the
model points to the organisational structure of the news media which over time has

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♦

inaugurated some traditional routines that largely define the selection and production
of news. Yet a third aspect identifies events as imperative harbingers of news while the
last aspect highlights institutions, groups or forces which apply their own influences
from outside of the news organisation. These would include national culture, the
ideologies of the dominant classes or groups in society, technology, market forces and
the audience.

Taking the model a plane higher but retaining the basics of the previous explanations,
Shoemaker and Reese (1991) produced a five-step hierarchy of influences model which
comprises:

1. potential influences on mass media content from the journalists’ demographic

characteristics, attitudes and professional experiences,

2. media routines,

3. organisational structure, economic goals and ownership,

4. extrinsic factors such as information sources, advertisers, the entire economic

environment, technology and

5. ideology of powerful interests (Kenney, 1994).

From the multiplicity of models and approaches to the study of factors influencing
news production, four prominent perspectives can be distilled as the major focal points
of research on the sociology of news production. These are ownership, organisational
policies and routines, news sources and audiences, and journalists’ personal and
professional orientations. While acknowledging that they cannot be exhaustive in
themselves, I believe that these focal points capture the essence of the multi-faceted
findings on factors influencing news production, especially with regard to the
presentation of political and government issues in the Nigerian independent press.
Thus, they are adopted as the focus of this part of the review. Each step of the review
starts with a general overview of findings, and subsequently, dwells more on the
situation in developing countries, Nigeria in particular. This emphasis arises from the
fact that both the media and journalists under examination in this study exist in a

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typical developing nation whose media culture, as in ownership, management,

philosophies and regulations, differ markedly in many respects from the Western
pattern.

4.2.1 Ownership and Organisational Policies.

A great deal of research has been done on patterns of media ownership, with the focus
on the influence of privatisation, media concentration and government control on news
production (McNair, 1996). The usual thesis has been that media proprietors have
goals (usually political, commercial or ideological) which they seek to use the media to
actualise. Ideally, therefore, the organisational policies of the media are designed to
ensure that the entire process of producing news and other media wares serves the
values or interests of the owner. Relative to the present study, the point of interest is
how much influence ownership can exert in the construction of issues that border on
change of government in the independent press in Nigeria.

Generally, researchers such as Golding and Murdock (1991); Baneijee (1973); Hartley
(1982) and Shoemaker and Mayfield (1987) have all demonstrated that sources of
finance, especially entrepreneurs, in the newspaper industry are glaringly influential on
all aspects of news production. Founders’ ideologies, they all agree, shape both
editorials and news presentation.

Perhaps, due to the culture of privatisation, deregulation and other economic

modifications in the West (which diminish government involvement in the ownership
and management of the mass media among other services) as well as the continuing
expansion of media conglomerates, some researchers tend to consider political
economy as a more appropriate concept in the examination of the impact of media
ownership on media contents, the accent heavily placed on external market forces and
the economic structure of the media organisation as major determinants of news
production (Schudson, 1996). The exception seems to be the public service model of
media management as exemplified by the BBC (Schlesinger, 1978).

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The nexus of influences transcending just that of the founder of a medium, be it an

individual, a group or government is well articulated by Elridge (1993) in his study on
how media organisations depend for their survival not just on the whims of the owner
but on several other forces, prominent among which are advert revenue, power elites,
and news sources. The influence of powerful interests who may not necessarily be
owners of media is more distinctly treated in a latter section of this review.

4.2.2 The Scenario in Developing Nations

In developing nations, the direct influence of ownership on news construction is most

visible in government-owned media or public media corporations as well as media
owned by political parties. In these areas, governments and political parties participate
directly in the media scenario, setting up their own print and broadcast media, dictating
policies and goals for them as well as ensuring that contents conform to such policies
(Omu, 1996).

In the case of government, the notion of the awesome power of the mass media, real or
imagined, continuously looms large in the perception of political power brokers,
particularly those in developing nations. Having exploited this perceived power to gain
independence, the political elites had come to repose an unshakeable trust in the
indispensability of the media in information management, largely for the preservation
of political power (Okonkwor, 1978). Thus for most of the emergent political leaders,
using the media to acquire political power was the first of a two-pronged programme
of media exploitation. The second part entailed making maximum use of the same
media for consolidation, stability and the popularisation of ideals such as national
development, national unity, national identity and other national policies (Mytton,
1983).

Governments expect the mass media to subordinate other goals to nation-building.

This principle was bluntly put to a gathering of Pan African journalists in Ghana by
Nkrumah (1963) who said that “the truly African revolutionary press does not exist

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merely for the purpose of enriching its proprietors or entertaining its readers.” It
should, in his opinion, “rather serve as a collective organiser, a collective instrument of
mobilisation and a collective educator, a weapon first and foremost to overthrow
colonialism and imperialism and to assist total African independence and unity.”

Arguing in support of the same cause, Tanzania’s ex-president, Julius Nyerere, insisted
that “in a country' faced with problems of poverty, ignorance, disease and
underdevelopment on a gigantic scale, press freedom should be limited just as it has
been in the liberal democracies in war time” (Mytton, 1983: 59).

Even journalists themselves seemed to have bought these sentiments. In a defence for
the nation-building role of the media in developing nations, a Kenyan editor once
argued that widespread poverty, illiteracy and disease in Africa, Asia and Latin
America makes it “sacrilegious to talk about press freedom”, since “freedom loses
meaning when human survival is the only operative principle on which a people lives”.
He rather advocates that in cases of wide disunity and tribalism as in Africa, a more
pressing role of the press should be to encourage greater national unity without which
“all other human values become impossible”, without which “freedom and justice
become meaningless”, without which “life becomes insecure” (Ngweno, 1968, cited in
Mytton, 1983:60).

In Asia, similar philosophies influence the operations of the mass media. National
unity and identity are meant to supersede other media values. Addressing the
International Press Institute at Helsinki, a former Singaporean minister for culture once
admitted that,

If a newspaper indulges in tactics which might incite

communal hatred or race riots, we intervene. In
fact, during the last one year, we have had occasion
to ring up the press to ask for their co-operation to
keep certain unpleasant stories out of the
press...Freedom of the press, freedom of news media
must be subordinated to the overriding needs of the

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integrity of Singapore, and to the primacy of

purpose of an elected government...The mass media
can help present Singapore’s problems simply and
clearly and then explain how if they (the media)
support certain programmes and policies, these
problems can be solved. We want the mass media to
reinforce, not undermine the cultural values being
inculcated in our schools and universities (Yuo and
Chen, 1983: 42).
This philosophy has remained the guiding principle of media policy in Singapore,
Malaysia and other countries in the region till date (Malaysia. The Rising Star. 1994).

Besides the developmental philosophy, government’s domination of the mass media in

developing regions has been explained by McQuail (1994) in terms of,

• the need for government to have its own voice especially whereitcannot rely on
the private media whose operational goals are largely profit-induced. In theview
of a Zambian journalist, “governments need to have a forum which is not
antagonistic to the overall goals of national policy when they need to explain
policies, transmit decisions, instructions... or discuss new projects and ideas with
the citizenry.” (Mwaffissi, 1989:17).

• the need to reach small linguistic groups especially in the rural areas whose
interests are disregarded by the commercially-oriented private media.

• the urge to help develop media facilities in countries whose economy is not robust
enough to encourage private media entrepreneurship.

Beyond all these philosophies, the interest of this review is in how the dispensation so
far highlighted impacts upon news production in developing countries.

Following a study of the mass media in developing nations, Mytton (1983) concludes
that mass media content is considerably devoted to national sentiment and symbols
which usually resound in the speeches and activities of political leaders. Mwaffissi’s
(1989) study is supportive of this thesis. His content analysis of government-owned
Zambian Broadcasting Corporation news demonstrated that news bulletins, like other
programmes, deliberately aimed to achieve five core national policies, namely,

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• building a humanist society based on a national philosophy titled humanism,

• supporting the total liberation of Africa,
• promoting African unity,
• promoting world peace and justice and
• adhering to the non-aligned policy.
In line with these policies, 71 % of the news coded were on developing continents, with
Africa taking the lion share of the coverage. A more pertinent finding was that “most
stories were centred on speeches of African leaders, OAU activities, African liberation
movements and economic groupings such as the Southern Africa Co-ordination
Conference, and the Front-line States” (ibid. p.31).

The influence of ownership prevails not only on what is given prominence but also on
what is screened out. Musa (1989) found that when reporters of the government-
owned News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) filed in stories that bordered on sensitive State
policies, the chief gatekeepers were quick to ensure that such materials were expunged
regardless of their merits in the hierarchy of news values.

As a further demonstration of the situation, Edeani’s (1988) investigation of value

orientations in press coverage of a national mobilisation campaign in Nigeria found
differences in coverage of the campaign between government-owned and private
newspapers in the country. For example, while government papers reported less
frequently than private ones on the problems identified with the campaign, they were
more eager to report evidence of its success more than the private newspapers. The
private papers themselves carried more critical content about the programme than the
government publications. Edeani explains the difference in terms of government
papers regarding it as their primary goal to publicise government policies and activities
as well as to always paint a glowing image of government and its officials, a situation
which influences their subservient posture in relentlessly playing up contents that are
favourable to government while ignoring those that are unfavourable. Conversely, “the
independence of the private newspapers disposes them more than government

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newspapers toward reporting and commenting on government and other public policies
more objectively” (Edeani, 1988: 30).

Like government media, party newspapers have their philosophies and contents
exclusively dictated by owners’ interest. In most developing nations, these
publications are active only during periods of election campaigns when they are fully
employed in either promoting the cause of their proprietors or denouncing opposition.
Thereafter, they disappear from the scene just as the parties until the run up to another
election (Diamond, 1990).

Does the he-who-pays-the-piper syndrome, which disposes government and political

party media to pander obsequiously to the pulses of government publicity needs and
political propaganda, similarly influence news production in the independent media
(mostly print) co-existing with them in the same social and political milieu?

There is evidence that beyond the pursuit of other organisational goals, especially the
profit motive, the private media, in most cases, are not tied to the apron strings of
proprietors as much as government and party newspapers. As Okigbo (1987: 12)
points out, other factors more than the alleged powers of media owners are
“responsible for much of what is routinely carried out in news organisations.” As he
further explains, the fact of the matter is that many publishers in Nigeria and some
other developing nations do not get involved in the daily determination of media
content. Their participation is usually restricted to a broad definition of audience
interests, and thus, reporters and editors have an upper hand in ‘balancing’ media
content to reflect their perceptions of audiences’ needs and expectations. This
observation is supported by research findings indicating the association between
depreciating monopoly of print media ownership and more balanced coverage of issues
(Edeani, 1971, 1988; Sobowale, 1985; Donohew et al, 1985; Okigbo, 1993 and
Nwokeafor et al, 1993).

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Another consideration guiding editorial judgement in such independent media is what

reporters and editors perceive to be in national interest, hence, they often
accommodate government sentiments, in particular, those they adjudge to be in the
public interest rather than mere political propaganda for the benefit of the government
or political parties. Focusing on the impact of newly introduced government policies
on quantity and quality of coverage, for instance, Ozoh (1990) reported that Nigerian
newspapers carried more positive news and features on the hitherto neglected rural
areas between 1986 and 1987 than in the 1984/85 period. He attributed the difference
to the inauguration of a national programme for the provision of food, roads and
infrastructure in the rural communities beginning from 1986. Ozoh then concluded
that “the press can be sensitised to important national development issues and (rural)
areas when particular programmes and policies have been specifically initiated in that
direction”(ibid. p.21).

In another study demonstrating the commitment of the private press to national interest
in a neighbouring country, Yankah (1994) examined the coverage of the environment
in the Ghanaian press and reported that coverage on environment issues was
concentrated in the month of June, a period which, by government policy, was devoted
to environmental awareness and activities in the country. The coverage however
diminished in the three months that went after June.

By the same token, these independent press have a reputation for allowing a broad
exchange of views on national issues, which in most cases are critical of government
policies and programmes (Edeani, 1988). This culture persists in the increasing
accommodation of vocal elites such as intellectuals, human rights groups, and pro­
democracy organisations who, even when they own no shares in the media, all the
same, command a considerable influence, in conjunction with business goals, in the
shaping of media contents. Tracing the attributes of today’s press in Nigeria, Jason
(1996:32) welcomes the increasing emergence of private independent newspapers and
magazines as “one of the most positive developments in the Nigerian press”. In his
view, this development “not only made the competition in the news stand very keen, it

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brought into the industry more intellectuals from the universities.” He believes that the
presence of the intellectuals in turn resulted in better packaged newspapers with well
written columns and articles as well as well-researched, in-depth news analyses and
specialised reports on special subjects. Most importantly, Jason is optimistic about the
entire development “narrowing the usual conflicts over the objectives and policies of
the press between businessmen owners and professional staff’.

4.2.3 News Routinisation.

There is a preponderance of research findings attesting to the predominance of news as

a product of media structure, sociology and predictable routine. Gans (1979) for
example, stresses the influence of news organisation routine as part of a frame work
for explaining the news process. In particular, could the framing of government or
political issues in the media, especially those that are thought to be instrumental to
political changes, as in Nigeria, be explained partly in terms of the routine factor?
Perhaps, an answer to this question demands a proper examination of the intricacies of
news routinisation itself.

Following a repetition of tasks most often in pursuit of repeated ideals, the mass media
tend to develop an enduring pattern of performance. Referring to this situation after a
study of broadcast news production in both developed and developing nations,
Golding and Elliot (1974:41) reported that news production followed a trajectory of
“strongly patterned, repetitive and predictable routine.”

The routine factor was further seen to be pervasive in Helland’s (1993:168) study of
news production in two news services. His observation that the “the routines for
producing the news were repeated every day...and may be described as quite
predictable” was merely a reinforcement of the stock of findings confirming the
influence of institutional routines on news production (Tunstall, 1971; Tuchman, 1978;
Schlesinger, 1978; Boyd-Barrett, 1980), for he found the same news meetings, the
same structured news diaries and the same pattern of story assignment dictating what
eventually ended up in the bulletins or not. As he put his observation,

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Often during the meeting, the top editors would also

provide some policy remarks about what news
needed to be covered, in what ways to do it...The
meeting also features a presentation of the potential
news comments on what angles to stress. At the
end of the meeting the editor in charge produces a
final list of news issues to be covered based on the
presentation, discussion and policy statements..., and
allocates the stories to reporters (Helland,1993:
171).

The usual outcome further confirmed in Helland’s study was that a majority of the
stories presented as newsworthy were easily predictable, especially from the
perspective of staff of the news organisations, and more especially reporters to whom
the events already pencilled down in planning diaries had been revealed well in advance
of coverage.

In another study which examined the editorial process at two prominent American
newspapers, Sigal (1973) depicted the prevalence and importance of established news
gathering routines and the impact of bureaucratic struggles within the two newspapers.
Sigal’s conclusion is as predictable as the situation he had observed: “whether one
story rather than another would appear on the front page or would be carried at all
depended in part on whether it came through a news channel that was regularly
monitored, on the persuasiveness of the editor who handles it, and on the relationship
between the reporter and the source of the information” (Sigal, 1973:13).

In developing nations, regardless of the obvious impact of ownership on news selection

as seen earlier in this review, there is evidence to show that it is by no means an end in
the news construction process. The routine factor has also been found to be pervasive.
Hypothesising that one of the pressures which intervene in news production is the “self
exerted professional demand of adhering to the organisational routines and values of
journalism”, Musa (1989:158) demonstrated how news routinisation is effected in an
African media scenario. After a participant observation of the news process in the
News Agency of Nigeria (NAN), Musa identified five levels at which routines
flourished as planning, reporting, processing, selection and evaluation.

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Relative to planning, Musa notes:

Contrary to the journalistic perspective which casts

news in the mould of an occurrence that breaks
randomly and gets trapped in the reporters’ news-
thirsty nose, there is a routine planning which
reduces randomness of news by deciding in advance
what events or issues qualify to make news (ibid, p.
170).

Such routine planning as observed by Musa in NAN entailed

• compiling a diary of possible news events (usually invitations from publicity-

seeking individuals and organisations),

• discussion and selection of those considered worthy of coverage at editorial

conferences and

• assigning specific coverages to reporters, with clear instructions on the desired

backgrounds and news angles to be stressed by the reporter.

In Musa’s opinion, such regular conferences reflect “the extent to which news is
selected and structured” even before the final report is submitted or turned into
published news (ibid. p. 192).

Since the various stages of news production are routinised and firmly entrenched in the
organisational operations, reporters cannot be expected to work free of the binding
influences of such routines. The influence of media routine on journalistic performance
can best be discussed under news values, topics and news subjects all of which have
been given separate treatments in this chapter. At the moment, I shall consider the
symptoms of routinized reporting which include the following:

• Striving to know and avoid what destines a story to the waste bin which in turn
generates the urge among reporters to conform to editors’ whims, thereby losing
individual judgements and styles in selecting and writing stories. According to
Musa, “reporters merely perform the task of news gathering adhering as much as
possible to the policy and house style as given in the editor’s directives on angles
and background of coverage” (ibid. p.97).

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• Stationed on particular beats for a long time, some reporters tend not only to
specialise on that beat but also unconsciously see themselves as part of the daily
activities and culture of the beat. Consequently, they tend to present reports of
such beats as sympathetically as possible on a regular basis. Furthermore, the
organisation’s news bulletin always have a space for the specialists’ beats which
means that the mere positioning of a specialist reporter in any place, predetermines
that place as a routine news shore (ibid. p.83).

• Due also to the routine story assignment which sends reporters combing the same
corridors of government, bureaucratic and business offices, usually in the capitals
and other cities, news can only be routinely reported in favour of such beats while
the countryside and the less glamorous places are sentenced to perpetual oblivion.
Musa found that due to this orientation, NAN reporters once posted to rural areas
protested such posting, arguing that “there is no news in the rural areas” (ibid.
P-91).

Routinisation of news processing, that is, soon after reporters have submitted stories,
is demonstrable in the waiting desks of news editors and sub-editors where stories are
modified, often re-written before being passed to other gate keepers. In NAN, stories
pass routinely from the reporter to the sub-editor to the desk editor and to the assistant
editor-in-chief who stamps the final approval for using or discarding a story (Musa,
1989).

Though it shares an indistinct borderline with news processing, news selection defers
more to strong criteria woven round the medium’s policy. Such policies would include
national spread, counterbalancing international media hegemony, enhancing national
development and promoting Pan Africanism in the case of NAN.

Referring to a Brazilian situation, Reeves (1993:126) comments that national news

programmes are tailored to “portray Brazil as a large and important nation
participating in international events”, and accordingly, the participation of national
figures in international engagements are usually accorded significant coverage.

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4.2.4 News Source Influence.

Even though publishers, editors and reporters are usually credited with the ability to
determine what gets published through established news gates, none of these classes of
media operatives can replace the position of news sources who, as ‘primary definers’,
are presumed to have full facts and expert knowledge which reporters rely on in
producing news and opinions (Hall et al, 1978). A deluge of findings including those
of Gans (1979); Gandy (1982); Bennet (1988); Ansolabehere et al (1991) and Singh
(1994) reinforces this thesis. Perhaps, a more pertinent question at this juncture is the
examination of who make up the typical news sources and how they exert influence in
news production, especially those that relate to dynamics of politics and political
change.

Naturally, it would appear that anybody possessing some intelligence and

communication skills could be regarded as a source. However, due mainly to the over­
reaching impact of structured media operations previously discussed, a few persons
who have access to media attention end up as news sources. This is simply the
dynamics of source building that concentrates ‘primary definers’ among the elites and
the powerful. According to Hall et al (1978: 59),

The important point about the structured

relationship between the media and primary
institutional definers is that it permits the
institutional definers to establish the initial definition
or primary interpretation of the topic in question.
This interpretation then commands the field in all
subsequent treatment and sets the terms of reference
within which all further coverage’s and debates take
place.

As would be expected, not a few research findings point to an unflinching tradition

among news organisations building their news stories with the information supplied by

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government, political and corporate officials, professional experts, celebrities and elites
in other walks of life; those Golding and Elliot (1979:11) identified as the
“information-producing strata” of society.

Based on a study of a small community newspaper, Fisher (1977:63) posited that the
production of news depended significantly on a mutually derived co-operation between
reporters and members of the information-producing strata. As he commented, “all
hard news reporting reproduces the primacy of such legitimated bureaucratic
institutions; facts produced by centralised bureaucratic sources are assumed to be
essentially correct and disinterested; facts promoted by others are ‘soft’, ‘non­
objective’ and ‘interested’.

Explaining the fanatical reliance on bureaucratic spokespersons for news leads as an

outcome of the media leaning on routine events, Davidson et al (1976) cited a study by
Molotch and Lester (1975) of press coverage of an oil spill in California in 1969. The
national press were found to give more prominence to the side of federal government
and the oil company spokespersons than the views and activities of local officials and
conservationist groups. Similarly, a study of the attribution pattern of two US prestige
papers which were naturally expected to have an independent stance on issues and
events were found to attribute almost half of their news to government officials while
quoting non-govemment sources in less than 17% cases.

Aside from the often cited institutional routine which assigns journalists to ‘legitimate
organised institutions’ and thereby socialises them to always search for views of
‘authoritative sources’ if stories must be credible, what else is responsible for the
sustained hegemony of the elites as news sources? Becker (1967:9) offers a
sociological explanation:

In any system of ranked groups, participants take it

as a given that members of the highest group have
the right to define the way things really are...those at
the top have access to a more complete picture of
what is going on than anybody else.

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The situation is therefore one in which personality or office prima facie determines the
reliability of an individual or group as worthy of being quoted; the parallel of the
slogan, “If Old Major said i t , it must be true” in Geoge Orwell’s Animal Farm.

Golding and Murdock (1973:21) analyse the situation purely from the dramatic
undertones of news. They argue that news is usually presented as a theatrical
performance or plot whose actions are “unfolded through the actions and speech of
certain central characters and the conflict between them.” Listeners, readers and
viewers are cast as ‘spectators’ who are expected to “participate vicariously in the
performance through projecting themselves into the situation and/or identifying with
central characters.”

To command such enthralling attention, these central characters must be spectacular,

and in real life, that translates into the same powerful, influential and glamorous news
subjects whose thoughts, comments and activities dominate the content of the mass
media. In fact, the dependence on the elite as news sources is so deep-seated that
where a situation produces several classes of elites, the elite among the elites is sought
for. In a hierarchical order, those who wield political power emerge as primus inter
pares which explains why presidents, ministers, parliamentarians and prominent
politicians take the lead among sources or actors.

So far, the attention has been on news sources; those whose cues make up the day’s
news. If, however, we were to relate this factor to the overall subject of news
construction, it would become apparent that the stereotyped definition of news makers
also defines non-news sources. It would further appear, from the foregoing, that
ordinary or less influential people and lower socio-economic groups are totally blanked
out of the news. While they may not be cited as sources in most cases, they do attract
coverage as actors, and under the section on professional news values, we shall see the
special social contexts in which they attract coverage. Molotch and Lester (1974:17)
give us an insight into such contexts when they argue that “ordinary people must
assemble in the wrong place at the wrong time to do the wrong thing” if they must be
seen by reporters and editors.

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Relating these observations to developing nations, the findings are similar to the
foregoing. For example a study of the news selection process in a Nigerian news
organisation, discloses that "... news bulletin is a reflection of the information made
available for it by the dominant elite.” (Musa, 1989:174). Another study of the
Nigerian news media further indicted reporters for not only carrying more news about
known personalities but also covering them in more favourable light than unknown
persons in a manner that smacked of sheer stereotyping (Aborishade, 1977).

Not only are the elites cited more frequently but also news credited to them are made
more visible by being placed on front pages (Oso, 1986). When they are not cited as
sources, the elites are all the same given media pampering by being featured as major
actors around whom stories revolve even when their presence in or linkage with the
subject is too remote to count. This will be discussed in detail under professional news
values. One obvious implication of the dispensation is that alternative voices are at
best consigned to the peripheral spheres of the news hole if not completely discarded
as irrelevant, non-factual or banal.

Even an organisation like NAN which had been set up primarily to promote alternative
sources of news in the wake of agitations by developing nations against undesirable
values and practices inherent in the domineering Western media of international
communication was found to be guilty of skewing news in terms of the activities of the
prominent. Commoners such as ordinary citizens, trade unions and pressure groups
were given scant coverage in NAN’s bulletins, forcing Musa (1989: 201) to conclude,

Dissenting voices are muffled...Activities of pressure

groups and illegitimate opposition are conspicuously
unreported or given little prominence. Same goes
for the majority of Nigerians who form the category
of ordinary citizens.

After examining the predominant news sources, it can safely be argued that the moral
is that whoever the media rely on for news and opinions can impact significantly on the

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outcome of the entire news production process. It will therefore be essential to find
out which sources provide independent newspapers with information on government
activities in Nigeria.

42.5 Journalists* Professional Orientation and News Values,

Proponents of the ‘culturological’ approach to news construction research (Schudson,

1991) attribute much of what shape news to journalistic autonomy rather than
proprietorial or other sources of control. According to Gandy (1982:9-10),
researchers adopting this approach “view news content as the result of individual
action, and seek to understand that action by understanding the background and
personality of journalists.” For example, Pool and Shulman’s contention (1959),
several decades ago, that fantasies of reporters influence reporter bias in news
coverage, has resounded in many other subsequent reports (Halloran et al, 1969; Hall,
1973; Bennet, 1982; Nasser, 1983; McNair, 1994).

Made from an African point of view, Okigbo’s (1987:18) observation that “journalists
are responsible for much that is routinely carried out in the media in spite of the alleged
powers of media owners and businessmen to regulate content” suggests the application
of journalistic autonomy in news production in developing nations as well.

It should be noted, however, that whatever the environment, the extent to, or the
fashion in, which journalists’ responsibilities are carried out would depend so much on
some social factors which compulsively shape the products of the mass media.
Davidson et al (1976) had earlier argued in the same direction as Okigbo when they
acknowledged that “journalists determine content by what they write and how to write
it” but they are quick to point out that journalists are “circumscribed by forces which
limit what they can or cannot do.”

Apart from previously mentioned factors such as institutional routine, other limitations
could arise from professional orientation and the ensuing journalistic values. The
ineluctability of these values is strongly worded in Murdock’s (1980:19) observation

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that “the manufacture of news is framed by a distinctive set of journalistic criteria of

news worthiness, and by routine practices of gathering and processing through which
these values are operationalised.”

In another reference to the values, Traber (1987:27) describes them as a set of

conventional rules which are applied to the selection and treatment of news in a fairly
uniform way, pointing out that adherence to them reflects the role of the news media in
sustaining the ‘dominance of the dominant sector’. Much of the discussion in this
section shall, therefore, focus on how journalistic values, rather than mere personal
attributes, are likely to affect news presentation.

A litany of studies pointing in all directions has emerged with a listing of the different
values adopted by different reporters in different media organisations in the business of
news coverage. Faced with an overwhelming harvest of reports which can all hardly fit
into news space or time at a given period, the editor’s decision is explained by
communication philosophers in terms of certain industrialised parameters or news
values. In the estimation of Golding and Elliot (1979), the adoption of news values
serves two basic ends: determining the suitability of stories for inclusion in the final
product, and serving as guides not only for treating the recipe, as it were, but also for
serving instructions (what to stress or play down).

The values emphasised by Golding and Elliot include the following:

• prominence and importance: defining news as the concerns and interest of the high
and mighty,

• brevity and simplification: the urge to strip news to bare essentials, obscuring the
complex under-currents,

• negativeness: news as an account of the odd, the quaint, the unusual, the abnormal,
the bizarre, the weird, the exceptional or the disruptive in the normal splice of life,

• recency: stressing the current as opposed to the historical,

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• drama: spicing up activities by stressing their dramatic aspects, playing up the

entertainment, humour and titillating values,

• personalities: emphasising the human angle through reporting events as interactions

of individuals or groups and

• elite: a preference for the well-known and the leading members of different walks
of life (ibid. p.20).

On their own part, Galtung and Ruge (1981), in what they termed ‘culture-bound
factors’, listed the following as factors influencing the transition of events to news:

• the more the event concerns elite nations,

• the more the event concerns elite people,

• the more the event can be seen in personalterms and

• the more the negative the event in its consequence.

Not only have these factors been repeatedly cited in several studies, they have been
found to apply in developing nations as much as in Western industrialised ones. In an
x-ray of the current criteria of news in media of the developing countries, Traber
(1987:30) expresses dismay that “the African mass media...are primarily concerned
with interests of the elites rather than with the aspirations of what we disparagingly call
ordinary people”. Other values which he identified among the mass media in Africa
and which he viewed as anti-democratic included timeliness, prominence, conflict, the
unusual, immediacy, the accident, the legitimate and repetition.

In order to examine the prevalence of these values, I have thought it wise to look at
them in relation to news actors, story genre, topic and story locale or dateline.

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The consensus among research findings is that across the globe prominence is the
dominant value in the coverage of persons or groups. This has been ascribed to a
psychological behaviour that is nurtured by routine:

When an event occurs, the journalist’s routine sends

him in search of the key individual, the witness, the
expert, and his personality frame of reference will
make him tend to explain events predominantly in
terms of personal ambition, conspiracy or other
personal motivations (Hartman and Husband,
1974:14).

As Traber summed it up, “...the picture that emerges is that some very few men or
women who are either politically powerful or economically rich or both, and those who
because of looks or muscle power or their singing voice qualify as the VIP of the
media.” (Traber, 1987:22)

Narrowing down the scenario to the situation among African news media with
particular stress on Nigeria, Opubor (1973) observes that the media concentrate on the
urban and traditional elite whose opinions are quoted and whose fortunes are featured,
giving rise to a bias away from the masses.

Both the concentration on elites and bias away from the ordinary people ran through
countless studies on news coverage. For example, top-ranking actors in news
bulletins of NAN were found to be heads of state, political elites and heads of
bureaucracy who attracted 50% of coverage while ordinary citizens got only 6%
(Musa, 1989). Similar results were reported in studies of other African news
organisations. Bosompra (1989:26) content analysed two publications; one Ghanaian
and the other British, in search of African news in the world press. Relative to actors,
his observation was that both papers featured similar news makers, namely, the
political elite. His conclusion was that “the activities of heads of state and their
ministers along with other top political figures were given more prominence than
information about how the ordinary people of Africa live from day to day.” Yet in
another study based in Ghana, Obeng-Quaidoo (1987:16) examined the socio­

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economic context within which journalists operate and the effects such contexts had on
their performance. Among other things, he reported that most of the news he coded
were political speeches or accounts of events in which politicians and top government
officials featured prominently. As he put it, “indeed, it could be said that such stories
became newsworthy or saw print only because of the presence of a political figure or
personality.” Other researchers like Becker (1967), Golding and Murdock (1973),
Husband and Hartman (1974), Aborishade (1977), Schlesinger (1987), Gans (1979),
Golding and Elliot (1979), Murdock, (1980), Knight (1982), Hall et al (1978),
MacQuail (1987), Abdullahi (1990), Helland (1993) have all established the
dominance of the prominent and powerful as news actors.

Under what circumstances are common people made visible in media coverage? The
general agreement among researchers is that their activities must be graced by the
solidarity of elites, mainly from government offices. Otherwise, such activities must be
completely weird to command media attention. Opubor (1973) for example, argues
that “what unimportant people do becomes important if it impinges significandy on the
lives of the great, if it is bizarre or if the journalist self consciously indulges in so-called
human interest.” Supporting this thesis, Roscho (1975) reminisces that there was a
time when poor and black minorities in America received no coverage in the media
unless they engaged in criminal behaviour, usually against a middle-class person.

Galtung and Ruge (1970:11) illustrate the situation as it applies to developing

countries, maintaining that “an incident regarding a snake charmer or an exotic cult in a
developing country is more likely to be reported than the construction of a modem
dam or bridge”. But Traber puts it even more sarcastically, for as he remarked, “it is in
the category of the unusual that ordinary people have access to the media: if they do
something particularly unusual or bizarre like drinking twenty bottles of beer (each),
they become news makers; if they figure otherwise in our newspapers or on the air,
then it is usually as victims of accidents or catastrophe” (Traber, 1987:30).

The Glasgow Media Group (1976) has an explanation for the seeming dichotomy in
representation of elite and ordinary people, using the case of coverage of industrial

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relations. Coverage of this sector, it maintains “tends to generate accounts of

uncontrollable forces in which social actors are cast as either villains or heroes; those
who disrupt the consumer society and those who battle to retain social order” (p.22).
More insight on the social contexts surrounding the visibility of the commoners in
news can be gained from the analysis of the dominant story genres which now follows.

The definition of news as ‘disruption in the normal running of events’ has dominated
research enterprise for several decades, especially in the wake of demands for a new
world order of information and communication. As Brucker (1973:17) put it, “the
bigger, the more off-beat or the more bloody the spectacle, the greater the news
value.” He, however, exonerates journalists whom he says are not more “ghoulish or
less sensitive to the finer things of life than their fellow men.” So, why do reporters
concentrate on conflicts, oddity, sensation and allied issues? One theory dwells on the
historical antecedents of news reporting. The origin of news is traced to a surveillance
service to business groups who were “concerned for the interrupted flow of
commercial life such as loss of merchandise at sea, financial upheavals in mercantile
centres and wars” (Golding and Elliot, 1979:17). Thus there was no interest when all
was smooth sailing. Reports were only made when disruptions arose.

Yet another theory points to the influence of the audience. Brucker (1973:9) insists
that the preponderance of negative incidents in news “merely reflects the ineluctable
fact that readers will flock to a story that has shock value but ignore what is routine.”

Both theories simply translate to a situation where news people and the media pander
to the psychology of readership, especially in a highly competitive media market.
Consequently, almost every research on news coverage talks about the dominance of
news genres presented as accounts of the exceptional.

Initially, the reduction of news to the negative was seen as the hall mark of the
capitalist-oriented Western news media, in particular the big international wire services

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and media conglomerates. In a classic illustration of the West’s flair for controversial
news, Davidson et al (1976:11) reported that,

When an unsuccessful attempt was made on

President Ford’s life in 1975, the event dominated
the mass media...Speculations about information that
might have been given more prominent treatment if
the assassination attempt had not occurred showed
that among the news ignored that day was President
Ford’s programme to give the US self sufficiency in
energy resources, and Secretary of State, Kissinger’s
proposals for a new approach to peace in the
Middle-East.

But the application of such news values is equally intense in the media of developing
nations. Bosompra (1989:45), for example, found that both Ghanaian and British
papers he content analysed carried more negative news of Africa, and concluded that
“it would appear that the North and South are equally responsible for the alleged
inadequate and distorted coverage of Africa.” Other researchers such as Pratt (1974),
Sobowale (1987, Nwosu (1987), Mwaffissi (1989), Nwuneli et al (1994), Emenyeonu
(1994) and Zaring (1994) have shown news of developing nations reported by their
own media as containing a significant percentage of negative portrayal. Reflecting on
this development, Traber (1987:31) surmises,

“We have become so obsessed with this news value

(conflict) that we capitalise on any event that
contains even the slightest element of it. Worse than
that if there are no real conflicts to report; they are
created artificially as a form of entertainment. In
short, there is little space or time in our mass media
that can be devoted to peace, normality and
harmonious relationships.”

The wonder must be how the mass media of developing nations seem to be promoting
the same values they find objectionable in the Western media. One school of thought
blames the situation on media education and professional orientation. For example,
Davidson et al (1976:12) observe that “the quality of the personnel that a society can
provide for journalism and the training available to this personnel has a direct effect on
the content of that society’s media.” The possibility of journalists absorbing value

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orientations all the way from journalism training institutions is quite high. And this
appears to be the case with most African journalists who are trained either formally or
through in-service courses in polytechnics and universities staffed by lecturers trained
in America or Europe. This dispensation, according to Domatob (1988) is aggravated
by the fact that the curriculum, course content, text books and methodologies are also
westernised. There are chances, therefore, that the acquisition of similar training and
values predisposes most reporters in the region to share a common conception of
news; precisely the way it is perceived in the West.

A second theory lays the blame on the door step of the African media which have to
rely solely on the international news agencies for both local and foreign news.
Bosompra’s (1989) contention that the Daily Graphic of Ghana projects a similar
image of Africa as the Times of London because both papers obtain news from the
same transnational news agencies is highly instructive here.

Relative to the news values that prevail over selection and coverage of topics or issues,
a majority of the results shows coverage leaning heavily towards politics, especially in
developing nations. Researchers like Abdullahi (1979), Obeng-Quaidoo (1988),
Lobulu (1988) and Musa (1989) who studied news production processes in African
mass media all found that much of the news and features were on politics, followed by
military activities, while issues like religion, education, science and technology were
hardly ever presented. In what sounded like a rationalisation of the dominance of
political topics, Obeng-Quaidoo (1988:26) reminisces that “the African press and
broadcast media...were conceived more in a political milieu than any other
consideration,” He refers to Ex-Ghanaian leader Nkrumah’s description of the African
press as “bom of incipient nationalism, nurtured on political consciousness”.

It would appear to be the case that the political tradition of the African media is still in
force, for as one of Obeng-Quaidoo’s respondents said, “most of our newspapers are

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politically oriented, so if there are two stories - one on health and another on politics,
obviously the latter would be chosen for publication”(ibid.p.30).

Just as politics is the most dominant topic in the African media and those of other
developing areas, research has shown the media of advanced nations to be equally
addicted to political topics. While the situation in less democratic nations has been
attributed to the lack of democracy which encourages the merging of State and
political processes and personifying them in the actions of the political leadership so
that even personal affairs are reported under official capacities, the context in
international reporting has to do with the concentration on the myriad diplomatic
fence-mending that has become the imperative of an era in which conflicts and threats
of war imperil global peace and progress (Emenyeonu, 1992).

With regard to locale, the dominant picture is the imperialism of world and national
capitals and cities. The apparent logic seems to be that the mere fact that a place
serves as home to news actors as well as the seat of government, industrial and other
bureaucratic enterprise predetermines it as a news dateline. This explains the devotion
of attention to the so-called world capitals (Semmel, 1976).

The practice also trickles down to individual nations, including those in Africa, where
according to several researchers (Traber, 1987; Bosompra, 1989; Abdullahi, 1990)
coverage is skewed in favour of capitals and urban centres. Of the News Agency of
Nigeria’s 167 reporters, 87 (slightly more than 50%) are said to be in the largest city,
Lagos, alone while the rest are posted to other cities in the country, leaving the rural
communities where well over 70% of the people live with virtually no reporters
(Abdullahi, 1990).

The definition of the more obscure places in the world and national news maps as
barren areas in terms of news production is dramatised by Traber who remarked, “An
editor seeing the word Kwekwe as dateline will scrutinise the item with special care,

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thinking, what can really happen in this little sleepy town in the midlands of
Zimbabwe” (Traber, 1989:26).

4.2.6 External Pressures: The Dependency Factor.

Davidson et al (1976) have noted that owners and managers of the mass media are
subject to pressures from many quarters. Most insidious among sources of external
pressure on the media are government, the business and political classes, advertisers,
interest groups and even rival media. Other influences identified by Gans (1979)
include the audience, national culture and the ideologies of the dominant group.

Limitations in funding, manpower and equipment, and the lack of autonomy, especially
in developing nations, have considerably shaped most of the production goals of the
media with particular reference to news presentation. The quest for financial solvency
in particular has exerted tremendous influence on media roles and performance in an
era in which market forces are making in-roads into areas earlier thought to be
impervious to the commercial revolution. According to Davidson et al (1976), most
media are set up purely to earn money for proprietors and investors whose very
interest in the media hinge on good financial returns. A demonstrable response by the
media to the impact of media commercialisation can be seen in the struggle to court
advertisers and maximise audience which in turn influences news construction among
other media programmes. Robinson (1981) offers an explanation by observing that
mass media whose financial apron strings are tied to advertising usually resort to more
entertainment content such as soap operas, musicals and sports which are expected to
attract potential consumers otherwise known as audiences, in reward for advertisers’
patronage. The direct influence of this relationship relative to news is that less
development news or in-depth analysis of social, political and science topics and more
space or time for shallow, usually event-centred, news are allocated. A good example
is the dramatic change in media policy in China. Traditionally, the Chinese media were
meant to publicise and explain government and party policies, but the inception of
advertising on television is said to have altered programmes in favour of contents with

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capabilities for attracting audiences to channels (Robinson, 1981, Quoted in Reeves,

1993).

Of all types of external pressures exerting influence on news production, the most
relevant to this study is that emanating from interest groups, mainly the dominant elite.
In what has been termed the propaganda model, Herman and Chomsky (1994) argued
that the media are no more than malleable instruments in the hands of a domineering
power elite who exploit the potentials of the media to mould public opinion for their
interests. Other researchers like McNair (1996) and Schudson (1996) have reinforced
this argument in recent studies.

The lack of technology which imposes the importation of hard and soft ware on
developing and poorer nations is by far the most enduring means of such pressure. At
one level, it constrains the media from effective coverage of even local communities,
leaving them at the mercy of the same powerful international news agencies whose
wares are said to be heavily spiced with unwholesome values. At another level, it
leaves the media with only the option of filling time and space with ready-made content
imported from the giant global media firms that produce cultural products. Thus, the
values inherent in such content are effortlessly diffused into all crannies of the world
not by choice but out of dependency (Bosompra, 1989). Though it was based in a
Western media scene, Helland’s (1993) study of the news services of the Norwegian
public service corporation and the Scandinavian commercial satellite TV3
demonstrated how the lack of resources renders the media, especially those of
developing nations, vulnerable to external pressures. It showed that the channel that
had lower levels of resources did not carry any domestic news. It was cheaper to rely
on wire services for foreign news than to hire local correspondents. The study further
revealed that the channel which had “far more resources for producing news had a
news room that was more flexible in its operation and could make more choices in
regard to what news to carry or how to present it” (ibid. p. 118).

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The imposition of a new ideology or the abrogation of an old one is yet another feature
in the propaganda model of external pressure on news production. This thesis is
vividly exemplified in Matta’s (1979) expose of the changing phases of media roles in
Latin America where news, originally constructed as a ‘current of opinion’ has, in
deference to new and subordinating links with North America and Europe, changed to
the selection and presentation of events aimed at evoking commercial interests among
the audience. To a considerable extent, the need to satisfy audience expectations,
basically for subscription and circulation support, also influences the news process in
the media. The general thesis is that “reporters’ perceptions of audience interests and
their expectations of probable audience reactions play a major role in how they
(reporters) select and handle stories for news” (Pool and Schulman, 1959, Quoted in
Davidson et al, 1976:54).

In addition to the sources highlighted so far, external pressures on news production in

the Nigerian media come mainly from governments. In one form, government’s
reluctance to deregulate government-owned media (by its insistence on funding them
when they can fend for themselves through licence fees, advert revenue or some other
economic derivations) can be reasonably argued to stem from the wish to perpetuate
their loyalty to the whims of the ruling party. Musa’s (1989:125) observation of the
News Agency of Nigeria’s predicament offers an excellent illustration:

NAN’s management feel more secure and hopeful in

approaching the government for increase in funding
with minimal record of controversy between the
latter and the agency. The management is often
proud of the cordial relationship that has so far
existed between NAN and government, and does not
want to see that cordiality dented.
This in itself speaks volumes about news construction in the Agency and other
government media, especially radio and television.

Among the independent media, government pressures news production through the
imposition of laws and economic measures aimed at curbing their freedom and

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flexibility. Ogbondah (1994) has documented a litany of press laws and decrees which
different governments, in particular, military administrations, have enacted to check the
operations of the private media in Nigeria.

Of more relevance to this study, however, is the pressure on the independent media, of
powerful interest groups in or outside government. These could be ideological groups,
politicians and other pressure groups lobbying for one reform or another. Is it
possible, as Herman and Chomsky (1994) would argue, that these are the
manipulators and beneficiaries of the framing of government issues, especially those
that portray conflict, and, in turn, pave the way for military intervention?

While it may not be easy to establish the exact impact of each of the afore-mentioned
sources of external pressure on news construction, it can logically be concluded that
the extent to which they apply would differ from medium to medium, from region to
region, from time to time and from case to case.

4.3 Incipient Concepts On Agenda Setting

Beside the preceding approaches to the study of news construction, a fertile

outpouring of theoretical conceptualisations aimed at situating the role of the media in
the political sphere has focused on the media’s potentials to impart salience, status and
cognition to the issues which successfully pass through the gates. In one of the
elemental functional analyses of the media, Lasswell (1948) identified surveillance and
correlation of society as the most essential preoccupations of mass communication.
Though critics of the Lasswellian communication model have argued that the analysis
of roles (in a biological form) of the media was fraught with the danger of imputing
linear causality, and that it tended to concentrate merely on “production, content and
delivery of communication while ignoring the immediate, historical, social and
institutional contexts of communication” (Boyd-Barrett, 1995:72), its attention on the
vital communication milestones has been a provocative factor in a wide range of
communications research. Considering, for example, the blooming interest in research

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inquiries into the processes and rationales which influence the selection and production
of media wares, Boyd-Barrett (1995:270) rightly observes that “sociological interest in
media occupations and professionals has been driven mainly by a concern to answer
the first of Lasswell’s questions in the communication cycle: who says what to
whom?”.

Of particular interest to subsequent studies on media functionalism was the observation

by Lasswell that “mass media, public groups and policy makers each have discrete
attention frames or periods of time during which they pay attention to certain issues”
(Dealing and Rogers, 1996:11). In a similar postulation earlier, Lasswell, Lazersfeld
and Merton (1948) maintained that by giving publicity to certain issues, the media
confer status on them as well as on individuals, group or organisational actors
associated with them.

Taking functional analysis to the cognitive domain, earlier researchers such as

Lippmann (1922) and Cohen (1963) had argued in favour of the thesis that the mass
media are principal connections between social events and people’s mental impressions
of them. Lang and Lang (1966:54) had, for example, examined media coverage of two
presidential elections (1948 and 1952) in America before concluding that the media
had the potency to structure reality by “defining the limits of political debate and
specifying the issues upon which voters would decide how to vote”. This was just a
different way of expressing faith in the media’s ‘stunning success in telling the public
what to think about’ (Cohen, 1963). All these hypotheses tellingly inspired thought
on the formulation of the Agenda setting function of the media by McCombs and Shaw
(1972).

4.3.1 The Agenda Setting Debate

Regardless of its methodological lapses and criticisms, in particular, its limitation to

issue salience and the impact of media content on public attitudes, cognition or
behaviours (Gandy, 1982), agenda setting has been the subject of fluent research

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investigations spanning more than half a century. Dearing and Rogers (1996) reckon
that from its formulation in 1972 up until 1994, agenda setting had provided the
theoretical scaffold for 357 studies. Of this number, a majority (at least 131) are based
on the traditional research design which measured correlation between media and
public agendas through a combination of media content analysis and survey of
audience ranking of agendas (Rogers, 1993).

Normally, agenda setting research examines correlation between media content and
public opinion. It needs to be clarified, however, that it is not the goal of this thesis to
examine or establish a correlation between press contents and military seizure of power
as already pointed out in the statement of the research problem, in the introductory
chapter. The focus here is on the relationship between media contents and the content
of coup justification speeches. The traditional approach to agenda setting research,
therefore, does not serve the purpose of this study. However, as far as agenda setting
concerns the process of constructing social reality, it is of considerable relevance to the
examination of print media characterisation or framing of governments as part of the
task of this study.

In any case, transcending the dominant traditional approach, the parameters and
direction of agenda setting research have broadened by leaps and bounds. Rogers et al
(1996:36) identify three broad strands of dependent variables serving as ‘active venues
of research’, namely, media agenda, public agenda and policy agenda. Media agenda
research focuses on concerns such as the relative importance of issues, events and
personalities on the media agenda, how such issues compare with others in terms of
coverage, how and why salience of issues change over time (Dearing and Rogers,
1996). The relative importance of issues to members of the public in general
constitutes the vista of public agenda setting research, while policy agenda research is
about the examination of issue agenda of government and policy makers. This extends
to investigations on whether, and how, both media and public agendas translate to
policy actions. In most cases, the borderline between all three areas appears indistinct,
for as has been noted, inherent in each agenda element is the relative preference or

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attention the media, the public and policy makers give to some matters while glossing
over others (ibid.).

43.2 Agenda Setting and Impact on Behavioural Attitude

Unlike the original agenda setting study (McCombs and Shaw, 1972) which examined
the relationship between media and public agenda without venturing into the usually
controversial area of behavioural effects of public agenda set by the media, subsequent
inquiries have attempted to investigate the impact or consequence of one agenda
element or another on political behaviour. Tracing the evolution of agenda setting
research 25 years after their seminal hypothesis that opened the floodgate, Maxwell
McCombs and Donald Shaw (1993:65) agreed with new research results which
suggest that “the media not only tell us what to think about, but also how to think
about it, and consequently, what to think.” Their agreement with this radical shift from
Cohen’s (1963) paradigm is anchored on the concept of media framing; the subtle
manipulation of social cognition through the reportorial perspectives which the media
discretely give to certain issues. Such perspectives, it is argued, influence or direct
public thought toward specific attributes of the issues treated. As McCombs and Shaw
(1993:62) put it, “both the selection of objects for attention and the selection of frames
for thinking about these objects are powerful agenda setting roles.” They draw some
theoretical evidence from two empirical studies. The one is Giltin’s (1980) research
on news coverage from which the conceptualisation of news framing emerged, and
whose central thesis is that,

Whatever the attributes of an issue presented on the

news agenda, the consequences for audience
behaviour are considerable. How a communicator
frames an issue sets an agenda of attributes and can
influence how we think about it. Agenda setting is a
process that can affect both what to think about and
how to think about it (Giltin, 1980: 25).

The other study which employed the experimental design reported that television
viewers exposed to a series of television content stressing the loopholes of US defence

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policies under the Carter administration awarded the president lower marks on his
performance in defence than did those who were not shown such news stories (Iyengar
and Kinder, 1987).

Further support of media influence on public perceptions of events, political figures

and social experiences through news framing can be found in the works of Page and
Shapiro (1992) and Weaver et al (1975).

If the arguments of proponents of news framing are suggestive of an innocuous

influence by the media on audiences’ behavioural attitude, there are a good number of
propositions on the direct consequences (impact) of agenda setting. Dearing and
Rogers (1996:4), for example, have advanced the concept of media advocacy to fortify
the argument that agenda setting can directly affect social change, especially in the area
of public policy. They cite the formulation of government policies against smoking and
AIDS in the US to explain how social issues ordinarily seen as individual affairs,
especially those which pose social problems, metamorphose first into public issues
‘requiring government remediation’, and then end up as subjects of government policy.
Both stages of the transformation process, they point out, are effected through mass
media exposure.

Analysing the anatomy of agenda setting research, Rogers et al. (1993) identify not
less than 65 publications most of which credit the mass media, among other forces,
with the ability to exert influence on policy agenda. Even more remarkable is the
enthusiasm which has driven some researchers (Cook et al, 1983; Leff et al, 1986;
Protess et al, 1991) to go as far as measuring the possibility of causal relationships in
agenda setting, using the experimental research design in over-time studies.

No matter where the proliferation of research designs takes agenda setting, the central
(juestion remains whether the mass media shape public or policy opinion on social
issues. In what appears to be a response to this question, Weaver (1987) attempts a

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classification of agenda setting findings under three basic conclusions regarding

correlations between media and public agendas. These are studies which hold that:

a) the media are both necessary and sufficient in setting public agenda (McCombs and
Shaw, 1972, 1977; Weaver, 1981, 1982; Asp, 1983),

b) the media are necessary but not sufficient in setting public agenda (Lang and Lang,
1981) and

c) the media are neither necessary nor sufficient in setting public agenda (McLeod et
al, 1974).

Of special interest to this thesis are the new domains of agenda setting research which
focus attention on media agenda. Do the media really set agenda or are they mere
transmission channels? By whom, and through what process is the media agenda
constructed? In sum, what are the contingent conditions under which agenda setting
takes place? These are some of the latest research problems demanding clarifications
by agenda setting researchers.

433 Agenda Building

Most studies probing the roots of social control beyond the traditional hypothesis of
mass media agenda setting have largely pointed at information sources, usually
comprising individuals, classes, interest groups, organisations or institutions within a
social system who share the common desire to influence public opinion and policy
decision making by manipulating the supply of information upon which such
perceptions and decisions are reached. At the beginning of this chapter, reference was
made to politics as the business of controlling power or influence. The observation
that “information is an important input in the production of influence” and that “the
news media are primary means for the delivery of information” (Singh, 1995:47) is
well known to actors in the political process who also make up a significant population
of news sources, for as Dearing and Rogers (1996:16) remark, “to influence the issues
that get on a media organisation’s news agenda is to exercise power”.

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Gandy (1982:10) exposes the goals of those who seek the use of information for social
control when he draws attention to how contending interest groups, especially within
the ruling class, exploit the media as ‘instruments’ for preserving the establishment.
This is done by pulling the strings on the “provision or withholding of informational
and ideational apparatus at all levels”. Ansolabehere et al (1991:74) refer to this kind
of control as ‘media management’ in which sources, “by providing reporters with a
continuous supply of newsworthy information, capture the process by which debates
are organised”, and thereby find themselves at “an advantageous position to attract
media attention”. According to Gandy (1982), the intricate undercurrents upon which
this manipulation thrives flow in two tributaries. On the side of the sources, the
prohibitive cost of moulding public opinion by direct contact with the mass audience or
policy makers whose accessibility cannot even be guaranteed makes the use of the
mass media attractive as a cost effective alternative in the quest to define and influence
public and policy agenda.

At the same time, hindered from investigative reporting by either the lack of skilled
staff or financial constraints, most media organisations cannot but rely to a great extent
on bureaucratically packaged information to fill news holes. By so doing, they
unwittingly enable sources to “enter into an exchange of value” with them in which
sources “reduce the cost of news work” and in turn gain or “increase control over
news content” (Gandy, 1982:15). The preponderance of bureaucratic news actors and
sources as shown in a great deal of studies (Sigal, 1973; Hall et al, 1978; Gans, 1979;
Mytton, 1983; Oso, 1986; Bennet, 1988; Musa, 1989; Abdullahi, 1990; Singh, 1994)
piles up evidence in favour of source influence in agenda setting.

In addition to ‘media management’, concepts such as ‘primary definers’ (Hall et al,

1978), ‘news promoters’ (Molotch and Lester, 1981) and ‘issue proponents’ (Dearing
and Rogers, 1996) have gained currency among the school of thought which argues
that agenda setting is more within the grasp of news sources than media workers.
Dearing and Rogers (1996:1) for example, play up source influence in agenda setting

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when they argue that agenda setting is “an on-going competition among issue
proponents1to gain attention of the media, the public and policy elites”.

One interesting development arising from efforts to strengthen the argument that
sources call the shots in agenda setting is the redefinition of media roles in the process
of social control. Weaver (1987:10) was one of those who provoked thought in this
direction. He maintained that “it is not quite accurate to speak of the press setting
agendas if it is mainly passing priorities set by other actors and institutions in society”.
Borrowing from this logic, some writers have tried to suggest what they regard as
more realistic media roles. Singh (1995), for example, sees journalists as taking cues
from sources, and, therefore, prefers to describe them as playing the role of mediator.
Employing the same metaphor of mediation, Gans (1979) views journalists as those
who pick up information transmitted from sources, summarise, refine and alter them
more for making them suitable for audiences than for shaping public or policy opinion.
Accordingly, new concepts such as agenda shaping (agenda building) (Semetko et al,
1991), news assembling (Molotch and Lester, 1981), and agenda amplifying have been
suggested as more appropriate terms to reflect the position of the media in the agenda
setting process.

But as in the case of the traditional hypothesis they are meant to reform or replace,
these new propositions are not without their flaws. Schlesinger (1991), for example,
has picked holes in the concept of primary definers by pointing out the confusion
regarding who becomes the primary definer among an array of definers with conflicting
views on one issue.2 Thus, apparently, not going along with the apologists of source
influence, some researchers have further dwelt on the political economy of the news
media as a crucial factor in agenda setting. As seen earlier, government (as the
repository of state power), sources of funding, ownership and advertisers are

1 Issue proponents as used in this context refers to interest groups advancing certain issues in the
mass media.
2 While this criticism may be relevant in Western democracies, it does not appear to be so in many
developing nations where political leaders remain the dominant primary definers.

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prominent among agencies cited in the political economy of social control (Hartley,
1982; Shoemaker and Mayfield, 1987, Baneijee, 1973; Bagdikian, 1980).

4.4 Theoretical Integration Approach

So far, this chapter has engaged in the general reconstruction of major hypothetical
bases for the analyses of news construction and social control, largely under the
sociology of news production and agenda setting paradigms. Beyond this point,
however, I find it necessary (for purposes of relating the entire theoretical background
to the subject of this thesis) to examine some closely related practical political
scenarios in which the two hypotheses would seem to have had an integrated
application: the mediation of political conflicts.

4.4.1 The Mass Media and the ‘Mediatisation* of Crisis.

The attention on crisis as “an analytical category” (Morin, 1976:164) in media research
has gained considerable momentum in the present age. This is so because in Morin’s
perception, “...society, the family, value systems, the economy, the environment, the
struggle within nature... all have been scrutinised from the perspective of crisis” (ibid,
p. 167). Narrowing the wide vista of social scenarios painted by Morin, Raboy and
Dagenais (1992:2) have devoted considerable attention to what they call “the politics
of crisis”, with particular interest in the role of the mass media in crisis situations.

Viewed from Gramsci’s (1930) classification of crisis as conflict at three levels3 or

from its definition as “a disruption, real or perceived, of social order, a connotation of
“times of difficulty, insecurity and suspense in politics or commerce” (Raboy and
Dagenais, 1992:3), the climate of political disenchantment that normally precedes most
coups is by all accounts, a typical example of a crisis situation. So is the eventual
displacement of one government by another through military force. Coverage of such
scenarios, therefore, fits squarely into what has been termed the ‘mediatisation’ or
‘commodification’ of crisis. According to proponents of this paradigm of media

3 These levels are: the ruling class hegemony, authority and the State.

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function (ibid), ‘mediatising’ crisis is all about making decisions about how to structure
and present issues bordering on social abnormality. Raboy and Dagenais argue that,

“...the contradictions inherent to the relationship

between the specifically ascribed function (of the
media) as agents of social discourse and their
economic status as purveyors of commodified
knowledge/information distinguish media from other
social institutions, in a certain sense, media thrive on
‘crisis’ and are threatened by normalcy. The
tendency is, therefore, for media to seek out crisis
(even) where it does not exist” (ibid. p. 170).

Thus, a growing number of studies in the area of the mass media and crisis
management have blamed the media for creating conducive atmospheres under which
crises and destabilisation flourish. Like most theorisations on the role or impact of the
media in differing social contexts, and in different societies, this contention is subject to
academic debates and research investigations. However, assuming it has got some
validity, the relevance of this thesis to the present research is whether it is a deliberate
role inherent in media sociology or as a result of media manipulation by interest
groups, and this shall be examined later in this chapter.

A more immediate need seems to be the context of such a role. Perhaps, two examples
upon which this thesis rests will suffice. Of all Latin American nations, Chile, has been
reputed to have allowed the widest latitude of freedom of expression in the 19th and
20th centuries (Buckman, 1996). In September 1973, the democratically elected
government of Salvador Allende was overthrown in a bloody coup by a combination of
the Chilean armed forces and the national police under the command of General
Augusto Pinochet.

Relying on the traditions of a free and responsible press serving as a check on

government, the Chilean press, especially those diametrically opposed to Allende’s
Marxist stance, had, prior to the coup, engaged in vigorous debates on government
policies and programmes. As time went on, the open debate was said to have
crystallised into a concentrated attack aimed at embarrassing and discrediting the

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government. Government’s attempts to stifle dissenting media did not help matters. If
anything, it made the criticisms sound even shriller.

Reflecting on the position of the media in the charged political climate at that time,
Robert Buckman, an American scholar of international communication, specialising in
Latin American political communication, asserts that “the media played a key role in
heightening the tension that led ultimately to the military coup...” (ibid. p. 168). He
goes ahead to defend this proposition in the following observations,

By late 1972 the media debate had degenerated into

a no-holds-barred gutter fight, with organs on both
sides exchanging sensational, often fabricated
charges and countercharges. By July 1973 the
situation had become so volatile that even the
heretofore staid and dignified El Mercurio stated
that “it is the categorical duty of sensible people to
put an end to looting and disorder stimulated by an
inept and crazy government that smothers us...In
order to accomplish this task of political salvation,
we have to renounce all political parties, the
masquerade of elections, the poisoned and deceitful
propaganda, and turn over to a few select military
men the task of putting an end to political anarchy”
(ibid).
“Two months later, on September 11, 1973, that is precisely what happened,”
Buckman rests his case, referring to the coup in which Allende was killed, and his
government seized by Pinochet (ibid).

Another crisis situation said to have been heightened by media framing of issues and
personalities was the Persian Gulf war which culminated from the Iraqi invasion of
Kuwait in August 1990. According to Kellner (1992), the political and media
establishment in the United States promoted a military solution to the crisis by
whipping up war hysteria and promoting a military solution to the crisis. The
dispensation upon which his arguments rests is depicted thus:

From the beginning, the media vilified Saddam

Hussein as a madman, a Hitler, and worse, and
whipped up anti-Arab war fever. Saddam was
characteristically described as a ‘dictator’, a ‘military

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strongman’, and a menace to world peace and the

American way of life...Week after week, report after
report, Saddam was described in purely negative
terms with commentators stressing his brutality,
irrationality and duplicity...The media eagerly
reported all of Saddam’s alleged and actual crimes,
suddenly focusing on actions and events which had
gone unreported when Saddam was a US ally, such
as his use of chemical weapons against Kurdish
rebels in his own country. There was even a
speculation on Iraq’s plans for future terrorism when
no current atrocities were on hand (ibid. p.52).

Examples of specific characterisations which were cited to buttress Kellner’s

observation included a Washington Post article (8/8/90) in which a writer, Mary
McGory, described Saddam as a ‘beast’, and a Newsweek publication (20/10/90) in
which the Iraqi leader was also referred to as a ‘monster’ which ‘Bush may have to
destroy’. Both print media and television channels were said to have adopted cartoon
techniques in the demonization of Saddam, with the NBC simulation of a character
labelled Saddam, threatening to “hang a US hostage every day” (ibid).

“The effect of the demonization of Saddam Hussein was to promote a climate in which
the necessity to take decisive military action to eliminate him was privileged,”
concludes Kellner (ibid).

4.4.2 News as Crisis

Going by earlier cited postulations on factors shaping news framing, theabove

reportorial habits can also be seen as an emphasis on crisis as news, drawing from the
old discourse on negativity as a predominant news value. For example, earlier in this
chapter, news values were treated as a necessary framework within which the
presentation of overthrown governments could be explained. In this case, however, an
explanation which fits the business of media attention on the abnormal features of
government is offered by Keane (1992:22) in terms of “the growing quantity of
political power which is normally accountable neither to citizens or to the mass media
nor subject to the rule of law.” This is most reflective of quasi democracies and totally
autocratic governments in most developing nations.

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What follows this dispensation is a climate of secrecy, suspicion, and the quest for the
media to try to unravel the ‘facts’ shrouded by government might. Governments,
whether civilian or military, in turn resort to harsh legal and extra-legal measures to
intimidate and keep the media at bay. The ensuing relationship becomes one that is
mutually adversarial to both parties. As Buckman (1996) points out, in most cases, the
more repression the government unleashes on the media, the more the media react with
stronger criticisms. This, as Ekwelie (1979) has also observed, is the exact situation in
Nigeria.

Whether these criticisms, as seen in the framing or characterisation of government

leaders and their programmes, are provocative enough to stimulate military
intervention is of general interest to this study. However, on a more specific note, an
offshoot of the crisis mediatisation discourse which can suggest the role the media play
in crisis (as in coups in the case of Nigeria) is the question of whose agenda is
deliberately or unwittingly promoted through such media framing of government.
Which brings us to another aspect of the theoretical approach: the issue of agenda
building.

4.4.3 News Sources and Social Control.

While earliest discourses tended to ascribe to the media the power of structuring social
reality and even setting the agenda for public and government decision-making, more
recent debates, wary of the ability of mediating factors such as the role of news sources
and institutional demands to render such roles imprecise, have dwelt on the often
invisible but powerful influence of sources, who are basically interest groups seeking to
exploit whatever weakness or inadequacy the media face in collecting information, to
promote their (sources’) well defined agenda. Raboy and Dagenais (1992:12) have
observed how both political office seekers and those already in authority, conscious of
the fact that information control and manipulation, especially through the media, is a

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form of political power, and eager to propagate ideas that will benefit their own
interest, have “mastered the ground rules governing media operations.”

In developing countries such as Nigeria where a combination of government

intimidation, paucity of equipment and inadequate financial independence impair the
coverage of news, Kellner’s (1992:58) observation about the subordination of the
media to the whims of such manipulative news sources is very instructive: “The media
are prone to wait until a major political figure or established expert speaks against a
specific policy and that view gains certain credibility as marked by opinion polls or
publication in ‘respected’ newspapers or journals”. The danger is that following such
leads often makes journalists susceptible to paying “even more attention to a fabricated
crisis than to one that can stake a material claim to reality”, especially where news
actors realise that “provoking a crisis is a form of empowerment or social control”
(Raboy and Dagenais, 1992:4). Explaining how the empowerment comes about,
Keane (1992:17) asserts that these actors (news sources) “ensure that a latent crisis
becomes manifest by rendering collective the feeling of crisis among citizens, and by
amplifying the claim of state officials that drastic action is required to remedy the crisis,
which they defined as such through the media”. Gerbner (1991) has also argued
strongly about the construction of crisis as a means of social control. Explaining
Gerbner’s argument, Raboy and Dagenais (1992:12) write that “the over-dependence
of the media on external sources, especially in the construction of crisis “reinforces
social power... notably by fostering feelings of insecurity among the powerless and
legitimating the mobilisation of state violence against often marginal opposition
groups.”

In Nigeria, this translates into the scenario of inordinate power struggle compelled by
the perquisites of office rather than leadership service, a situation which pitches
opposing camps in a matter of life and death battle for political power (Diamond,
1990). The possibility of opposition parties using the media to drum up social unrest,
especially where the party in power uses the machinery of incumbency to thwart the
electoral process, as has been the case in most elections in Nigeria (Ihonvbere, 1995),
cannot be ruled out.

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It does not have to be an opposing political party only. Several studies have spoken
about powerful special interest groups, who may not necessarily be interested in
occupying political offices, but are desirous of controlling government policies for the
interest of business or ideological goals. For example, in an expose on what he sees as
the crisis of American democracy, Kellner (1992:45) reflects on the expanding
influence of “corporate elites (who) use the state and the media to advance their
interests and to pacify rather than to inform and empower the public”. He identifies
such hidden controllers of media agenda with the media hysteria that provided a
suitable background to America’s military solution to the Gulf crisis.

In another crisis, said to have been equally stimulated by the media, namely the coup
that brought in the Pinochet military government in Chile in 1973, Buckman
(1996:169) points accusing fingers on similar powerful influences. He discloses the
clandestine instigation of anti-Allende elements through huge financial donations by the
CIA. For example, El Mercurio. the bourgeois newspaper which he had earlier cited
as one of the most vocal publications that so battled the civilian government under
Allende that it even directly suggested military coup, “received 1,665,000 US dollars
(from the C IA ) to help it resist government economic pressures” (ibid).

4.4.4 Conclusion

The question about how and by whom media agenda on government issues, especially
those suspected to have precipitated military intervention, is set cannot be realistically
examined without turning the entire gamut of theoretical perspectives on news
sociology and social control inside-out.

Because of the ‘common conceptual grounds’ they share (McCombs and

Weaver, 1985:13), as well as their adaptability to the research problem, the sociology
of news construction and the agenda setting have been reviewed as the integrated
theoretical framework for this study. In so doing, I defer to the wisdom of advocates

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of the theoretical integration approach (e.g. Shoemaker & Reese, 1991; Dearing &
Rogers, 1992; McCombs & Shaw, 1993) which can be summed by the observation
made by Rogers et al (1993:73) that “the media agenda is constructed through an
interactive process between the news media and their sources, in the context of
competing news organisations, news handling conventions and routines, and issue
interest groups”. Precisely, this study aims to examine how accepting or supportive
the Nigerian press can be said to be of military intervention by:

1. analysing the kind of media characterisation or framing of issues relating to two

governments which were displaced in military coups and

2. finding out the personal disposition of journalists regarding military intervention in

politics.

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THE RESEARCH METHODOLOGY

5.1 Introduction

As it was noted earlier in this work, military intervention in politics has become an
irrepressible part of Nigeria’s political reality. Following the recurring spate of coups
d’etat, the military have been in government for 26 out of Nigeria’s 36 years of
independence.

At times, there have been claims that the coups were widely called for or welcomed by
Nigerians, the explanation being that in the absence of a faithful devotion to the
welfare of the masses by either a civilian or military administration, the people’s
frustration might have reached such a zenith that they yearned for yet another cabinet.
According to Diamond (1990:13), the disgust of the first coup plotters with the First
Republic “was shared by a broad cross-section of the population which welcomed the
coup in an effusive outpouring of joy and relief.” But even more curious is the
contention that journalists had in most cases led the clarion call for military coups.
For example, Oyewole (1991:12) alleges that “almost all journalists (in Nigeria)
supported the coup that overthrew the Shagari administration.”

Such contentions regarding media involvement in precipitating crisis have been the
subject of discourse in some other studies in Latin America and Asia (Buckman, 1996;
Kellner, 1992; Raboy and Dagenais, 1992). The argument is that the media precipitate
crises, such as the type that results in forcible change of government, by the way they
frame issues arising from the daily activities and programmes of government.

By examining the contents of some independent publications, it is the task of this study
to probe the extent to which the Nigerian press can be said to be predisposed to or

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supportive of military intervention in politics in Nigeria. This chapter presents the

research methods and procedures adopted for data collection and analysis.

5.1.1 Research Questions

For purposes of clarity and continuity, it might be worth reiterating the questions
which were designed to constitute the essence of the study:

1. Did the print media carry news, articles and editorials that called for military coups?

2. If so, how frequent were such contents and what prominence was given to them?

3. What discernible position did the press take, through editorials, cartoons and news
slants, on an overthrown administration at least three months before its downfall?

4. Is there any similarity between the coup makers’ justification for forcible change of
government and media perception of an overthrown government?

5. What is the discernible predisposition of Nigerian journalists to military intervention

in politics?

5.2 Method of Study

To attempt answering these questions, two basic research methods - content analysis
and survey - were adopted for the collection and analyses of relevant data.

5.2.1 Content Analysis

The need to situate social science research outside the realm of serendipity or what
Holsti (1969:27) called ‘fishing expeditions’ dictates that every research process
should follow a tested methodology built upon a reliable research design. Over the
years, a series of research methodologies has been introduced, and for the most part,
their application to research enterprise has been subject to robust intellectual discourse.
Holsti (1969) disapproves of the energy dissipated in contentions over the superiority
of some methods over others, arguing that despite their relative merits, even the best
design of any particular method could not be devoid of some inherent defects.

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What should matter to the researcher, therefore, is the relevance of the chosen method
and the capability of a design in collecting and analyzing data which facilitate the
solution of a research problem with maximum verisimilitude.

One of the methods chosen for this study, content analysis, has emerged over several
decades as an enduring research technique applicable in a wide variety of audits on the
content of communication. Krippendorff (1980:13) traces the “intellectual roots of
content analysis as dating far back to the beginning of man’s conscious use of symbols
and language.” At this primeval stage, it was at best a quantitative exercise aimed at
checking the content of printed literature for very specific or narrow purposes. A
classic example of such early analyses was the scrutinisation of a collection of 90
anonymous songs feared to contain ideas capable of fomenting dissension within the
18th Century Swedish State Church by challenging the doctrines of the church as well
as the authority of the Orthodox Clergy. Were the hymns the carriers of such
revolutionary ideas indeed? That was the problem or essence of the investigation
which basically involved the mere enumeration of religious themes and symbols in the
hymns. These were then compared to the symbols in the official song book (Dovrin,
1954).

Some of the developments which sustained the quantitative enumeration of printed

communication contents have been outlined by Krippendorff (1980) to include:

• the need to assess the mass market,

• increased interest in public opinion,

• the pressure from journalism schools for increased inquiry into the phenomenon of
the newspaper and

• the avid appetite for scientific objectivity1, amongothers.

1 The Concept of objectivity in the Social Sciences remains very grey, with many critics arguing that
it is merely an illusion. See Preece (1994) for example.

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Characteristically, most of those early analyses concentrated on newspaper contents.

They included Speed’s (1893) investigation of the extent to which newspapers carried
hard news; an analysis which showed that the papers he studied had given up religious,
science and literary issues in favour of gossips, frivolity and scandals. A similar inquiry
by Matthews (1910) sought to determine the relative attention devoted to topics
categorized as ‘demoralizing’, ‘unwholesome’, and ‘trivial’ as opposed to those
grouped as ‘worthwhile’.

It was not until the dawn of the 20th Century that content analysis became adopted as
a full empirical research technique, its development nurtured by social science scholars
such as Harold Lasswell, Irving Janis, Bernard Berelson, Daniel Lemer, Paul
Lazersfeld among a host of others who intensified its use from the 1930s to the 1950s.

The evolution of content analysis has been traced under purpose, approach and
sources examined (Holsti, 1969). But Krippendorff (1980) prefers to examine the
phases of growth of content analysis against some influential historical landmarks.
These include:

1. the emergence of empirical methods of inquiry in the 1930s which boosted several
research interests such as image studies (Simpson, 1934), the expression of national
sentiments (Martin, 1936) and attitudinal studies in search of journalistic ideals such as
objectivity, fairness and balance in printed communication, and the analysis of public
communication in search of political symbols.

2. wide spread interest in the analysis of war-time communication, propaganda in

particular, after the second world war.

3. the spread of content analysis beyond its initial media domain to several social
science and arts disciplines notably psychology, anthropology, history, politics,
linguistics and literary studies.

Krippendorff asserts that these phases “made major contributions to conceptualizing

the aims and processes of content analysis” (ibid.).

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As a full fledged research technique, content analysis surpasses mere quantitative

newspaper analysis by lending itself to:

• the use of theoretical frameworks

• a wide range of statistical analysis

• application to a large spectrum of research possibilities.

5.2.2 Definition, Limitations and Merits.

The limitations of content analysis are most conspicuously betrayed in the different
definitions and conceptualizations given to it throughout its evolution. Earliest
definitions seemed to have preoccupied content analysis with quantitative
measurements. Bernard Berelson, for example, deposed that “Content analysis is a
research technique for the objective, systematic and quantitative description of the
manifest content of communication” (Berelson, 1952:18) while Cartwright (1953:424)
declared that ‘The terms content analysis and coding are used interchangeably to refer
to the objective, systematic and quantitative description of any symbolic behaviour.”
By insisting on ‘quantitative’ ‘descriptions’ of ‘manifest’ contents, these definitions
incurred plenty of criticism, the main points being that they were too restrictive, they
excluded the qualitative as well as the latent aspects of analysis, they were confined to
descriptions only, and they neither spelt out what ‘content’ meant nor specified the
object of content analysis (Holsti, 1969). Further disagreements on such definitions
have dwelt on questions about the definition and measurability of the concept of
objectivity.

Even though they sound more elaborate, at least up to the point of plugging the holes
picked in the earlier mentioned definitions, subsequent definitions have basically skated
round similar motifs, some in very general terms. For example, Holsti (1969:3) defines
content analysis as a “Multi-purpose research method for investigating any problem in
which the content of communication serves as the basis of inference”, while
Krippendorff (1980:21) says that “Content analysis is a research technique for making
replicable and valid inferences from data to their context.”

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Other definitions of content analysis have been given by Kaplan (1943), Janis (1945),
Paisely (1945), Barcus (1959), Osgood (1959); Stempel and Westley (1981). A
summation of the attributes of content analysis highlighted in the various definitions
which are relevant to this analysis would include systematization (both in selection of
units of analysis and application of categorization rules), investigation and
interpretation of contents, using the results as the bases for drawing inferences (based
on the research questions or coding objectives).

The controversy over the applicability of content analysis as a social science research
method dwells on two major issues: the quantity/quality divide, and the aspects of
communication to which content analysis can be validly applied.

While some researchers, especially proponents of the ‘representational’ model of

communication, express distrust on qualitative designs which aim not at the face
meaning of communication but what it conveys, others argue against the tendency to
reduce the design, analysis and results of content analysis to highly statistical exercises.
Holsti (1980:6), for example, contends that content analysis does not merely aim at “a
classification of content in numerical terms”, insisting that “frequency is not the only
valid index of preoccupation, behaviour, intensity” and other communication variables.
In fact, he seems to favour the proposition that qualitative content analysis has always
been acclaimed for its superior performance in problems of applied social science.
Recent additions to qualitative content analysis such as ethnographic content analysis
(Altheide, 1987:68) also claim such superiority.

However, researchers such as Pool (1959:192) strike a balance between the adherents
of the quantitative and the qualitative groups. He maintains that “It should not be
assumed that qualitative methods are insightful, and quantitative ones merely
mechanical methods for checking hypotheses. The relationship is a circular one: each

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provides new insights on which the other can feed.” Characteristically, many present
day content analytical designs encompass both respects. So does this study.

Beyond the tendency to go arbitrarily for either quantitative or qualitative analysis or

even both, a more important consideration which can ensure a valid analysis is the
theoretical relevance of the adopted design relative to its ability to measure the aspect
of communication under investigation, or in terms of what area of communication it
can or cannot apply to.

It is gratifying to note that amid the multiplicity of definitions of and dissenting

opinions on procedural approaches to content analysis, there are some agreements on
qualities that should make content analysis a formidable research technique.
Almost all the definitions recommend that content analysis should be objective,
systematic and generalisable; three essential attributes of empiricism. Being systematic
guarantees that the choice and coding of content are done faithfully, in accordance
with the set rules; that the entire process of analysis, beginning from the selection of a
sample of materials through the definition of units of analysis to their categorization,
submits to carefully worked out rules and procedures. Though the concept of
objectivity in the social sciences, especially in communications research, has been the
subject of controversy, with many arguing that it is unattainable (Preece, 1994), its
application in this context points toward the need for the researcher to be as far as
possible detached and impartial in making observations or judgments during the
research. Generalisability on its own aims at making the results theoretically
significant starting from the sampling procedure up to the method of data analysis and
interpretation.

These and other measures aimed at reducing to the barest minimum the possibility of
‘polluting’ the analysis with the researcher’s subjective predisposition were applied in
drawing the sample of publications, designing the coding instrument, in the coding
itself, as well as in the analysis of data.

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Throwing his support behind content analysis as a reliable tool of research, Holsti
(1969:19) remarks,

In general, content analysis will be useful whenever

the problem requires precise and replicable methods
for analyzing those attributes of documents which
may escape casual scrutiny. In such cases, the
analyst will find the objective and systematic
methods involved in content analysis advantageous
as a supplement, not as a substitute for, the other
intellectual tools he brings to bear on his problem.

Further merits of content analysis in this study relate to its appropriateness to the
objective of the study. Generally, it has been found to be most appropriate as a
research tool when, among other situations,

• researchers’ data are limited to documentation

• the need to minimize subjectivity requires that subjects be studied in an unobtrusive

environment.

It ought to be noted that the entire data for this study were not strictly limited to
documentation (part of it was generated from a questionnaire survey). As indicated
earlier, content analysis and survey were adopted as complementary adjuncts in the
search for relevant data. The strength of this sort of approach can be gleaned from the
following observation,

A related application of content analysis even when

direct access to the subject poses no difficulty is to
develop an independent line of validation for data
obtained through other methods. The investigator

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may check the results of questionnaire or interview

data by comparing them with content analysis of the
subjects’ statements ... Triangulation or the multiple
approach to research ensures that when two or more
approaches to the same problem yield similar results,
our confidence that findings reflect the phenomena
studied rather than methods used is bolstered
(Holsti, 1969:17).

Buying this prescription, several researchers have used content analysis in conjunction
with other research techniques. They include Gillepsie and Allport (1955), Janis
(1958); Sikorski, Roberts and Paisley (1967); Mudgal (1994); Singh (1995); Tarabay
(1994) and Shaari (1997).

Some of the conspicuous aspects of communication which content analysis seeks to

investigate include:

• describing characteristics or attributes of content,

• drawing inferences about the cause or motives of messages and

• drawing inferences about the effects of messages (Holsti, 1969).

Relative to this thesis, I intend to analyze the selected publications basically in terms of
describing their content attributes, concentrating on the pattern of presentation of
issues bordering on government, with a view to drawing inferences on thematic
portrayals based on the theoretical framework and research questions. I shall not
attempt to infer either on any motives of the contents or on the possible influences of
such contents on the audience, since those tasks are outside the domain of this study.

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5.23 Objectives of the Analysis

The content analytical method, as adopted for this study, shall be aimed basically at
finding o u t:

1. if the press carried news , articles, editorials or other contents that called for
military coups,

2. how frequent such contents were carried, if ever, and the prominence given to them

3. how the press presented an overthrown government at least three months before
its downfall,

4. if there is any similarity between such presentation and the coup makers’
explanations for intervention,

5. what the press present as the effects of military intervention in politics and

6. what solutions are offered.

5.2.4 Selection of Newspapers

For the purpose of this study, three leading independent newspapers co-existing at the
time of each coup under examination were purposively selected and scrutinized for
contents bordering on government and politics. The newspapers are, The Guardian.
The National Concord and The Punch.

Published by the Guardian Newspapers Limited, the Guardian came into being on July
the 4th, 1983 as a 28-page tabloid in English language. It was envisioned as an elite
publication which would not necessarily alienate general readership. Its elitism derived
from its avoidance of undue sensationalism, gossip and other frivolities, while
devoting attention to the coverage of serious national and international news and
issues (Omu, 1996). But even more admirable is its informed and in-depth analysis of
issues made possible by the accommodation of specialists from different walks of life
as editorial board members and essayists. The Guardian devotes days to specialized
treatment of topics such as the arts, law, medicine, business, housing and so on.
Highly impressed by its style, the African Media Directory (1996:212) describes it as

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“unquestionably the best daily newspaper in the country”. As a daily, its circulation is
estimated at 250,000. Its sister publications include the weekly Guardian on Sunday.
also a 28-page tabloid with a circulation of 280,000, and Guardian Express, an eight-
page metropolitan evening paper for Lagos readers only. Others are Lagos Life (an
entertainment package for low-brow readers in Lagos) and African Guardian (a weekly
magazine devoted to features on national and international news developments).

The National Concord is another reputable national daily. Published by the Concord
Press of Nigeria Limited, it came into being on March 1, 1980 as a 28-page tabloid in
English language. At its inception, it fended for the political interests of its publisher,
Chief Moshood Abiola, who nursed presidential ambitions under the NPN. In the
latter days of the Second Republic, after that ambition was dashed with the re-election
of Alhaji Shehu Shagari, the paper abandoned its allegiance to party politics, and from
then on, it assumed a more neutral and business orientation. It is devoted to the
coverage of serious national and international affairs, carrying in its feature pages well
articulated pieces from learned sources. Its circulation figure is put at 200,000.
Other reputed and widely read publications in the same stable include Business
Concord. Sunday Concord. Weekend Concord. African Concord and the vernacular
weeklies (Amana and Isokan).

The third paper, Punch, is reputed to be “among the most vociferous champions of
democracy since it was founded on March 17, 1973” (Africa Media Directory.
1996:203). Published by Punch Nigeria Limited, it is a 16-page English language
daily tabloid whose circulation is about 120,000 copies per day. Its weekly version is
the equally outspoken Sunday Punch.

The criteria for the choice of these publications include the following:

1. They are among the leading independent dailies in Nigeria operating free from
government control.

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2. Though adherence to owner interest cannot be completely denied, these

publications are, in most cases, run with minimal interference from owners as far as
editorial policies are concerned. This is largely because they are managed by
formidable editorial boards comprising intellectuals who exercise their right to freedom
of expression independent of the ideologies or political leanings of the publishers
(Jason, 1996). The publisher of The Guardian, for example, is a business man as well
as a politician who became a minister of internal affairs in 1994 under the Abacha
government. The independence of the Guardian was fully demonstrated in its
continued criticism of government whenever it found it appropriate to do so,
regardless of the membership of its founder and publisher of the ruling cabinet at that
time. An even more remarkable development was the fact that the Guardian proprietor
was still in government when the paper was proscribed in 1994 for carrying news and
comments that were considered prejudicial to government interests.

3. They enjoy about the largest circulation, and appeal to the largest possible
readership.

4. Unlike other publications which share the above-mentioned attributes, but were on
and off the news-stands due to closure by government agencies, the three selected
newspapers co-existed steadily at the time of each coup under examination.

5.2.5 The Period of Study

The study was limited to a period of three months prior to the coups of December 31,
1983 and August 27, 1985. These coups have been chosen because they exemplify
interventions preceded by administrations which were said to have provided sustained
provocation for coups through ineptitude, corruption, economic mismanagement,
dictatorial rule, inability to quell political unrest, or any other form of administrative
weakness (Diamond, 1990). Those administrations are, therefore, likely to have
attracted considerable coverage in the independent media. Furthermore, one period
marked the overthrow of a civilian government while the other involved the toppling
of a military administration. It should be interesting to compare press characterization
of both types of government.

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By these attributes, the coups of 1966, 1975 and 1994 aptly qualify for the study.
They were, however, excluded for the following reasons:

1. There was a problem of access to newspapers published before 1966.

According to librarians I consulted during the field work, most of them were thought
to have been vandalized during the civil war which raged from 1967 through 1970.

2. For purposes of uniformity and continuity, I thought it appropriate to study the

same newspapers throughout the two study periods. However, two of the most
suitable publications, The National Concord and The Guardian, came into existence in
1980 and 1983 respectively. This, therefore, made the pre-1980 coups such as those
of 1966 and 1975 unsuitable for the analysis. The November 1993 coup was also
unsuitable for this study because almost all reputable independent publications were
out of circulation within that period, having been closed by government in the wake of
the political unrest that ensued from the cancellation of the June 1993 election and the
appointment of the interim national government after the hasty exit of president
Babangida.

Regardless of its seeming brevity, the three-month period representing each year has
been considered appropriate for the following reasons:

1. It is very plausible that the acts or inaction by government leaders which are usually
blamed for attracting coups continue or even build up at least three months before the
eventual coup.

2. If this is the case, it would also be expected that print media coverage of such acts
or inaction should be ample if not intensified within the same period.

5.2.6 The Sampling Procedure,

All told, the period delimited above was expected to yield 558 copies of the three
newspapers (See details in table 5.1 ). From this population, a manageable sample of

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252 issues was drawn by simply selecting 14 issues in every month. In deciding on the
use of this two-week sample frame, it was determined that:

1. While time and financial constraints might not permit a comprehensive analysis of
every single paper published within the scope of the study, a deliberate effort should be
made to capture as much of the coverage as possible through a broad sample.

2. The two-week sample frame should permit a comprehensive analysis of relevant

issues or topics whose coverage might have lingered beyond a day or more.

The selection of 14 issues per paper per month was done by picking alternate days,
beginning from the first day of the month for the first paper (alphabetical order), and
from the second day of the month for two others. The following table presents the
sampling frame.

Table 5.1 Sampling frame of publications analysed

Papers 1983 1985 Total

RP SS RP SS TRP TSS
The Guardian Oct 31 14 Jun 31 14 62 28
Nov 31 14 Jul 31 14 62 28
Dec 31 14 Aug 31 14 62 28
Concord Oct 31 14 Jun 31 14 62 28
Nov 31 14 Jul 31 14 62 28
Dec 31 14 Aug 31 14 62 28
Punch Oct 31 14 Jun 31 14 62 28
Nov 31 14 Jul 31 14 62 28
Dec 31 14 Aug 31 14 62 28
Total 558 252
RP = Research population, SS = Sample size, TRP = Total research population,
TSS = Total sample size.

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5.2.7 The Coding Instrument

The coding schedule designed for the analysis contains variables relating to six broad
areas of interest. The initial variables are associated with the identification of each of
the newspapers used in the analysis in terms of their names and date of publication.
The second class of variables identifies and defines the various items coded. They
describe the type of item (news, editorial, article, letter etc.), the space occupied by
each item, their position or placement, and summaries of their main points or headings.
Another group of variables identifies the authors or writers of the items as well as their
sources of information. There are also variables pertaining to the range of topics
which feature in the items, as well as subjects or actors around whom the stories or
comments revolve. Most importantly, there are variables designed specially to assess
the nature of characterization or framing given to the actors. These particular
variables exist in two forms of labels: positive and negative. Finally, some variables
were meant to check the authors’ views on military intervention through a dual list of
options on what they perceive as the (positive and negative) effects of military coups.

A copy of the coding schedule is attached as Appendix 2.

5.2.8 The Period of Analysis

The collation of newspapers for the analysis was part of the overall fieldwork which
took place in Nigeria from October 1, 1995 through June 1, 1996. I relied mostly on
public and university libraries for the collection of the newspapers. To make room for
the other aspects of the field work, especially the nation-wide survey of journalists and
collection of relevant literature, I had to photocopy relevant issues of the selected
newspapers. These were coded upon my return to Leicester, from July to August
1996. The analysis was done in September using the SPSS package to run frequencies
and cross-tabular results.

5.3 The Questionnaire Survey.

While reviewing some of the theoretical approaches upon which media roles in framing
crisis situations could be conceptualized, mention was made of the different sources of

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influence on news production both from within and outside of news media
organizations. It was also pointed out that regardless of the presence of these
influences, journalists themselves do constitute a force that cannot be ignored in the
discourse on news. Several writers have pointed out the possibility of journalists’
cultural, ideological or even personal biases influencing their coverage and
presentation of news (Pool and Shulman, 1959; Bennet, 1982; Schudson, 1991; Singh,
1995). These views are best illustrated by Nasser’s (1983) argument that journalists
form part of a complex socio-cultural social setting from which they can hardly detach
themselves, and as such, even as professionals, they cannot help injecting their
personal, political and cultural biases in their reports and writings most of the time.

Based on these arguments, therefore, I considered it a useful exercise to complement

the analysis of press characterization of government in the selected newspapers with a
survey of journalists’ personal opinions on, and predisposition to military intervention
in politics, a political dispensation which is assumed to be the product of the pattern of
such press coverage or characterization. Put differently, the survey aimed at
generating additional data to augment the results of the content analysis.

This was done by a randomized sample survey, using the questionnaire as the data
collection instrument. The self-administered questionnaire has been acclaimed as a
popular survey research method that saves time and expense compared to telephone or
face-to-face interviews (Shoemaker and McCombs, 1981).

Other merits of the questionnaire survey highlighted by the two scholars have been
traced to its elimination of biases usually occasioned by interviewer presence, ensuring
standardized presentation of questions, allowing the respondent more privacy
especially in the case of sensitive questions, and enhancing the validity of responses
that require the respondent to do some reflection or consultation of references about
the answer. Nichols (1991:11) finds the survey so useful that he defines it as “the best
known method of social research.”

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The survey method, however, has inherent deficiencies. Some critics, for example,
have argued that:

• surveys cannot adequately establish causal connections between variables,

• surveys are incapable of getting at the meaningful aspects of social action,

• surveys just look at particular aspects of people’s beliefs and actions without
looking at the context in which they occur and

• surveys are a sterile, ritualistic and rigid model science centred around hypothesis
testing and significance tests, which involves no imagination or creative thinking.

Nevertheless, De Vaus (1993) argues that such criticisms are based on

misunderstanding, pointing out that surveys are a reliable method of social research if
used where they are appropriate. As far as eliciting attitudes, information or both are
concerned, as was the target of this study, survey interviews are considered very
appropriate so long as the design of the instrument, the choice of respondents, and the
conduct of the interview submit to the demands of empiricism, in particular the
minimisation if not absence of interviewer bias (Preece, 1994).

Given the sensitive nature of the topic as well as the social context within which the
survey was done, the merits of the questionnaire survey far outweighed those of any
other mode of interview. No matter how harmless the exercise would have seemed,
most respondents would have been reluctant to discuss coups either in an oral
interview or by telephone, especially with an interviewer they hardly knew. To the
contrast, the questionnaire offered respondents the privacy and anonymity they needed
to respond to such questions. The fact that all 200 copies of the questionnaire were
duly completed and returned demonstrates how the use of the questionnaire helped
reduce respondents’ inhibitions.

Furthermore, as far as the goal in this segment of the study remains the description of
certain attributes of the subjects, and not necessarily establishing causal relationships,
the survey method was seen to be very appropriate.

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5.3.1 Obiectives of the Survey.

The specific objectives of the survey included the following:

1. assessing journalists’ predisposition to military administrations,

2. establishing if there were occasions when they wished for or endorsed a coup,

3. finding out what they perceive to be the effects of military intervention in politics
and

4. finding out if their attitude to military intervention is influenced by:

age, educational qualification, and ethnic origin.

5.3.2 The Sampling Procedure.

The survey entailed a study of 200 Nigerian journalists, using the questionnaire to elicit
information on their attitude to military intervention in the political administration of
the country. The major criterion for selection of a respondent was a minimum of five
years of experience omthe job. This is also one of the basic criteria for the registration
of journalists in Nigeria, according to the Nigeria Union of Journalists constitution.

At the first stage, the cluster sampling method was adopted to encapsulate the entire
population of Nigerian journalists spread across the 30 States2 and the Federal Capital
Territory into five zones, namely: Lagos, the North, the West, the East and the
Minorities. These zones reflect as much as possible the federal character of the
country.

Though it is just one out of the said 30 States, Lagos was delimited as a zone because
of its status as the economic capital of the nation and as the seat of at least 70 per cent
of media institutions in the country (Africa Media Directory. 1995). Even among
those media organisations located in the country side, a majority have correspondents
in Lagos. By virtue of this status, therefore, half the sample, 100 respondents, was
drawn from Lagos alone.

2 The Abacha administration announced the creation of six new States on October 1, 1996, bringing
the total so far to 36.

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The other zones comprise states, namely:

the North - 14 States

the West - 6 States

the East - 5 States

the Minorities - 5 States and the Federal Capital Territory.

From each of the North, West and East zones, three States were randomly selected
and 10 respondents were randomly picked in each State, using the register of
practising journalists at the State headquarters of the Nigeria Union of Journalists as
the sampling frame. The remaining 10 respondents were equally randomly selected in
two out of the four minority States. The summary of the sample is presented in the
following table.

Table 5.2 Sampling frame of respondents from the zones and states.

Zone State Sample size

Lagos Lagos 100
North Kaduna 10
Kano 10
Plateau 10
West Kwara 10
Ogun 10
Oyo 10
East Anambra 10
Enugu 10
Imo 10
Minorities Benue 05
Rivers 05
Total 200

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5.3.4 The Survey Instrument

A 27-item questionnaire was the instrument designed for interviewing the selected
respondents. The questionnaire contains both structured and unstructured questions.
After a pre-test, it was discovered that respondents needed some kind of guidance in
the areas of the questionnaire that sought their views on certain issues related to
military intervention, especially those that involved dates and other statistics. For the
above reason, and for the purpose of ensuring that the required ground as dictated by
the research objectives was covered, structured questions with options were,
therefore, considered very helpful without compromising the objectives of the
interview. However, there were cases in which the respondents needed to give their
answers unaided, mostly where they were required to express their views on certain
issues or to give their own answers where they felt that the options provided were not
exhaustive of the range of possible responses to any question. Specialists in surveys
believe that such “free-ranging accounts can give a better indication of a respondents’
true attitudes” (Preece, 1994:120). Accordingly, some of the questions in the
questionnaire were unstructured. A copy of the questionnaire is attached as Appendix
1.

5.3.5 The Period of Survey

As I mentioned earlier, the entire data for this study were collected during the field
work in Nigeria (October 1 1995 - June 1, 1996). As I had also stated earlier in this
chapter, the sensitive nature of this study posed a challenge in terms of collecting
useful information (in an environment where even the most harmless piece of
information is shrouded in secrecy). The onus was on me to adopt a strategy that
would earn me the trust of the respondents as well as offer them the atmosphere they
needed to offer their responses uninfluenced by my presence. Each respondent
selected from the sampling frame for the survey in each State was contacted before
hand for a meeting with me at his or her newspaper office. At each meeting, the first
step was to convince the respondents on the purpose of the survey. The second was
to persuade them to try and complete the questionnaires on the spot while I waited

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within the premises. Once they established a rapport with me, the respondents not
only showed interest in the study but also were very co-operative. As I stated earlier,
all 200 copies of the questionnaire administered were duly completed and returned.
Apart from meeting reporters, who constituted the majority of respondents, at their
newspaper houses, I seized the opportunity of being invited to a meeting of the
Nigerian Guild of Editors, in Sokoto, in January 1996, as an observer, to interview
some editors as well.

Responses in the questionnaires were coded immediately after collation and processed
using the SPSS package.

5.4 Summary

The content analytical and survey methods were adopted for this study. This decision
was based on the assumption that the predisposition of Nigerian journalists to military
intervention can best be examined through their professional and personal approaches
to issues bothering on that phenomenon. Thus, while content analysis aimed to reveal
press characterisation of governments which had been sacked in coups d’etat, the
survey sought the opinions of journalists on coups. It was hoped that the marriage of
both methods would produce data which could give an insight to the relationship
between journalists’ personal views and their professional orientations on the subject.

For the content analysis, three leading independent newspapers were purposively
selected. These were the National Concord, the Guardian and the Punch. Samples of
these newspapers were examined for contents relating to the governments under Shehu
Shagari and Muhammadu Buhari: the former, a civilian regime which was toppled in
December 1983, and the latter, a military administration which was overthrown in
August 1985. The aim was to find out how these governments were portrayed in the
stories, editorials, articles, cartoons and columns published in the three newspapers
three months before the fall of each administration.

The questionnaire survey, on the other hand, concentrated on one major focus: the
predisposition of journalists to military intervention in politics. Most of the questions

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were framed to elicit responses to this very question. Two hundred journalists drawn
from newspapers across the country were the respondents of the questionnaire.

Data collated from both enterprises were analysed to form the basis of the reports
which follow in chapters six and seven, as well as the discussions in chapter eight.

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PRESS CHARACTERISATION OF GOVERNMENT

6.1 Introduction

This chapter presents the results of the quantitative and qualitative analyses of selected
newspapers aimed at examining how some displaced governments in Nigeria were
portrayed in the local press prior to their fall. Since the specific interest in this exercise
was the government, the items coded were press contents (news, editorials, articles,
cartoons, columns and readers’ letters) which referred to the government.
Government in this context encapsulates key government functionaries and all the
strands of the political bureaucracy involved in the governing process such as the
ruling (civilian or military) cabinet, the legislature, the judiciary, the security agencies,
commissions, boards and directorates at both federal and state levels. The inclusion of
the states was meant to reflect the federal status of the country.

The analysis is presented in three sections. The first deals with the frequencies and
percentages of the various categories, while the second attempts to sharpen the focus
by concentrating on the cross-relationships between specific variables. The third
section presents a qualitative analysis of the major themes which form the portrayal of
the subjects.

6.2 THE QUANTITATIVE ANALYSIS.

Beginning with the quantitative analysis, the items in the selected publications
(Guardian, National Concord and Punch) were examined along twelve major foci. The
first focus was on placement, and the intention was to gain an insight on the degree of
prominence accorded each of the items through the kind of display given to them. The
second point of attention was devoted to type of item while the third dwelt on space
(in square centimetres) occupied by each item. This focus was meant to complement
placement in the bid to determine the prominence of an item. The fourth focus related

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to authors of the items. Each category under this unit helped to define how much of
the items were written from within the newspaper organisation and from public
contributors. The actors directly quoted or identified as the subject of an item formed
the fifth focus. Actors, in this case, were mainly individuals occupying a government
office or designated to discharge responsibilities strategic in running the government.
These included the president, ministers, political party leaders, state governors,
members of the ruling cabinet, legislators and judicial officers among others.

In order to accommodate items in which only offices rather than their individual
occupants were mentioned or referred to, an additional unit, ‘other actors’, was treated
as the sixth focus. A seventh focus was on news sources. The eighth examined the
several topics under which the items were presented by the authors while the ninth
treated the characterisation of the actors. This was coded as either positive or negative
following a set of modifying labels on both sides. The tenth point of examination was
on what the authors of the items identified as the effects of military intervention. They
were analysed as either positive or adverse following once more, a set of labels
specified for both sides. The eleventh focus was on the authors’ prescriptions for
ending military coups in the country while the last focus dealt with the very important
question of whether there was any advocacy for military intervention.

6 , 2 .1 General Frequencies

The sample of 252 issues of three newspapers published during the period of study
(1983 and 1985) generated 381 items on various topics which related to government
activities or reflected public opinions on, perceptions of, and disposition to
government. This was an average of one item per issue. As shown in table 6.1
(p. 178), The Guardian, with 141 items (37.0%) ran neck and neck with National
Concord which had 140 items or 36.7% in terms of the contributions of each
publication during the two-year period. The Punch generated 100 items (26.3%).

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Table 6.1. Distribution of items over the period of study.

Publication 1983 1985 Column total

National Concord 81 (21.3%) 59(15.4%) 140 (36.7%)

The Guardian 98 (25.7%) 43 (11.3%) 141 (37.0%)

Punch 43 (11.3%) 57 (15.0%) 100 (26.3%)

Row total 222 (58.3%) 159 (41.7%) 381 (100.0%)

If anything, the similarity in the total number of items carried by each of the three
newspapers over the two-year period is an index of the common attribute shared by
almost all independent publications in Nigeria: an avid interest in news and views
regarding the business of government. Naturally, newspapers are set up for myriad
reasons, depending, for the most part, on the economic, social or political interests of
the proprietors. There is also a marked difference in the way the individual
newspapers go about actualising their goals. However, based on the breakdown of the
total number of items in each newspaper, it would seem that the coverage of
government is a common denominator of the three leading newspapers in Nigeria.
This can further be explained in terms of the traditional news beats, news sources and
news values which have become the unifying force for media of different types and
orientations in the country. In such traditions, activities of government and its
officials, as shown in a great deal of studies (e.g. Oso, 1986; Edeani, 1988; Mwaffisi,
1989), attract considerable media attention. With time, however, more light can be
shed on the nature of such coverage when the analysis touches on the tone of the
stories or the dominant characterisation of government as portrayed in the stories.
This will also enable further explanation of such sameness of coverage as a function of
the influence of certain news values in the news selection process.

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Furthermore, a majority of the items, 222 (58.3%), appeared in the 1983 period while
1985 yielded 159 items or 41.7%. For two out of the three publications (Guardian and
Concord), there was a marked decline in the number of items published about
government between 1983 and 1985 as illustrated in figure 1 below.

Figure 1
Newspaper Stories by Year
110
100
90
80
70
newspapr
60
National Concord

The Guardian

The Punch
83 85

YEAR

The preponderance of items in the publications in 1983 could possibly be attributed to

two factors. In the first place, the government in 1983 was run by a civilian cabinet
headed by Alhaji Shehu Shagari, and as opposed to a military dispensation, it allowed a
wide latitude for a market place of ideas in the press. Secondly, it was a year of
general elections, and was bound to not only generate robust comments from the
usually turbulent parties or observers either celebrating or protesting the results of the
election, but also to feature frantic coverage of a new administration. It is typical of
the mass media to focus attention on a newly elected government, almost to the point
of ignoring other walks of life. In Nigeria, the inauguration, speeches and programmes
of a new government, as well as people’s comments on it constitute the preoccupation
of the media for months. These take the form of daily reports, editorials advising the
new government, speculations or confirmation of cabinet appointments, readers’ letters
expressing their aspirations and inter-party contests regarding the election results. And

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as time goes on, the government-owned media continue with the courting of
favourable public opinion for government while the independent ones feel free to
report on issues that are both favourable and unfavourable to government.

On the contrary, the 1985 period had a military administration in power. While it may
be admitted that relations between the private press and government has never been
mutually friendly, military administrations, have by far been the less tolerant of
unrestrained media coverage of issues. Having taken over political power by force, a
military government will go to any length to assert its authority and to eliminate any
opposition (Oyewole, 1991). The initial steps in this direction include the dissolution
of political parties, the suspension of the constitution, and most essentially, the
enactment of decrees. Primarily, such enactments aim to render its actions beyond the
jurisdiction of the courts, and thereafter to impose a series of dictatorial and
unjusticeable sanctions on individuals and groups. In the process, the line between
government and the state or even between personal and official capacities are made
indistinct, and any challenge, as seen in the criticism of its actions in the media, is
translated as a plan to subvert the state. Over the several years of military rule in
Nigeria, the usual target, as judged by the number of decrees specifically made for
them, are the independent private media.

Of all military administrations in Nigeria, that of Major-General Muhammadu Buhari

was about the most repressive as far as human rights and press freedom were
concerned (Ihonvbere, 1996; Ogbondah, 1994). While other military leaders began
with measures aimed at courting press support, and later became more hostile to press
criticism, Buhari’s entry into government house as the new head of state was marked
by a publicised threat to ‘tamper with press freedom’. The Buhari administration had
come to power in the midst of mounting public and press criticism of the second term
of the Shagari regime. As has been pointed out in the historical antecedents to the
December 31, 1983 coup in chapter two, the Shagari government was marred by
widespread accusations of corruption, inept leadership, economic mismanagement and
general discontent. When it came to power, therefore, the two cardinal objectives of

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the Buhari government were a war on indiscipline and corruption, and a package for
economic recovery. It, therefore, made it transparently clear from the beginning that it
was not going to make pretences to any form of permissiveness. Measures were put in
place to check lateness to work, redundancy in offices, abuse of office, and to enforce
queuing in public places and environmental cleanliness. Stringent sanctions which
ranged from corporal punishments to dismissal or payment of fines were imposed
summarily on persons caught contravening any of the set rules.

However, it would appear that Buhari had personal grudges against the press. Before
the coup that brought him to power, he had been a federal minister for petroleum
during the Murtala/Obasanjo administration. Then, a majority of the private press had
carried stories about the 2.8 billion naira scandal in Buhari’s ministry. The amount said
to have accrued from oil revenues was also claimed to have been unaccounted for. In
the absence of the willingness of the initiators of the claims to come forward and
testify, a commission of enquiry set up to investigate the matter declared that the said
sum of money was not missing. But the scars of that ‘embarrassment’ were to remain
indelible in Buhari’s mind, and using that as a premise either to retaliate retroactively
or to forestall the repetition of such accusation, he promulgated the notorious Decree
number 4 of 1984 (Ogbondah, 1994). Known as Public Officers (ProtectionAgainst
FalseAccusation) Decree, the law aimed directly at silencing the criticalpress. It
stipulated that:

Any person who publishes in any form, whether

written or otherwise, any message, rumour, report
or statement, being a message, rumour, statement or
report which is false in any material particular or
which brings or is calculated to bring the Federal
Military Government or the Government of a State
or public officer to ridicule or disrepute, shall be
guilty of an offence under this decree (Federal
Government of Nigeria Official Gazette. April 1984.
P -5 3 .)

The decree further forbade newspapers and the electronic media from publishing or
transmitting such messages, rumour or report, but the section of the decree which

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betrayed its origin in the 2.8 billion naira oil money controversy, and therefore its aim
at journalists stated that:

It shall be an offence under this decree for a

newspaper or wireless telegraphy station in Nigeria
to publish or transmit any message, rumour, report or
statement which is false in any material particular
stating that any public officer has in any manner been
engaged in corrupt practices or has in any manner
corruptly enriched himself or any other person (ibid.).

According to the law, errant journalists and media organisations were to be tried by a
military tribunal whose verdict could never be challenged in any appeal court. The
punishment for contravening any of the provisions of the decree was imprisonment for
two years without an option of fine for individual journalists, and a fine of not less than
10.000 naira for a media organisation.

Regardless of these punishments, the decree still empowered the head of state to
prohibit or ban the circulation of any newspaper or to revoke the licence of any station
publishing or transmitting such contents.

Apart from the fact that the decree ousted any safeguard for fair hearing by providing
for trial by a military tribunal which had the exclusive preserve to determine what was
false or rumour, the emphasis on the capability of a report to bring public officers into
ridicule or disrepute tended to overshadow the truthfulness of such reports. This was
clearly demonstrated in the conviction and imprisonment of the first victims of the law:
two reporters of the Guardian who had reported an imminent re-posting of diplomats
in 1984. They were arrested and tried under the decree, and were jailed for one year
each while their corporation was fined 50,000 naira (Momoh, 1996). The accuracy of
their report was never in doubt. To the military authorities, the ability of the
journalists to gain access to that story from sources unknown to the government was
an incursion into what government would have wanted to remain an impervious wall to
‘prying and mischievous’ journalists, and therefore, an embarrassment.

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Added to several other coercive measures of this government, especially the

indiscriminate arrest and detention of persons labelled threats to national security,
under Decree number 2 of 1984, decree 4 was undoubtedly a real threat to press
freedom. The imprisonment of the two journalists can be said to have driven the
seriousness of the law home.

Supported by the labour unions, students unions and intellectuals, the private and even
government media were united in their crusade for the revocation of this law, and the
release of the jailed reporters, and in some cases criticisms of the government
continued (Ogbondah, 1994). However, while they may not have completely cowed
the press into total submission, the corrosive impact of those decrees on the hitherto
free and exuberant independent press cannot be denied. Considering that a majority of
the overall press contents were negative or critical of government, the repressive laws
are most likely to have accounted for the less number of stories on government in the
newspapers in the 1985 period which was also the tenure of the Buhari government. A
Guardian editorial after the promulgation of Decree number 4 of 1984 said it all: “...
the press has resigned itself to the innocuous chronicling of the pronouncements of
public men, and the government is preoccupied with incestuous monologues with
itself1...”

Another factor that might have contributed to the depletion of stories in the 1985
period was the banning of political parties and government prohibition of any discourse
on political issues. Considering the tradition of most independent newspapers in the
reporting and discussion of politics, such prohibitions must have veered the focus of
the newspapers into ‘harmless’ topics, such as sports and foreign affairs which were of
course not considered in this analysis as long as they had no bearing on the Nigerian
government. Such a recourse to less sensitive topics could not have been a surprise in
the face of the indiscriminate harassment and prosecution of deviant journalists and
publications as was the hall mark of the Buhari government.

1 C ited in W est A frica. S ep tem b er 9, 1985 p. 1846.

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Being the exception, the Punch carried more stories in 1985 than in 1983. In addition
to other less obvious factors that may be responsible for that trend, it can be argued
that the maintenance of, if not heightened interest in government affairs, especially
with more critical than favourable contents, even under such a repressive climate,
demonstrates the fact that harsh press laws hardly ever succeed in ‘taming’ the
independent press in Nigeria. This seems to have been the case beginning from the
colonial era.

6.2.2 Type of Item

Of the 381 items analysed over the two year period, news stories placed first with 166
items (43.5%) of which 44 (11.5%) were lead stories. Editorials followed news with
107 items (28.1%) while articles (features) and cartoons accounted for 59(15.5%) and
21(5.5%) items respectively. Table 6.2 presents a breakdown of the frequencies of all
the items coded.

Table 6.2. Frequency of Item Types.

Item type Frequency Percentage

lead story 44 11.5

news 122 32.0

editorial 107 28.1

article 59 15.5

letter 10 2.6

speech/press statement 4 1.0

column/view point 14 3.7

cartoon 21 5.5

Total 381 100.0

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This result reflects the inclusion of the broad range of press contents in the coverage of
government issues. The spectrum usually spans between straight reports and
comments. However, the pre-eminence of news items and editorials suggests the
significance of both wares as the commanding genres in the business of print media
communication. Two essential functions of newspapers as demonstrated in several
content analytical studies (e.g. Tarabay, 1994; Sigal, 1973) have remained the
presentation of fresh news and the leading of opinions through editorials. Without
disregarding the importance of articles, columns, letters-to-the-editor and other types
of newspaper content most of which can be contributed by the public, the pre­
eminence of news and editorials is not only demonstrated in their regular appearance
and prominent placing, but also by restricting their preparation to professional in-house
personnel.

The low percentage of letters, and press statements is most possibly due to the
combination of the economics of space management, organisational policy and in-
house style. Since these are not paid for, papers are not obliged to carry them. In
most cases, according to the editors, the lack of space, the tedium of editing lengthy
and badly written materials, and poor taste are some of the factors that reduce the
chances of publishing this class of materials. Relative to columns, the reason for their
diminutive frequency can be attributed to the fact that in most Nigerian newspapers,
they are usually restricted to few paid regular writers and are carried on particular days
of the week.

Cartoons are popular in Nigerian newspapers. There is hardly any Nigerian

newspaper - private or government - that does not carry at least one cartoon in any
issue. They almost always reflect the entire range of human activities, but are dictated
by either the cartoonists’ interests or by editorial specifications for the illustration or
reinforcement of editorials. Perhaps, the low number of cartoons found in the three
newspapers, compared to news and editorials, had to with the careful selection of only
those cartoons that dwelt on government. Even then, the seriousness of the subjects of
those analysed, provide an evidence of the use of cartoons not just for livening up

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pages or tickling the readers’ fancy, but also in providing serious commentary on
matters of national or public interest, just as could have been done in an editorial or an
article.

6.2.3 Placement of Item

Items which appeared on the front page were 88 (23.1%), those on the back page were
29(7.6%) while 264 (69.3%) or two-thirds of the items were found in the inside pages.
Ordinarily, front page items, especially lead stories, are strategically chosen to arrest
reader attention either by their significance or sensational value. By extension of this
logic the most important items appear on the front pages while items placed in the
inside pages, or in the newspaper ‘belly’ as it would appear to be, are regarded as
having secondary or even filler value.

It would, therefore, seem that the majority of the items in the three papers were
‘tucked’ away in the inside pages, and were, therefore not particularly significant.
Considering, however, that the items coded were all on government, such pattern of
placement becomes an apparent deviation from research findings which establish that
activities of governments and politicians, and the stories or comments they attract are
usually accorded prominence both in space allocation and conspicuousness (Mwaffisi,
1989; Edeani, 1988; Oso, 1986; Mytton, 1983). The front and back pages are seen as
the show-cases where such important contents should be placed.

The first of the two factors responsible for the appearance of two-thirds of the items in
the inside pages is institutional. While the ability of front page stories to grab
readership cannot be contested, the use of the ‘opposite editorial’ (OPED) page has
contributed to the growing salience of some inside pages as well. It is the practice
among many Nigerian newspapers, including the three analysed in this study, to
position contents which constitute both corporate and public opinions such as
editorials, letters, cartoons, columns and features on the ‘OPED’ pages inside the

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newspaper. Editorials, cartoons and columns had a permanent place in the three
newspapers. If it is accepted that such contents serve very significant functions for the
reader, it can be argued that the permanence and consistency in their placement, albeit
inside the newspaper, constitute their own prominence, and therefore draw attention to
inside pages, for readers would always know where to find them. Regardless of the
dynamics of newspaper contents such as those which often lead to the competition for
space between adverts and editorial matter, the OPED items always have their places
guaranteed as it were. Furthermore, in all three papers, columns and articles written
by both staff members and outside contributors had a permanent place on the centre
spread which, by such placements, had also an ability to attract readers.

front page
2 3 .1 %

back page
7 .6 %

inside page
69.3%

Fig. 2. Page distribution of items.

6.2.4 Authors and Sources

The analysis showed that the authors of a great majority of the items, 342 or 89.8%,
were from within the newspaper organisations. As shown in table 3, staff reporters,
writers and cartoonists authored 235 items (61.7%) while the editorial board produced
107 (28.1%) items (editorials), leaving a marginal 33 or 8.7% items to outside

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contributors, and 6 (1.6%) to columnists (some of whom were also employees of the
organisation on a full- or part-time basis). By their nature, most of the items such as
news, editorials and cartoons, which featured prominently in the publications, require
some skill to package, and therefore, had to be produced by staff trained for the job,
leaving the public the narrow option of contributing letters and some of the articles.
This was the case in some earlier studies such as Tarabay’s (1994) which found that
the reporter ranked highest as author of the items analysed.

Table 6.3. Frequency of Authors.

Author Frequency Percentage

staff (writer/reporter/artist) 235 61.7

editorial board 107 28.1

Columnist 6 1.6

outside contributor 33 8.7

Total 381 100.0

Beyond the identification of the authors of the various items, it was very important to
describe the sources of the ideas or facts contained in the items. Being about the
possible role of the press in precipitating military intervention, this study cannot but
examine the place of sources in the construction of the stories which are thought to
stimulate such interventions. A clear-cut identification of sources can illumine the
search for the possible role of the press: as either initiators or mere transmitters.

Due to the main focus of this study - government matters - sources were broadly
categorised as government or non-govemment. However, for purposes of identifying
as much as possible of the broad range of news sources in both categories, government
sources were further broken down to the president/head of state, governors,
ministers/parliamentarians/judges and other government officials. Under non­
governmental sources, there were two categories: opposition leaders and elites. Yet a
separate category was created for unidentified sources. These were news reports

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whose sources were not revealed. Stories which did not lend themselves to sources
such as editorials were classified as unattributable while those that were hard to trace
to any source were put under the category ‘others’.

The analysis showed that sources differed according to item type. Relative to news
stories, a great deal of the reports, though reported in the straight-jacket format which
dwells on the presentation of the news elements while de-emphasising the injection of
opinion, were not attributed to any sources. It was common for reporters to rely on
anonymous referees indicated by the use of labels such as: “it is widely believed
that...”, “...was said to have”, “the word was out in reliable circles that...”, “going by
the expectations of the people...”, “speculations have it that...”, “according to official
documents,...”, “observers believe that...”, “official sources indicate that...”, “my
informant said that...” and so on.

The most plausible explanation of this finding lies in a related and interesting
observation: the existence of an association between critical stories and the lack of
attribution. In a recent study on the Malaysian press, Shaari (1997) found that a
majority of the news reports were attributed to official sources, a situation which
derives from the culture of press-govemment co-operation, which also disposes
reporters to rely solely on government sources for their stories and to frame such
stories in favour of government. As she put it, Malaysian journalism had come to be
dubbed “say-so journalism” because of the profuse quoting of government sources
(ibid. p. 135). The above finding has been deliberately cited to serve as a comparison
to the Nigerian situation. The government-owned press in Nigeria share similar
characteristics with the mainstream Malaysian press as far as the reliance on and
towing of government views are concerned. However, unlike the friendly and co­
operative spirit between government and the press in Malaysia, or between Nigerian
government-owned media and government, the relationship between the independent
press and government in Nigeria over the years, as stated repeatedly in preceding
chapters, has been constantly confrontational. More as result of a convention nurtured
right from their origin than codified policies, the independent media, exemplified by the

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three chosen for this study, see themselves not as partners with government but as
detached observers, reporters and commentators, a position from which they feel free
to report and comment freely on any matters of public interest (Omu, 1996). A
derivative of this posture is the inclusion of both official and unofficial or alternative
viewpoints in reports and comments.

Considering that most of the news analysed in this study were unfavourable to
government, detailing in most cases, allegations or figures about corruption, financial
mismanagement or abuse of office, it is not surprising that sources of such disclosures
or allegations would not be mentioned in the reports. The reasons for this are varied.
On the one hand, in cultivating sources, especially in investigative reporting or the
disclosure of government secrets, newspapers execute a covenant to protect the
anonymity of their sources, a situation which is backed by both ethics and law2 in
Nigeria. According to some editors interviewed, most of such sources are from within
government or the military establishment who are forbidden by bureaucratic
regulations from talking to the press or divulging government secrets. Even if it is not
for being seen as having broken such regulations, the fact that such officials can be
treated as traitors, compels the press not to disclose their identities. In any case, the
press stands to be the loser for not keeping the confidentiality covenant, for they close
such sources if they are known to break the covenant at the slightest pressure from
government. In most cases, editors and journalists are known to have been, to no
avail, arrested detained and tortured to disclose sources of information said to be
government secret or embarrassing to government. In the celebrated case cited in
chapter three in which two Guardian reporters were jailed for one year under Decree
number 4 of 1984, it has been said that their sentence would have been mitigated had
they disclosed the source of their report who was obviously a government insider.

On the other hand, even sources who are not government insiders, but whose leads
are, in the editors’ judgements, worthy of being reported, can ask for anonymity for
fear of government reprisals.

2 Tonv M o m o h v Senate o f the N a tio n a l A s s e m b ly (1 9 8 1 ) 1 N C L R 105.

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There were three observable cases where sources were directly identified. One case
happened to be reports attributed to established opposition leaders or formidable non­
governmental sources such as academics, labour unions, students bodies other elites.
In both civilian and military regimes in Nigeria, these are not only the traditional
opposition to the establishment, but also the strength behind the boldness and freedom
of the press (Diamond, 1990).

A second case where sources were identified had to do with reports in which
government officials were indicted through a quotation of their statements which
showed them to be ‘irresponsible’, ‘vindictive’, ‘ignorant or insensitive’, ‘wielding
unnecessary official clout’, or to have admitted guilt of one blunder or the other. Most
of the sources cited in such cases included the president, ministers, and legislators.

The third case involved stories which were favourable to government, in which one
government policy, programme or action was lauded. Naturally, the sources of such
views had nothing to lose, and were, therefore clearly identified.

Once again, based on all cases of source identification or non-disclosure in this study,
the argument that there is an association between tone of news and source
identification among the Nigerian press is reasonably reinforced.

In the case of editorials, it was not easy to attribute them to any specific sources.
Being the corporate opinions of newspapers on chosen issues, editorials are handled
exclusively by the editorial board of individual papers, and are not even signed by
either the editor or the publisher. However, an observation which was similar to the
relationship between tone and citing of official sources in news reports was the fact
that almost all editorials were critical of government, and about 70 per cent of the
editorials were based on the statements, conduct and personality of government
officials, most especially, governors, ministers and parliamentarians. Thus, as in the

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case of news reports in which government sources were quoted in indicting manners,
editorials which criticised government were pegged on comments or actions attributed
to key government officials.

Other classes of items such as articles, columns and letters were personal and heavily
opinionated views of individual writers from within and outside the newspaper
organisations. In most cases such views were based on observations, personal
prejudices, personalised analyses, narratives and speculations. Together with stories
and editorials which shared similar attributes, these were classified as having
unattributable sources.

Probably, it would have helped the investigation for their sources had such stories or
articles disclosed the methodology for gathering their information or venues where the
information was gathered. In Nigeria, these would include press conferences,
interviews, press releases, opinion polls and subscription to other news organisations.
Such venues and methods were, however, conspicuously missing.

In fact one remarkable finding in this regard is the glaring absence of news agency
materials (news, features and pictures) in all three newspapers. Most Nigerian
newspapers usually subscribe to local, regional and international news agencies. This
fact is corroborated by Golding and Elliot’s (1979) study which reported that the mass
media in the third world, especially, Nigeria, relied heavily on four global news
agencies for both national and international news. In the first place, the government-
owned News Agency of Nigeria which is most unlikely to be a source of news and
features for the three newspapers considering their flair for contents that are critical of
government. Relative to foreign agencies, it is possible that the sampled publications
either considered it economically expedient and legally safer to assign their own
reporters to government matters, or used news agency materials without
acknowledging them.

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In relating these findings to the theoretical approaches adopted for this analysis,
sources shall be further discussed in terms of the overall sociology of news production
and agenda setting.

6.2.5 Actors Referred to

An examination of the actors in the items analysed indicated 176 items with clearly
identifiable actors who were either quoted or referred to or both. Such actors were
mentioned 208 times (multiple responses). The remaining 205 items either referred to
offices or positions coded as ‘other actors’ or to no identifiable actor at all. Followed
by state governors, and then by ex-presidents/heads of state, the president/head of
state was the actor most cited or referred to. The visibility of the other actors is shown
in table 6.4.

Table 6.4. Frequency of Actors.

Actors Frequency Percentage

president/head of state 46 22.1

senate/house of rep. leader 9 4.3

justices/judges 4 1.9

state govs/administrators 44 21.2

ministers/advisers/security 21 10.1
chiefs

commissioners/perm. secs. 7 3.4

party leaders/front-line 19 9.1

politicians

parliamentarians 11 5.3

ex-presidents 39 18.8

others 8 3.8

Total responses 2083 100.0

3 Figure derived from m ultiple cod in g.

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6.2.6 ‘Other Actors’

Relative to the categories coded as ‘other actors’, the office of the president or
supreme military council as the case may be, once more attracted the greatest
attention. It was the subject in 174 items (54%). None of the other arms of
government coded in this unit scored more than 10%. The details are given in table
6.5 below.

Table 6.5 Frequency of ‘Other actors’.

Other actors Frequency Percentage

the presidency 174 54.2

the judiciary/tribunals 19 5.9

the legislature 21 6.5

presidential commission 9 2.8

ministry/govt.parastatal 32 10.0

political party 33 10.3

security forces 32 10.0

other 1 0.3

Total responses 3214 100.0

The pre-eminence of the president and his office as subjects of items corroborates
earlier research findings on the ranking of prominent news sources which are indicative
of the prime position of officials of state bureaucracies and organisations as news
actors (Tarabay, 1994; Murphy, 1991; Tiffen, 1989; Musa, 1989; Oso, 1986; Hallin,
1986; Sparks, 1986; Hess, 1984; Mytton, 1983; Aborishade, 1977; Tunstall, 1971).
On the theoretical plane, several researchers have attempted to explain the preference

4 Total due to m ultiple coding.

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for government officials among other prominent personalities as news actors. Factors
such as convenience (Hackett, 1991), cost reduction (Herman and Chomsky, 1988),
news routinisation (Gans, 1979; Golding and Elliot,1979; Musa,1989; Helland,1993)
have been adduced for this purpose.

However, relative to the publications analysed in this study, and the socio-political
milieu in which they operate, the most relevant explanation is that by virtue of
occupying the central position of power which they hold in trust for the people,
government and political officials become ‘accredited’ news actors (Hall et al, 1981).
The assumption, of course, is that whatever they do or say will be of interest to the
mass of people they represent. This is perhaps why Golding and Elliot (1979) refer to
such officials as constituents of the ‘information-producing strata’ of society.
Emboldened by a constitutional exhortation which challenges the mass media to always
“uphold the accountability and responsibility of government functionaries to the
people”5, the private press in Nigeria have never wavered from focusing their
searchlight on the government as reiterated in this portion of the results. This point
will be further developed in the discussion of findings in chapter eight.

6.2.7 Topics

Relative to topic (subject matter), the analysis showed that the topic with the highest
coverage was politics (23.8%). Politics, in this context, was broadly used to cover
specific issues such as elections, political appointments, government activities, and
change of government. Following closely on the heels of politics was economy which
was the subject matter of 19.6% items ranging from trade and commerce through
financial issues. Noticeably, subject matters such as education/science and technology,
health and social services, housing and environment, and sports and culture, among
others, were scantily featured as shown in table 6.6 on page 196.

5 S e c tio n 21 o f the 1 9 7 9 C o n stitu tio n .

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Table 6.6 Frequency of Topics.

Topic Frequency Percentage

politics/elections/change of 124 23.8

govt/appointments

economy/trade/finance 102 19.6

law/civil rights 86 16.5

crime/violence/corruption 61 11.7

employment/industry 32 6.2

agriculture/food 25 4.8

transport/communication 19 3.7

internal affairs/security 18 3.5

environment/housing 17 3.3

health/social services 14 2.7

education/science & tech. 12 2.3

external affairs/image 7 1.3

sports/entertainment 2 0.4

other 1 0.2

Total responses 520 6 100.0

Apart from the fact that politics has been found to be prominent as topic or subject of
items in many studies (e.g., Tarabay, 1994; Bosompra, 1989; Musa, 1989; Lobulu,
1988; Obeng-Quaidoo, 1987; Abdullahi, 1979), the primary explanation of the high
frequency of political issues in the publications lies intrinsically in the political influence
on the birth and evolution of the African press, especially those of Nigeria. Obeng-

6 Total due to m ultiple coding.

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Quaidoo (1987) is among researchers who agree that the press in Africa were
conceived and have continued to evolve more in a political milieu than any other
consideration.

As far as this study goes, this finding is further complemented by the traditional news
value of prominence which automatically makes the activities of government officers
and political leaders news worthy or prone to public discussion, as explained earlier.
In specific terms, the period of study, 1983 through 1985, was remarkably associated
with a wide range of political activities. In 1983 for instance, the Nigerian political
climate was highly charged as six political parties campaigned prior to general elections
which finally took place from August to September. Not long after, in December of
that year, the elected civilian cabinet, just three months in its second term, was ousted
in a military coup. The Buhari military administration which took over effectively from
January 1984 was again ousted by another clique of military officers in August 1985.
The swift dangling of political offices, and the multiplicity of plans and policies by each
incepting administration were bound to offer a broad spectrum of agenda for news and
comments in the press.

Another major issue which could not escape notice was the economy. Beginning from
1979, when the second republic came into existence, cracks had consistently developed
in the economy. They continued to deepen up until late 1983 when the situation
reached a hopeless dimension as witnessed by dwindling foreign reserves, excessive
foreign loans, crashing of industries, retrenchment of workers, inflation, scarcity of
essential commodities, low standard of living, rise in crimes, and mass discontent
(Waziri, 1983). This explains why the ‘economy’ topic shared the spotlight with
politics in the publications analysed.

6.2.8 Actor Characterisation

An examination of the manner in which the actors were characterised is of paramount

importance to this study. It was deliberately included to yield some clues which could
be used to adjudge how critical the press were of government, and therefore, whether
or not the press could be said to be responsible for precipitating the crises that usually
give way to military intervention.

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Denoted by some labels, characterisation was considered as either positive or negative.

Items in which subjects had a positive characterisation were very few. Regardless of
the allowance for multiple characterisations on the positive side, there were only 58
items with positive characterisation. Conversely, there were 305 items containing a
whopping 621 unsavoury characterisations. Of these, the three most prominent were
the labels which depicted the actors as a) weak/incompetent/crisis-ridden/irresponsible,
b) unpatriotic/against national interest/selfish, and c)
oppressive/brutal/fascist/dictatorial. Table 6.7 shows the details of both positive and
negative characterisations.

Table 6.7. Positive and Negative Characterisations.

Positive Frequency Percentage Negative Frequency Percentage

Characterisation Characterisation

dynamic 17 24.3 incompetent 115 18.5

anti-corruption 16 23 unpatriotic 105 16.9

responsible/reali 11 15.7 oppressive/brutal 99 15.9

Stic

upholding rights 8 11.4 corrupt/wasteful 79 12.7

humane 6 8.6 inhuman 79 12.7

exemplary 4 5.7 immoral/undisci­ 67 10.8

plined/notorious

pro-national 3 4.3 exploitative 48 7.7

interest

progressive 3 4.3 illegal/unjust 26 4.2

resourceful 2 2.9 anti-mass welfare 3 0.5

Total 70 100.0 Total 6217 100.0

7 Total due to m ultiple coding.

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The prevalence of negative characterisations over positive ones possibly reflects once
again the influence of traditional news values in the construction of news. One of the
dominant values in news construction across the globe is negativeness. News and
articles are often presented as an account of the abnormal, the exceptional or the
disruptive among the ordinary run of the mill. In Africa, the continental setting of this
study, as in other regions of the world, a great deal of studies have confirmed the
news of developing nations reported by even their own media as containing so much
negative portrayal (Zaring, 1994; Emenyeonu, 1994; Nwuneli et al., 1993; Mwaffisi,
1989; Sobowale, 1987; Nwosu, 1987; Pratt, 1974).

On a surer note, however, the predominance of negativeness in most of the items in

this study is a lucid depiction of the entire social and political malaise that characterised
the nation, especially during the 1983 period. It was a period of unprecedented
corruption and lack of political direction (Okigbo. 1992; Taiwo, 1995), as will be
further demonstrated in the presentation of headlines and themes of the items.

6.2.9a Effects of Military Intervention

Wherever any of the items had anything to say about the effects of military
intervention, they were coded, once more, as either positive or negative, guided by
some labels constructed for this purpose. A majority of the items, 375 (98 9c) were
silent on either positive or negative effects. Only six items (29c) indicated that there
was cause to worry about military intervention in government. The most frequently
stated of such negative effects, which was found in four items, was the denial of
fundamental rights. The effects of militarisation of governance must have been well
appreciated by both journalists and the public, especially the adverse effects. The
absence of items containing comments on such negative effects, especially during the
1985 period can easily be attributed to the dictatorial climate that prevailed then. The

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publications were possibly playing safe in the face of so many decrees aimed at dealing
with ‘erring’ journalists and media. The most plausible explanation of the lack of
comments on positive effects of military rule might have to do with caution on the part
of the press not to be seen as endorsing military take-over of government. There is no
doubt that the press is about the most haunted target in military administrations in
Nigeria, and the reasons have been stated in a previous chapter as not unrelated to the
dictatorial nature of military rule and its zero tolerance on opposition (Oyewole,
1991).

6 .2 .9 b Solution to Military C o u ps

The search for suggestions on how to end military intervention yielded only one
response which mentioned two options: ‘the installation of an indigenous form of
democracy’ and ‘a socialist approach to the economy’. As in the case of effects of
military intervention, as much as 380 items had nothing to say on how to end military
coups. The reason for this silence arises from the themes of the items. Most of them
dwelt on issues that offered no room for suggesting a panacea to military intervention.
Furthermore, one of the periods studied had a civilian government. During a civilian
administration, there is hardly any thought or comments about coups until they occur.
During a military administration, however, the fear of reprisals might have cowed the
press into keeping sealed lips on this matter.

6.2.9c Advocacy for Military Intervention

A central question in this study is whether the publications carried any items in which
there was any invitation for military intervention, whether unequivocal or obscure.
There was not a single item in which such a call was made. There was, however, one
news item in which a disgruntled politician during the Shagari administration declared
that “Only a revolution can save Nigeria”. He, however, did not define the nature of
revolution he was prescribing. As stated earlier, though it would not be completely
impossible, it would have been most absurd for any independent newspaper to crusade

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for military rule, considering that in such a dispensation, they quickly become an
‘endangered species’.

As would be revealed in the survey, editors and reporters have their individual views
on coups. Like other Nigerians, the feeling of frustration from any government,
civilian or military', might sometimes express itself in the wish for a change, even if in
the form of a military coup. But as has been pointed out by some writers, there is a big
borderline between such personal biases and the institutional factors that impinge on
the finalisation of media contents. These will be given more breadth in the discussion
of the theoretical implications of the findings.

Given the inevitability of coups in Nigeria, the experience is that some newspapers,
have been known to have celebrated the ousting of appalling administrations without
necessarily endorsing the method or plotters of such change (Aka-Bashorun, 1990).
This is shown in the crusade for such interregnums to install measures for the re­
establishment of a democratic government as soon as possible. Thus, the conclusion
can be drawn that the Nigerian press do not campaign for military intervention, but
given its inevitability, they do not crusade against it when it has already taken place.
Their position can therefore be said to be that of tolerating coups as events for raising
more awareness on the ills of an ousted government but not as a legitimate means of
changing it. The following observation regarding the position of a popular Nigerian
magazine during the foiled April 1990 coup supports this view’: “A special issue of the
African Concord contained several letters supporting the issues raised by plotters
while rejecting their attempted violent mechanism for changing the (Babangida)
regime” (Ihonvbere. 1991:623).

6.3 CROSS TABLE ASSOCIATIONS

63.1 Characterisation/Placement

To further probe how the press presented an overthrown administration prior to its
downfall, the positive and negative characterisations were subjected to a cross

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tabulation with placement. It had earlier been shown that not less than two-thirds of
the entire items were located in the inside pages. The items which carried negative
characterisations followed the same trend. They were 305 in all, and 229 (75.1%) of
these were in inside pages. Furthermore, each of the nine labels used to denote
negative characterisation appeared most frequently in inside pages. For example, the
most frequent label, ‘weak/incompetent’ appeared in 115 cases. Of these, 80 (69.6%)
were in inside pages while only 28 (24.3%) and 7 (6.1%) attracted front and back page
positions respectively.

As for positive characterisation, the labels were evenly spread between the inside and
outside (front and back) pages. The inside pages had 28 (48.3%) positive
characterisations while the front and back pages had 25 (43.1%) and 5 (8.6%)
respectively. The positive characterisation which appeared most frequently on the
front page was the label, ‘anti-corruption’. An examination of the association between
item type and subject characterisation later in this section will shed some light on why
most of the items bearing negative characterisation appeared in the inside pages.

6.3.2 Actor/Characterisation

From the quantitative analysis in section 1, it was found that out of 176 items with 208
identifiable actors, the most frequent actors, 85, representing 40.9% of all actors were
incumbent and ex-presidents in the ratio of 46 (22.1%) and 39 (18.8%) respectively.
State governors ranked second as the actors in 44 (21.2%) items. I then went ahead to
examine how each of ten actors fared under the set of labels devised to depict negative
and positive characterisations. Generally, the negative characterisations were
dominated by incumbent and ex-presidents. The incumbent president was the leading
actor in three major negative characterisations namely, ‘unpatriotic’,
‘corrupt/fraudulent’, and ‘weak/incompetent’. On their part, ex-presidents not only
led in four other negative characterisations, ‘inhuman’, ‘immoral’, ‘dishonest’,
‘oppressive/brutal’, but also ranked second in the ‘unpatriotic’ and ‘corrupt/fraudulent’
labels. A third class of actors who attracted significant negative characterisation were

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state governors, who led in the ‘illegal/unconstitutional’ label and ranked second in the
‘oppressive/brutal’ and ‘immoral’ labels.

With regard to the relationship between actors and positive characterisation, there
were only 26 cases in which actors were directly identified with a positive
characterisation. Of ten actors, only three; president/head of state, state
govemor/administrator and minister/adviser shared the positive characterisations. The
president was the actor most identified in two positive labels, ‘upholding rule of law’,
and ‘working in masses’ interest’. State governors led in three other positive labels,
‘responsible/reasonable’, ‘dynamic/productive’, and ‘humane/sympathetic’.
Conspicuous among seven categories of actors who had not a single positive
characterisation were ex-presidents.

6.3.3 ‘Other ActorsV Characterisation

As in the case of actor characterisation, items in which ‘other actors’ were accredited
with positive characterisations were very few. There were only 38 such cases.
However, unlike the situation in positive actor characterisation, the office of the
president/supreme military council was identified with most of the available positive
characterisations. It was the leading ‘other actor’ identified as
‘responsible/reasonable’, ‘dynamic/productive’, ‘upholding rule of law’, and ‘anti­
corruption’. The results of a cross-tabulation between year and actor characterisation
will indicate which of the two administrations, military or civilian, was mostly
identified in those positive labels. Eight categories (labels) of negative categorisations
of ‘other actors’ appeared in 220 cases. A most remarkable feature in the
identification of the eight ‘other actors’ with these characterisations was the revelation
that the office of the president/head of state took the lion’s share of negative
characterisation, ranking first in all eight negative labels..

6.3.4 Actor Characterisation/Item Type

To establish why most items with negative characterisation were placed in the inside
pages while those with positive characterisations were evenly spread between outside

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and inside pages, the association between item type and actor characterisation was re­
examined. The cross tabulation showed that 33 of 305 items with negative
characterisation were lead stories, 76 were news, 99, editorials, 53, articles, and 19,
cartoons. The rest were 12 columns, nine letters and four press statements. As seen
earlier, items such as editorials, articles, cartoons, columns, letters and press
statements were permanently published inside the papers. Added to 33 news stories
which also appeared on inside pages, they generated 229 (inside-page) items, leaving
only 33 lead stories and 43 other news stories containing negative characterisations to
the outside pages.

On the other hand, of the 58 items with positive characterisations, six were lead
stories, 38 were news, and eight were editorials. Two were cartoons and one was a
column. Considering that a majority of the items in this class of characterisation were
news stories which enjoyed the flexibility of appearing in both outside and inside
pages, it was not a surprise that items with positive characterisation in general were
evenly spread between inside and outside pages.

6.4 QUALITATIVE ANALYSIS:

6.4.1 A Descriptive Summary of Headlines. Captions and Themes.

Having first presented a mass of frequencies on different categories with which we

sought to examine the representation of government in the press, I deem it necessary,
at this juncture, to reinforce the meaningfulness of the emerging results with some
relevant textual examples. This basically entails the presentation of some of the
headlines, captions, leads and themes of items to complement the realities they had
depicted in the quantitative analyses, with special reference to characterisation. The
depiction of both positive and negative characterisation for the two administrations are
presented separately.

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In choosing the illustrative excerpts, the basic criterion was the poignancy of language
in the depiction or portrayal identified in this section. For this reason, there is an
overwhelming appearance of excerpts from the Guardian and the National Concord at
the beginning. This does not exclude the Punch from the exercise. Though they are
scanty compared to those of the first two publications, materials from Punch were used
wherever they served the purpose of the stated criterion. For the same reason, the
number of excerpts chosen to illustrate each portrayal does not necessarily represent
the exact proportion of the frequencies of the protrayals. However, for purposes of
systematisation, an average of ten illustrative examples has been analysed in each
portrayal.

The need to provide evidence for the depictions was responded to in the direct
quotation of excerpts of selected items. However, in order to draw attention closer to
the depictions, the specific words, phrases or sentences or lines in these quotations
which form the basis of the judgements on the images of government have been
highlighted. Also highlighted are the headlines or captions of the items, which in some
cases also add to the overall depiction.

THE SHAGARI ADMINISTRATION (OCTOBER 1979-DECEMBER 1983)

Considering that the negative depiction is more pronounced, it is presented first.

6.4.2 A Weak and Incompetent President

A great number of items published in the newspapers in 1983 and even in the 1985
period portrayed the civilian administration as one headed by a non-performing, weak
and incompetent leader. For example, an article in The Guardian (1/11/83) titled,
President Shagari as a ‘Nice Guy’, presented the president as a stooge of his party,
(The NPN) who sheltered corrupt and undisciplined cabinet members imposed on him
by the party. The article said, among other things,

From the very beginning of his administration,

Shagari did not hide his intention to satisfy his
party men who apparently made his election

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possible. He allowed his party choose for him

those who were to be his ministers...Being a nice
guy, Shagari refused to sack any of his ministers
and special advisers in spite of the overwhelming
evidence that many of them were downright
sloths. When some of Shagari’s ministers and
special advisers were living in hotels at government
expense and at the same time giving out their official
quarters to relatives and friends, the president could
not understand what the noise was all about...

Referring again to the quality of the president’s men, a news story with the headline,
Balogun Back Home Angry With All (Guardian. 5/11/83), reported,

...International film maker, Ola Balogun, stepped

back home on Thursday from a three-week
professional trip overseas, brimming with anger over
the state of things in his country...He was
thoroughly scornful of the last cabinet some of
whose members he equated with clowns he said
he would have shuddered to hire as ‘chief clerks’
in his film business...

It was perhaps, in the light of this image of a ‘clay-footed giant’ surrounded by

‘clowns’ that another item, an editorial (Guardian. 4/11/83) lampooned the president’s
‘dispiriting’ attempt at reviving discipline and probity in public service. According to
the editorial,

...Last weekend’s statement credited to President

Shehu Shagari that he is establishing a ministry of
national guidance to implement the ethical re­
orientation scheme may not be his most dispiriting
since October 1. But it certainly claims the trophy
for the most ridiculous...In the main, let him
employ personal example, and build a reputation
as a man who will not have any nonsense; a man
before whom anyone would be in trouble if it was
ever said that they attempted crossing the new
ethical minefield...

Adding a similarly worded criticism on the proposed ministry, an article, Who is

Guiding Who? (Guardian. 6/11/83) argued,

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...But the truth is, and as the president quite rightly

pointed out, the business of corruption is the biggest
business in the country and our ministries are the
hot beds of corruption. So, who is going to do the
guiding?...Beyond this immediate challenge, the
president should set out to maintain good
government by starting with himself, by setting
the style, the tone and the right example. Let the
president start by converting his entire cabinet
into one big, disciplined ministry of national
guidance and planning...

Not only was the president seen as incapable of selecting a good cabinet, he was as
well depicted to have inflated its size out of tune with biting economic realities, for the
sake of rewarding party supporters. In an editorial entitled, Shagari’s Unseriousness,
the National Concord (18/11/83) opined that,

...The first premonition of disaster emerged when

the president, contrary to popular advice, sent
the unjustifiable number of 35 names to the
Senate for screening as ministers...In fact, the
situation confirms earlier speculations that there
were more men than jobs to go round. Hence, Alhaji
Shagari, caught between satisfying party whims
and the need for prudent management,
compromised with a token cut of his cabinet from
46 to 37, while retaining and even creating some
new and completely superfluous
departments...We believe that the character and
composition of his cabinet ...is symbolic of the
laziness of the administration and the confused
approach to solving the nation’s fundamental
problems...In another one of his familiar and
ineffectual foot-shuffles, the president tried to
counter public out-cry against the post of junior
ministers by swearing in a cabinet of 29 ministers, all
of cabinet rank...

The National Concord insisted on its point of view in two more editorials, The
Senate’s Duty to the Nation (8/11/83), and The President’s Men (8/12/83) in
which it reiterated that there was no justification for a bloated cabinet, and called on

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the senate not only to trim the proposed list but also to ensure that those who would
be selected were people with a track record of integrity and ability.

In its editorial comment on the same matter, titled, Shagari’s Ministers, the Guardian
(14/11/83) lamented, in particular, the overlapping of offices in the over-sized cabinet.
It said among other things,

...Those who feared that at 37, the proposed size of

the federal cabinet is too large will find their fears
not assuaged, but rather intensified. Although
ministries have been slightly reduced in number, the
gain is defeated by the awkward overlapping of
portfolios or outright duplication of
responsibilities...For instance, education, handled at
the commencement of his (Shagari’s) first term by
two persons, which was one too many, ...is now to
be handled by three, and this time, all of cabinet
rank- at a time when the nation is supposed to be
cutting costs! Finance has three...There is one
minister for transport and aviation, and another for
aviation. One for water resources, another for water
supply...One man will mn industries and commerce,
while another runs commerce and industries.
Absolutely fantastic! And where there are two or
more ministers in a ministry, one of them is
supposed to be called ‘minister oF, the other,
‘minister for’...

Still on this issue, The Guardian (5/12/83) carried a news item headlined, Students
Ask Shagari to Trim Number of Ministers. The students were quoted as saying
that the president’s decision on the cabinet size was aimed at sharing offices to his
party faithfuls, adding that their fear was that the three ministers (for education,
student affairs and technical education) will almost spend the first two years trying to
demarcate between education and technical education on the one hand, and education
and student affairs on the other.

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Another attribute of the president which the press saw as a weakness was his penchant
for international trips. When the president turned down an opportunity to embark on a
tour abroad, the National Concord (11/12/83) wrote an editorial, saying inter alia,

...For a country whose president seemed to have

accorded greater priority to executive nomadism
than to the rest of his duties over the past four years,
it is heartening that once, the president decided to
forfeit an opportunity to travel...Foremost of these
(reasons why he should stay at home) is that the
country for quite some time now has been in the
tortured grip of multiple complicated problems
whose solution calls for no less than total and
concentrated attention from the chief
executive. ..Shagari’s challenge in the final
analysis is not to set a record as the world’s most
widely-travelled leader but to preside over the
affairs of this country for the welfare of its
people...

A news story in the Guardian (8/12/83) did further harm on the president’s image,
casting him as unworthy of even a handshake. The story whose headline was,Student
Leader Impeached For Shaking Shagari’s Hand, narrated how the president of the
students union at the University of Lagos got close to losing his office for shaking
hands with President Shehu Shagari and congratulating him on ‘his disputed election
triumph’. The students leader who was said to have appeared before the students
parliament, was temporarily saved by the Speaker’s ruling that a motion for his
impeachment be deferred.

A feeling of more disenchantment with the president’s ineptitude was depicted in a

news item (Guardian, 23/12/83) with the headline, Braithwaite Calls for Shagari’s
Resignation. The story was about the leader of the National Advance Party (NAP),
Mr. Tunji Braithwaite’s call for the president’s resignation because , as he claimed,
“the Nigerian ship of state had been run aground because of poor captainship”.

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6.4.3 Irresponsible and Incompetent Governors and Ministers

If the president was represented as weak and incompetent, governors and ministers in
the administration did not fare better. Irked by what it saw as the lack of direction in
the governance of the states, a National Concord editorial (8/12/83) titled, A Bad
Example, said in part,

...Having now taken control of the various states,

the modalities of implementation ought now to be
the one and exclusive concern occupying the
attention of our various state governments.
Unfortunately, this is not so. In too many states,
there is still an absence of understanding of the
whole purpose of government, its conduct and its
method...A number of state governments, lacking
an active, public-spirited policy or clearly
defined methods, are using up their time tearing
down structures and institutions built by previous
governments...

Examples of governors who were depicted as having swapped devotion to duty with
intemperate conduct and display of brute force abound.

Olunloyo Shuts Oyo State TV was the headline of a story which reported that the
first official duty of the newly swom-in governor was the unilateral and unannounced
closure of the state television and disbanding of its staff in a witch-hunting exercise.8

Yet another news story with the headline, Olunloyo Threatens More Fireworks
(National Concord. 8/10/83) further represented the same governor as preoccupied
with the show of raw power. Its lead said,

...Oyo State Governor, Dr. Omololu Olunloyo,

whose first official action was the closure of the
state television station, on Thursday threatened
more fireworks, and hinted that Sketch
(newspaper), Radio O-Y-O and Odua Group of
Companies are the next targets...The governor said:
“The land on which they stand is ours. I can ask
them to get out.”

8 T he G o v ern o r w a s not happy w ith the s t a tio n ’s c o ld n e s s to h im d u rin g the cam p a ig n s.

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There was another story on this governor which said in its headline: Olunloyo
Manhandles Newspaper Reporter. (The Guardian. 2/12/83) The story began thus,
...Mr. Victor Olunloyo, governor of Oyo State,
descended from the majesty of his office on
Wednesday and engaged a newspaper reporter in
a near fisticuffs. In the process, governor Olunloyo
pounced on Mr. Olabisi Abayomi, the Oyo State
editor of Punch, tore his note book, threw the
shreds at his face and rained abuses on him...

Another state governor was also reported to have physically attacked two journalists.
The story captioned, Onoh Manhandles Journalists (Concord. 15/11/83), went that,

...Two journalists based in Enugu, Anambra State,

were last Friday manhandled by the State
Governor, Chief Christian Onoh. It all happened at
the old government lodge, Enugu, where Governor
Onoh was having a ‘peace meeting’ with Governor
Sam Mbakwe of Imo State over the on-going crisis
at the NIGERCEM Nkalagu...Chief Onoh quickly
grabbed the camera of a Daily Star photographer
and warned sternly that ‘if I see this (picture taken
by the photographer at the meeting) in your paper,
I will deal with you ruthlessly. Do you have to
snap everything or are you not tired of taking
pictures?’...A mild drama took place shortly after. A
reporter with the Radio Nigeria, Enugu asked,
‘Your Excellency, can I ask you a question?’ to
which Onoh replied, ‘You again? I said get away’,
and then in annoyance registered his palm on the
reporter’s cheek...

The governor of Kano State was another officer depicted to be power-drunk as

exemplified in two cases. Zuwo Gets Tough in Kano was the caption of a cartoon
(National Concord. 14/10/83) in which the newly elected governor frothing with
vengeance, wields a killer sledgehammer with which he knocks the state-owned
Triumph newspaper into a pulp and is ready to deal with the ‘nexthf victim, most
likely, traditional rulers in the state. In the second case, a report (The Guardian.

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20/12/83) captioned, Rimi Vows to Resist Govt’s Take-over of House narrates the
on-going tussle between the incumbent and ex-governors of the State, Bakin Zuwo
and Abubakar Rimi, respectively, who happened to be political opponents. According
to the story, the incumbent governor had vowed, during his campaign, that as soon as
he became governor, he would confiscate a house built by Rimi, claiming that it was
built with public money...

In Kaduna State, the new governor, Mr Lawal Kaita, was reported to have spent time
denouncing his predecessor. A news story titled, Kaita Vows to Shake
Kaduna...Says Abba Rimi was a Disaster, (The Guardian. 14/10/83) quoted the
governor as saying of his predecessor, “Tonnes of verbiage from the administration,
and tonnes of garbage in the streets were the outstanding achievements of former
governor Abba Rimi...”

Apparently worried by the wide-spread abuse of power and irresponsible conduct by

high-ranking government figures, an article carried in the National Concord (23/10/83)
captioned, Politics of Power warned that,

...Those who seek power ought to show some

understanding of power, its acquisition and use.
Power has its politics and dynamics, and they are
different from the politics of partisanship and witch-
hunting...Dikko9 is only the worst example in how
power is abused. Other examples litter the place,
and Sunday Adewusi is in keen competition in this
abysmal misunderstanding of politics of power...

9 D ik k o w as the transport m in iste r w h ile A d e w u si w a s th e In sp ector-G en eral o f P o lic e in the Shagari

go v ern m en t. B oth m en w er e rep u ted to b e m o re p o w e r fu l than the president.

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When it was not the depiction of abuse of power, it was that of display of
irresponsibility, incompetence and dereliction of duty. A Guardian Story (5/10/83)
titled, Teachers Stay Away From Aku’s Swearing-in, narrated how ‘starving’
teachers expressed their anger at the governor over accumulating salary arrears. As
the story put it,

...Primary school teachers in Benue State joined

Governor Aper Aku’s political opponents to boycott
his swearing-in ceremony in Makurdi on
Independence day. A spokesman of the teachers
asked: How can we go to salute him when he has
not paid us the arrears of our salaries for
upward of three months now?...Look around and
look at the faces of those present. They are not
happy. Any way, how do you expect me to go and
start marching? I can faint because I have not eaten.
When Mr Aper Aku pays us and we are able to
feed well, then we can march the whole day if
that will please him...
Perhaps, the ministries and allied government units had the greatest depiction of
irresponsibility and dereliction of duty. The Communications ministry, for example,
once came under scathing criticism for ‘gross irresponsibility’ in a National Concord
editorial (4/10/83) which wrote,

...WAEC’s candidates had paid 9 million Naira in

postal orders. It cannot lay hands on that money for
its administrative and other expenses. Without it,
exams cannot hold...The P&T was initially reticent.
Then Communications minister, Audu Obgeh, was
summoned to the National Assembly, and he talked.
The money, he admitted, was received. It had stayed
more than four months with the department and the
P&T decided to dip its hands into it to pay salaries
and other expenses. The P&T would pay back in
instalments...In a private organisation, the minister
and other persons involved in this case of conversion
should now be answering queries from the
police...The whole story is an unfortunate,
culpable breach of contract and a case of bad
faith. The minister cannot absolve himself from
the case. He did authorise the utilisation of the
postal order money for salaries. If this is not gross
irresponsibility, we do not know what else is...

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The minister of agriculture as well as the special adviser to the president on agriculture
were not spared when they allegedly misrepresented the reality about the food situation
in the country in a face-saving ploy.

In an editorial, Adamu Ciroma’s Food Basket, the Guardian (5/11/83) maintained

that,

...Nigerians could only have been bemused by Mr

Adamu Ciroma’s (agriculture minister) expressed
conviction last Tuesday that our markets are
brimming with food supplies. Answering
questions from the Senate Committee screening
ministerial nominees, he said that there is an excess
surplus of yam, guinea com and millet as a result of
the success of the federal government Green
Revolution programme, to which N1.5 billion has
been committed since 1979...If yam, guinea corn
and millet are so plentiful, why are they still so
costly? Or don’t the basic laws of economics
operate in our own society? Do we have to have
food riots for those in authority to appreciate the
magnitude of the food problem confronting the
average family?...

Reacting to a similar misrepresentation of reality by the presidential adviser on

agriculture, The National Concord (20/11/83) declared: Aribisala Didn’t Speak the
Truth. In an editorial it said,

...By asserting that food prices are ‘systematically

falling’, he (Mr Theophilus Aribisala) cast grave
doubts on whether Ribadu Road (the seat of
government) is actually in touch with what
transpires in Oyingbo, Onitsha or Maiduguri
markets...And the tmth is that food is simply not
there to be bought cheaply. The federal
government appears to be grossly misinformed
on this matter. With Aribisala’s statement, it seems
that the misinformation is going to be
perpetual...Mr Aribisala said we produce 40% of
our rice and 80% of our maize. Great! But if
someone is not lying with statistics, it is curious that
his newscast appeared on the same day that
Nigerians were made to know that we import an

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average of 10 million Naira worth of rice monthly

from Thailand alone...

Still on agriculture, the Concord (20/12/83) devoted an editorial to what it termed The
Agric Loan Gimmick, asserting that loans are mismanaged and doled out as political
largesse to supporters of the ruling party, at the expense of the subsistence farmers for
whom the loans are really meant. It stated,

...It is on record that this country (in 1980) received

500 million dollars from the World Bank as loan for
agriculture...The truth of the matter is that only
an infinitesimal part of what goes for
agricultural loans get into farming...the loan
applicant must first and foremost possess the
relevant political credentials and he is best if he
could get a top party functionary to endorse his
application. The agricultural loan scheme has
been, perhaps, one of the most abused of all such
schemes- where young women can easily escape
with N 100,000 loans whereas the true farmer faces
the ordeal of being grilled to prove where his farms
are, to provide certificates of occupancy...

A Senseless Air Disaster was the title of a Guardian editorial (1/12/83) which indicted
the aviation ministry for dereliction of duty. A week before the eventual crash of a
Nigeria Airways plane in which 53 lives were lost, according to the piece, “a formal
complaint was lodged in writing by a captain who (on an earlier flight) noticed that this
particular plane was faulty”. The captain was quoted to have said among other things,
“The maintenance of F28 has deteriorated so much within the last few weeks that if
something is not done we may have another problem. I do hope this incident is not
overlooked because I won’t have been alive with 35 other souls on board to tell the
story. I am sure if the Airline wants to phase out the F28s, it is definitely not by
crashing them”. The Guardian then wonders why nobody heeded the captain’s
warning, and why the plane was rather put back in service barely one week after.

The ministry of justice also got a share in the depiction of dereliction. An example is
the Concord editorial whose caption demanded that Justice Obi-Okoye Must
Resign. This was because,

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...John Kadiya, NPN governorship candidate for

Plateau State felt he did not receive justice in the
hands of FEDECO. He took his case trustingly to
the Plateau High Court of Justice where Justice Obi-
Okoye was presiding. Justice Obi-Okoye dribbled
him all round in a manner that offended every
basic tenet of justice, and in the end, guillotined
the case...The Supreme court, however, refused to
shirk its responsibilities. Not only did the justices
order a retrial...they accused him also of making
‘unwise’ statements that were not expected of a
judge...Justice Obi-Okoye’s response to all this
was even worse. Rather than opiate or show
remorse, he threatened to ‘use my judicial might
to deal with anybody who carried unnecessary
propaganda against me’...His intolerable arrogance
where there should be humility, his brazenness
where a sense of shame was needed divests him of
all moral authority to continue in office...

Other cases of impropriety in the judiciary were collectively reflected in a Concord

editorial (3/10/83) titled Unchaining justice, and a Guardian news story(l0/10/83)
headlined, NPN chief says judiciary is on trial.

Other government ministries or departments that featured prominently in the depiction

of derelict or incompetent institutions include, the Mines and Power ministry e.g., No
End to Power Failure (Concord editorial, 7/11/83), N8 m Spent on N2m Coal
(Concord news, 19/12/83), and the Federal Electoral Commission (FEDECO),e.g.
Prosecuting FEDECO Officials, (Guardian editorial, 4/10/83), A Case for ‘Election
Courts’ (Guardian article, 7/10/83); Wanted; Thugs and Riggers (Guardian article,
10/10/83).

6.4.4 Self-seeking Politicians and Political Parties in Disarray

The recurring image of politicians in the publications was that of individuals who were
out to exploit political power for personal or sectional benefits only.

The Guardian (10/11/83) carried an article titled, The Sheer Audacity of the
Nigerian Politician. It said among other things,

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...Soon after their swearing-in ceremonies, a long

drawn battle for salaries ‘commensurate to their
status’ began, with the legislators at the fore front.
They ‘legislated’ huge salaries and allowances for
themselves and forced their less greedy colleagues to
accept same. Next, they set out to systematically
empty the various treasuries through inflated
contracts, usually awarded to their own or friends’
or relatives’ companies, unnecessary overseas
tours, and fraudulent mileage and other claims.
Many of them who could hardly afford a Volkswagen
car in 1979 acquired Mercedes Benz cars, private
jets, mansions in major towns and fat accounts and
estates in foreign countries. These illegal
acquisitions were sumptuously displayed to their
fellow countrymen, many of whom could hardly
afford a square meal a day...

Corroborating this point of view, a National Concord editorial (16/12/83) captioned,

Politicians and Public Property, wrote:

...This is not to say that the Nigerian public is

unaware of the many cases in which public officials
have converted public property to their
individual use especially in those states where
government changed hands...The thievery of some
defeated members of the National Assembly at their
1004 Flats residence has gone down in the annals as
one of the most shameful acts committed by
elected members ever...

Furthermore, a news item in the Guardian (12/10/83) whose headline was - Pilfering
Charge Against First Term National Legislators - reported that the Peoples
Redemption Party had accused out-going members of the National Assembly of brazen
corruption and shameless profligacy. The spokesperson of the party was quoted as
asserting that,

...The 1979-83 National Legislature was a national

shame; it was a shamelessly greedy congregation
solely interested in advancing the material
interests of its members...Its reckless display of
the lack of self-discipline in truancy, careless
attention to national issues and unruly behaviour

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lowered the respect of this institution in the eyes of

the public...To crown their history of indiscipline
and self aggrandisement, several members reduced
their flats to pittery, and as a parting shot, stole
many household items...

There were specific references to some conduct among politicians in elective offices
which added to their portrayal as more self-seeking than public-spirited. Law Makers
Scramble for Commerce Committee was the headline of a story (National Concord.
6/12/83) which went as follows,

...One hundred and eighty members of the House of

Representatives applied to serve in the Commerce
and Industries Committee which has vacancy for
only 27 members. Similarly, 110 of them asked to
serve in the Defence Committee of the House which
also requires only 27 members. Reason: Members
saw these committees as providing opportunities
for them to have direct access to position of
influence and affluence. The committees are also
described as ‘busy ones’ of the house...The failure
of the members to get the committee of their
choice led to their revolt against the Speaker.
The House has 450 members and 34 committees...
A story on a similar behaviour by politicians in one State (Concord. 3/10/83) had its
headline as: Oyo NPN Men Lobby for Top Posts. The story stated that,

...Serious lobbying is going on in the Oyo State

NPN, as party members ‘scramble’ for top public
appointments at federal and state levels in the
State...The word was out in usually reliable party
circles in the State that the speakership was being
‘hung out for sale to the highest bidder in the
state’. National Concord leamt that N 125,000 was
demanded from one of the keen aspirants to the
post...

In a continuation of the portrayal, an editorial (Concord, 16/10/83) titled Senators

and the Grab for Shadow of Power condemned senators who, well after a season of
‘non performance and ignoble conducts’, passed a resolution to be called senators for
life. It wrote,

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...The first senators of the Second Republic began

their tenure rather dreadfully and ended it
shamelessly. By passing the resolution on the
perpetuity of the title of senator on an individual
who once serves in the senate, they crowned an
inglorious tenure with self-ridicule...The nation
was forced to bear all manners of disgraceful
conduct in the senate these last four years, such that
Nigerians resigned themselves to all the
misdemeanours and shortcomings of a senate
which exchanged physical blows in its chamber,
decreed car loans for themselves at a time loans
were banned, showed no erudition in argument,
displayed no initiative in anything, and went
through scandals...

Still on the Senate, the Guardian (9/11/83) was outraged by the legislators’
preparations for the creation of new states, a plan it said was out of tune with the harsh
economic realities of the nation, but which politicians alone could gain from.

In an editorial titled, When Will This Madness Ever Stop?, the paper was of the
strong opinion that,

...Going by the disappointed expectations of the

people in several existing states, it should be clear
that state creation per se is not necessarily a
blessing. Avenues were only created for the
wealth of a few without the well-being for the
mass of the people. The country can no longer
afford a tiny elite’s appetite for self­
gratification...

Painting a further picture of the Nigerian politician as one who is more interested in the
glamour of office than service to the nation was the dramatic reference to a remark
attributed to the Senate President. According to the editorial (Guardian. 3/10/83), the
president of the senate in the first term of the Second Republic was keen on being re­
elected, and told another senator who was interested in the position that “It is unethical

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for a subordinate to challenge his boss”, adding that “it is not practicable for a
presiding officer to become a floor member again.”

Perhaps the strongest depiction of self-centredness among political office holders was
the news story (Guardian, 7/10/83) credited to an out-going senate member. The story
captioned, Mahmud Waziri Deplores Senate Performance, had it that,

... Out-going Senator Mahmud Waziri yesterday

criticised senators for a lack-lustre performance
characterised by self-interest, personal comfort as
not justifiable of the nation’s huge expense on
them. “Hardly could anyone find even a
charitable comment about us. Rather, it is either
the case of members allegedly fiddling with the
attendance register or junketing to Europe to write
committee reports, or of our embassies...bailing
members from one scandal or another,” he said...

The other federal legislative chamber, the Federal House of Representatives, also had a
share of the‘lack-lustre’ depiction. Beginning with the House’s Speaker, there was a
report inthe Guardian (13/12/83) titled, Junaid May Lead Impeachment Move
Against Chaha. The news was that a disenchanted member of the House (Junaid
Mohammed) had vowed to spearhead the move to sack the Speaker (Benjamin Chaha)
of whom Junaid said,

...He allows himself to be teleguided from outside

the house by the party machinery...I believe that he
has not got the capacity, nor the basic integrity
to be the presiding officer. He is immature and
completely incompetent. Worse still, I think his
loyalty is not to the house nor is it to the
constitution but to the NPN machinery...He is a
national disgrace...

The House Speaker was yet to court more criticism when he declared on the floor of
the house that “women cannot chair committees in this house because it would be too
demanding for them, moreover, the men would not want to serve under them.” A

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cartoon (Guardian. 11/12/83) accordingly depicted him as a male chauvinist, out of

favour with female members of the house.

Members of the house were not presented as having done better than their speaker.
Describing proceedings at the inception of the house in October 1983, a news story
(Guardian. 13/10/83) narrated,

...Most of the new law-makers behave to type as

they move from one person to another, posing for a
shot at the sight of a photographer. In the midst of
the bustling and hustling, an NPP legislator-elect
from Imo State... registers himself as the first to
fall into a deep slumber in the House of
Representatives in the second term of the
presidential system. He fell into a deep sleep at
about 11.40 am, so deep that the talks and
laughter in the house did not affect him. A man
later stumbles over him and he startles up...About an
hour later, at 12.45, another NPP legislator-elect
takes his turn. He curls in his seat, fast asleep...

Depicting members of the house as people who were there to represent sectional
interests rather than the national cause they were elected for, both the Guardian and
the National Concord carried a report of a particular chaotic day in the house.
According to the Concord report (10/11/83) titled Uproar in House,

...The House of Representatives witnessed an

unprecedented uproar on Tuesday when all
legislators from the North opposed a motion calling
for the setting up of an ad hoc committee to look
into the problems of soil erosion, oil spillage and
other natural disasters in the Southern states...For
more than 20 minutes, hot arguments raged and
the atmosphere was charged, making the Speaker
helpless as divided members defied his order and
turned the chamber into a noisy marketplace in a
setting that conspicuously portrayed the north-south
dichotomy...

The ethnic dichotomous dimension of the story was amplified in the Guardian report
(10/11/83) which quoted a legislator from the north to have said,

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...I will like to dissociate myself from this motion.

The disasters listed by the legislators (from the
south) are man-made, and unlike the drought in the
north, they are not national disasters. They can be
avoided by the people concerned, and it’s up to
them to do that rather than seek the help of the
federal government...

The tumultuous conduct of affairs in the house seemed to have become a tradition as
suggested in a Guardian news item (3/12/83) headlined, Rowdy Session in House for
Third Time.

As for the political parties, the enduring image was that of a congregation in constant
turmoil and disarray. The following headlines are graphic examples: Crisis Looms in
Kwara UPN (Concord. 8/11/83), Sokoto UPN Splits...Two factions now emerge
(Concord. 14/11/83), Crisis Looms in Cross River...over political appointments
(Concord. 7/10/83), Crisis Erupts in Ogun NPN (Concord. 17/11/83), PRP Faces
Crisis (Concord. 11/11/83), NPN Suspends Saraki (Concord. 15/12/83), Fresh
Crisis Breaks Out in PRP (Guardian. 11/11/83).

6.4.5 An Administration Riddled With Corruption

The portrayal of the Shagari administration as highly corrupt was quite heavy. There
was a heavy presence of items which dwelt on or alluded to corruption in one arm of
government or the other, indicting the president for not doing much to halt the mess.
For instance, The Bane of Our Economy was the title of an editorial (National
Concord. 5/11/83) which traced Nigeria’s economic woes to corruption among other
factors. As the editorial put it,

...The inflation of contract costs for the nebulous

aim of gratifying party faithfuls has been one of
the ways in which government has over the years
authored an unsavoury economic situation...Over
the years, public officers have brazenly made a
high art of corruption. There has been...an
erosion of the notion of strict accountability.
Reports of fraud, misappropriation of funds and

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the manipulation of official positions for private

gains have since independence inundated our
newspapers. Timidity and half-heartedness have
unfortunately marked most attempts to unravel the
truth of these reports...

In agreement with the above contention was a news item (Concord, 22/11/83) titled,
Corruption is Cause of Our Woes. The news item quoted a legislator as accepting
that “Corruption in high and low places is the root cause of Nigeria’s economic
woes...”
An illustration of that assertion can be found in a
news story (Concord, 10/12/83) with the headline,
Former NNSC Manager Owns 31 Houses in UK.
According to the story,...A former London manager
of the Nigeria National Supply Company (NNSC)
allegedly swindled the company of £4 million and
bought 31 houses in the British capital. ...The
man involved was initially a staff of the Nigerian
High Commission in London where he was sacked
for withdrawing £1000 fraudulently in the name
of the High Commissioner...The man was employed
by the NNSC as London Manager two weeks later...

Dikko Looted N4 billion - Official, was the headline of yet another corruption report
in the Punch . “It is now no longer controversial that Umaru Dikko, Shagari’s right
hand man had the lion’s share of the loot of the corruption-ridden Second
Republic. According to an official document circulated in Lagos at the weekend, the
former transport minister allegedly milked a staggering N4 billion from the nation’s
purse...”, the story stated.

A government institution that attracted the largest depiction of corruption was the
Federal Electoral Commission (FEDECO). Specifying most vividly the impropriety of
officials in this Commission, a Guardian article (7/10/83) lamented,

...To crown the perfidy, FEDECO officials allowed

themselves to be bought by unscrupulous
politicians in order to subvert the people’s
expressed will. Naira notes were exchanged to
effect falsification of results in favour of
unpopular candidates, thus enabling the defeat of

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victorious candidates. The avalanche of election

petitions that greeted FEDECO’s verdict is a
testimony of the lack of faith in the Commission
by politicians and ordinary citizens alike...

It is worth noting that a litany of items dwelling on corruption in the Shagari

administration appeared after the overthrow of that government as reports of
convictions of ex-govemment officials in special tribunals for corrupt practices flooded
newspapers. However, since the scope of this analysis is limited to three months
before the fall of a selected administration, we had to remain with only the reports that
were carried in the chosen publications during the incumbency of Shehu Shagari. They
are summarily exemplified in the following captions: N28,000 Fraud at NET -
(Concord news, 13/11/83), Bribes Galore at CBN on Foreign Exchange -
(Concord news, 20/11/83), Another N13 million Fraud at Housing Ministry -
(Concord news, 25/10/83).

The rot was so deep that a news item (Concord, 9/11/83) titled, A Nation-wide Probe
is Ripe Now, reported thus,

...A nation-wide probe among government

officers is necessary to revamp the ailing economy
and promote ethical re-orientation, chairman of the
unregistered Nigeria Socialist Party, Mr Samuel
Oshisanya, has said...He said that such officers
include ministers, some members of the National
Assembly, some judges, permanent secretaries,
chairmen of statutory corporations and many other
public officers...He said that the probe would enable
the country to recover part of the countless
millions of naira that had been siphoned away...

Even the president himself was quoted as lamenting over ‘mounting’ corruption among
his aides. A news item (Concord, 23/10/83) with the headline, Shagari Decries
Corruption in Government, reported that,

...President Shehu Shagari has expressed revulsion

at the degree of corruption that is going on in
public life. In tones of anger and determination that

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were unusual of him, the president declared: “The

mounting rubbish of corruption just has to be
cleared and our society sanitised and made more
humane.” The statement was made at the swearing-
in of his seven special advisers, the secretary to the
government, the head of service and four of his
personal aides at the State house, Ribadu Road...

Apparently not satisfied with the president whom it sees as conniving at and merely
denouncing corruption in government, the Guardian (29/12/93) wrote an editorial
tided, Words Are Not Enough, reminding the president that “it is not enough to make
speeches, or to recognise what is wrong, or even what to do about the ills of society.
More important is putting muscle and will behind effecting decisions...”

6.4.6 A Failed Administration

The various political parties that vied for power in Nigeria’s second republic inundated
the electorate with a variety of promises all of which bothered on welfare. In
particular, The National Party of Nigeria which was declared the winner of the
elections in 1979 and 1983 promised to provide shelter, food, health care, freeand
qualitative education, jobs and basic amenities for all. Going by the news and
comments on that government in the publications analysed, the lucid impression was
that the government was a failure, at least, as far as those promises were concerned.

By far, the most frequent portrayal of the government as a failure derived from its
inability to manage the economy. The National Concord (22/11/83) carried a report
captioned, NANS Flays Shagari’s Government - Says it’s a Disappointment. The
story opened with the lead: “President Shehu Shagari’s administration has disappointed
the citizens of this country following its failure to find lasting solutions to the
increasing economic problems of the nation, the National Association Of Nigerian
Students (NANS) has said...”

Apparently supporting the students’ view, an article (Concord, 23/12/83) insisted that,

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...The Nigerian economy is a classic case of an awful

headache which has become a maddening migraine
to relieve even with unprescribed
pills...Unfortunately, the present administration has
no tenable defence for the present economic
disaster...The crux of Nigeria’s problem is grossly
inefficient resource management...

An insight into the tone of disappointment in other items regarding government

mismanagement of the economy can be gleaned from these captions: The Economy is
in Chains - (Concord article, 28/12/83), Economic Strangulation - (Guardian article,
9/12/83), Harsh Days Are Here - (Concord article, 29/12/83), Revive the Nation’s
Economy - Shagari Told - (Concord news, 14/10/83), We Never Had it So Bad -
(Concord article, 30/12/83).

The publications went ahead to demonstrate how bad the situation was by carrying a
flood of items on the effects of economic mismanagement on individuals and
organisations. The most graphic of such effects was in a cartoon (Concord, 24/10/83)
captioned, If Only God Will Send Down Noah. In the cartoon, unemployment nails
a weather-beaten commoner to a wall while a raging tide of inflation, advancing close
to his neck, threatens to drown him, forcing him to pray for ‘Noah’s ark’. The
following headlines further express the plight of citizens under the depressed economy:
Shoe Workers Lose Jobs in Thousands - (Concord news, 9/10/83), Workers Still
Face Cruel Times - (Concord news, 20/10/83), Austerity: 1,000 Managers
Retrenched - (Concord news, 20/12/83), Fishing Firm May Fold Up - (Concord
news, 9/12/83), Steel Mill’s Production Drops - (Concord news, 19/11/83),
Volkswagen is Shut Down Again...Lack of foreign exchange - (Guardian news,
5/10/83), More Factories Close Down - (Concord news, 8/11/83).

The measures taken by the Shagari administration to cushion the effects of the
deteriorating economy attracted critical news and comments. One such measure was
the administration’s frantic resort to the IMF and World Bank for loans. The Concord

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(19/10/83) addressed this matter in an editorial captioned, Making a Virtue of

Borrowing. It wrote,

...The reward for living beyond one’s means is

sorrow, but when the prodigal complicates
profligacy with debts, sorrow turns into
misery...That the country’s total revenue has
dwindled from a total revenue of about N22
billion in 1980 to N9 billion in 1983 is bad
enough. But that the country should spend as
much as 40% of its national income in servicing
debts (not repaying them) is as disturbing as it is
dangerous...the exact figure of our debts has been
subject to disputations...the absence of a definite
figure reflects the financial irresponsibility of both
the administration and the Central Bank...The
federal government must take it easy with more
loans before it inflicts greater damage on an already
battered economy...

The danger in frantic borrowing was most dramatically but pointedly depicted in a
cartoon (Guardian. 5/10/83). In a desperate bid for revival, the president wheels the
sick economy into the ‘IMF ward’ where only one ‘injection of loans’ knocks it out,
and it ends up in the mortuary.

Also expressing doubts over the president’s commitment to economic recovery, a

news item, Shagari Urged to Sell N50m Jet (Concord. 20/10/83), quoted an
opposition party as wondering why the president bought a N50 million presidential jet
at such austere times, urging him to sell it. Another item, (Concord editorial,
26/11/83) titled, Phoney Executive Wage Cuts described the ruling party’s proposal
to contribute to economic recovery by cutting about 15% from salaries of its members
in the cabinet or parliament as ‘ridiculous’. It said,

...In a move designed to save the government some

N25 million yearly, the NPN recently recommended
a wage cut from 7.5 to 15% for its members in
executive and legislative arms of government...But
this superficial approach to the fundamental

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issue of prudent management by the party cannot

be supported...With the present economic recession,
we had expected the NPN to begin the drive for
governmental prudence by whittling down the jumbo
size of the president’s cabinet from the unwieldy 35
ministers and seven advisers to a more realistic
total of 19 or thereabouts...Chopping off a few
naira from the salaries of executive appointees and
legislators only begs the question. The amount saved
compared to the cost of maintaining individual
appointees is insignificant to put it mildly...

A few weeks before the overthrow of the Shagari administration, the economy was
presented as still in decline. The most resounding indication of this situation was
perhaps the report (Guardian. 17/12/83) titled, Awo Says the Future is Bleak. In the
story, Chief Awolowo, the leader of the Unity Party of Nigeria (UPN) declared that
Nigeria was insolvent, burdened by a staggering external debt of between N16 billion
and N20 billion which grew steadily since the inception of the Shagari administration.
He accused the federal government of squandering N15 billion out of the projected
N40 billion for the 4th national development plan within 15 months. He also accused
the government of “insincerity over the nation’s exact economic and financial
situation, unparalleled disposition for harmful foreign loans and planlessness,
financial indiscipline, and inept revenue collection...”

Another promise which the government was said to have failed to deliver was housing.
The Guardian (3/12/83) bluntly labelled it, Federal Housing Failure in an editorial. It
wrote,

...For four years and two elections, the NPN held

out a rosy picture of its housing and agricultural
ambitions...In 1979, the programme swore to build
slightly less than 40,000 housing units nation-wide
each year - 2,000 per State...Four years after the
promise was first hawked, however, and a few
months after it was redisplayed in the electoral
market place...the federal government has washed its
hands off the entire idea...In its execution, the
housing project in the past four years has been a
prime scandal unequalled in magnitude of failure

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by any other programme...Where undertaken at

all, most of the structures are shoddily built little
cement boxes, out in the bush, next to the highways
where passing motorists may see and presumably
admire them. Very often, they are abandoned half­
way, and ‘donated’ to rogues, madmen, reptiles and
plants...

Referring to the same scheme, the National Concord said in an editorial,

...The recent gigantic housing fiasco in this country
was the one embarked upon by the Shagari
administration under the food and shelter
programme...In spite of the billions of naira that
was gulped down the programme, the scheme
failed so woefully that many Nigerians are still
wondering what exactly happened to the promised
houses...

The portrayal of failure continued in the following items: Education System May
Collapse - (Concord news, 8/12/83), Experts Say Starvation is Much in Sight -
(Guardian news, 1/12/83), Worse Federal Budget Underway for 1984 - (Guardian
news, 10/12/83), The Misfortunes of Nigeria’s Forgotten Rural Majority -
(Guardian article, 9/10/83), Nigeria’s Foreign Policy: Still Wobbling - (Guardian
article, 1/10/83), Drug Shortage Hits LUTH - (Concord news, 7/11/83), and Big For
Nothing10 - (Guardian editorial, 5/11/83).

Among several letters in which citizens aired their views on national issues, the one
that most portrayed a feeling of discontentment and betrayal was found in the
Guardian (9/11/83). It was titled, God Has Not Abandoned Nigeria. The writer
lamented,
...Thousands have been thrown out of jobs and
there is no hope of securing another. Those who
are yet to be fired are not sure of the next pay.
Many cannot afford three square meals daily. In
fact, it has now been confirmed that some examine
refuse in search of food. These unprecedented

10 R eferrin g to N ig e r ia ’s tim id ity in n o t c o n d e m n in g the in v a sio n o f G ren ad a by A m erica .

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incidents happen to Nigerians as a result of some

people’s treachery, and we continue to feel uneasy
as the cost of living becomes more unbearable
everyday. The million naira question being put to
the so-called leaders of this country is: when shah
we breathe a sigh of relief?...Prayers have always
been said in mosques and churches, yet the sickness
of this country is yet to be cured, hence some
people are forced to believe that God has
abandoned Nigeria! I want to assure such people
that the Almighty Allah is still existing and will
continue to exist when we are no more, and by His
grace, those who forced themselves on us, making
life difficult for us, those who caused the killing of
the innocent citizens of this country in order to
achieve their political ambition will surely not go
unpunished.

6.5 POSITIVE DEPICTION.

There were some isolated reports or comments on different government programmes

and actions. As isolated as they were in each case, it was difficult to synthesise them
into units of portrayals as in the case of negative depiction. They are, therefore,
presented singly as they appeared.

The National Concord (1/11/83) published an article titled, Will Shagari’s 2nd Term
be Result-Oriented? The article argued,

...Those pessimists who never believe that anything

good can ever come out of Alhaji Shehu Shagari will
now be having a second thought in view of some
personalities he has appointed as his special
advisers...There is no doubt that the president, as
an individual, has continued to show a
remarkably high standard of probity in the last
four years...

Another item, (Guardian news, 13/12/83) came out with the headline, Shagari’s New
Stand on Namibia Lauded, and the gist of the story was that “PRP Deputy publicity

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secretary, Una Akpan, has come out in support of President Shagari’s recent stand
on the issue of Namibia’s independence.”

On the provision of amenities, a Guardian report (22/12/83) titled, Ogun Promises

More Water stated that “The Onabanjo administration has completed plans to
ensure a flow of water supply to all parts of Ogun State, according to Secretary to
the government, Ademola Ogunleye...”

The Guardian (23/12/83) went ahead to report that “Manufacturers have been
granted import licences worth N42.5 million as the Presidential Committee set up
by President Shehu Shagari swings into action...”

THE BUHARI REGIME (JANUARY 1984 - AUGUST 1985)

6.6 POSITIVE DEPICTION

6.6.1 A Regime Out to Fight Corruption

The Buhari administration forced its way to power against the background of
persisting national problems, especially the culture of corruption in government which
it vowed to wipe out. Understandably, the press, which had ceaselessly condemned
the rising tide of corruption prior to the intervention, devoted considerable attention to
monitoring how the new ‘corrective’ administration was faring in the war against
corruption. This accounted for the high frequency of items coded as anti-corruption,
and which, therefore, depicted the Buhari regime as one which was committed to
fighting corruption. Examples of this depiction include the following: Contract Hiked
by N168m - (Punch news, 3/6/85), N.9m Scandal Exposed - (Concord news,
26/6/85), Umaru Dikko Has Case to Answer - (Guardian news, 20/6/85), N2b
Foreign Exchange Fraud Explodes- (Concord news, 15/7/85), Panel Orders
Refund - (Concord news, 6/8/85), NNPC ex-Manager in for 23 Years - (Concord
news, 22/8/85), Former Brewery Chairman Convicted - (Concord news, 22/8/85),

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Ministries Won’t Be Spared in Fresh Purge, Says Idiagbon - (Guardian news,

11/6/85), Alii Jailed Again - (Concord news, 12/6/85).

Other items containing positive depiction were found in isolated cases, and, therefore
could not form any significant units of portrayal. The National Concord (16/7/85), for
instance, wrote an editorial captioned, A New Strategy for Development, in which it
commended the collaboration between government and a community in the provision
of public infrastructure. ‘The dismal times into which our economy has fallen
necessitates that we devise new methods of financing development. Joint ventures
between government and communities are certainly a new strategy that deserves
serious consideration”, it prescribed. In its own editorial titled, Triumph of Reason
(June, 1985), the Guardian lauded a government position on education. It was of the
opinion that ‘The Oyo State Governor’s decision to abolish the payment of fees in
primary schools in the State is a double victory for the people and the
government...We are glad at Governor Popoola’s good sense and humility. His
action is a patriotic example for other governors to emulate...”

Another Concord editorial titled, Towards an Indigenous Technology, commended

government sentiments on evolving an indigenous technology, while a Punch editorial
(10/6/85) paid glittering tributes to a governor’s project to boost food production.
‘‘Examined against the disconsolate backdrop of a looming spectre of famine in the
third world, the attempt being made by the Rivers State Governor to boost
agriculture in the State is not only commendable, it is indeed heroic...”, the paper
maintained.

6.7 NEGATIVE DEPICTION

As in the case of the preceding administration, items about the military administration
which carried negative depiction were quite significant. They fell into two major
categories.

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6.7.1 A Repressive regime

The most visible of the entire depiction of the military administration under the
leadership of General Muhammadu Buhari was that of repression against the mass
media and other pressure groups, as well as the violation of personal liberties. The
stage for the autocratic style of government during this period was set by a Punch
news item (2/7/85) which quoted a government counsel as asserting that, “A law court
is not competent to question the authority of a military administration.” It was in a case
brought before an appeal court against government by an aggrieved citizen.

In an emotional piece titled, Obituary, the Guardian (22/7/85) reflected on the savage
killing of a destitute under the wheels of a bulldozer during the forceful demolition of
market stalls in a part of Lagos. Among other things, the writer said,

...Amidst the shredded wreckage lies a man-

wriggling in his own pool of blood. He wriggles,
stretches, twists and jerks, and clutches in agony, in
sorrow, but in vain. He lies limp, motionless,
finished. He is dead. He died like a wrung chicken,
the severed tail of a lizard...They said that the man -
nobody knew his name - was a madman, a lunatic
without a home...The execution was quite often an
exercise in power drunkenness and unnecessary
exuberance...Let it be said that a government that
cannot rehabilitate its lunatics is not worth...the
glittering and dashing medals with which our earless
men of power adom themselves...

Another item with its caption as Obituaries was a cartoon (Punch. 19/7/85) which
‘mourned’ the banning of prominent pressure groups in the country such as the Nigeria
Medical Association (NMA), the National Association of Students (NANS), the
Nigeria Union of Journalists (NUJ), the Nigeria Bar Association (NBA) and even the
Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC).

Apart from proscribing the associations listed above, the government promulgated
endless decrees to gag both the media and other outspoken organisations. For

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example, a Guardian editorial titled, A Ban Too Many, criticised a government order
banning university academics from granting audience to foreign journalists except with
the express approval of the Supreme Military Council. On its own part, the Concord
(27/6/85) wrote an editorial captioned, A Campaign of Intimidation. It attacked a
follow-up order from government which forbade institutions of higher learning from
using campus buildings for ‘anti-social activities’, stating that this new order was
aimed at silencing every potential source of independent thinking in the country.

A government programme through which personal rights were violated was the War
Against Indiscipline (WAI) as exemplified in a Concord editorial (4/7/85) titled,
Simply Ridiculous. Arguing that the programme was being abused, the editorial
stated,

...A case in point is the recent report that a would-

be couple were not allowed to wed at the Ikoyi
Marriage Registry because they could not sing
the national anthem...The ability to sing the
national anthem says more about one’s choral
abilities than his patriotic instincts. After all, those
who publicly and noisily proclaimed their
commitment to the public good- and indeed
swore oaths to advance the national cause-
during the Second Republic are, even now, being
shown to have been some of the worst scoundrels
this country has so far been cursed with...

This argument was supported by a Punch editorial (1/6/85) titled Power

Drunkenness? It flayed the reckless abuse of power by a governor, who in the guise
of enforcing WAI ordered that a commissioner and some other officers in a ministry
forfeit a month’s salary because a ceremony at which he was guest of honour did not
start on time.

Other captions which depicted the repressive character of the military regime include:
Unionist Says Decree 2 Will Silence the Poor (Guardian. 17/7/85), Six New
Decrees Promulgated (Guardian. June, 1985), Government Bans Further Debate

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on Political Future (Guardian. 25/7/85), Editors Urged to Keep Clear of Political

Reports (Guardian. 8/8/85), Anguish Over Detention of Freed Woman (Concord,
13/7/85), Scuttling Private Newspapers11 (Guardian. July, 1985), What is Political
Discourse? (Concord, 12/8/85), Five New Decrees Enacted (Punch. 23/8/85),
SMC Confirms Death Sentence for Drug Pusher (Punch. 23/8/85), Why Gag
Academics? (Concord. 14/6/85), 66 Executed Last Year- Amnesty (Concord.
7/6/85), I am Afraid12 (Punch. 23/7/85).

6.7.2 An Administration Overwhelmed By Economic Malaise

Announcing the coup that overthrew the Shagari government, the spokesperson of the
new regime promised, among other things, to ‘set the economy on the path to recovery
as soon as possible’. As depicted in the publications, the Buhari administration was
incapable of containing the economic adversity.

The Guardian reviewed the achievements of the administration after one and a half
years in office. In an editorial (2/7/85) titled, 18 Months of Buhari: The Economic
Score Card, it returned the verdict:

...That many are wondering today where the

nation’s money is going is proof enough that despite
the sacrifices demanded of all since 1982, there
does not seem to be a light at the end of the
tunnel. What is more, with the new levies and taxes
reportedly still being considered, it is obvious that
either the gains are not being utilised well
enough or somebody is beginning to enjoy the
tightening belts of the nation...

A National Concord cartoon depicted government in a confused and indecisive mood

as it pondered over the question of taking an IMF loan or not. An on-looker in the
cartoon says to the government officer: This matter is getting prolonged, let's take it
or forget it. Period!

11 In a bid to stifle p riv a te n e w sp a p e r s, g o v ern m en t en a c te d a d ecree b a n n in g all g o v ern m en t o ffic e s

from p la cin g a d verts in th e m .
12 T h e w riter w a s e x p r e s s in g fea r o v e r the d isa p p ea ra n ce o f jo u r n a lists.

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The ripples of the continued economic down-tum were depicted in some items. For
example, National Concord (4/6/85) carried a news story titled, Inflation: Nigerians
Helpless. According to the news lead, “Nigerians seem to have resigned themselves to
fate as prices of essential commodities continue to soar all over the country. The
inflationary trend is in spite of the federal military government’s efforts to improve the
conditions of the masses.” Almost a month later, the Concord reported the grim story
about worsening inflation in a news item captioned, Prices Climb Higher and
Higher. Two cartoons reinforced this reality. The one (Concord. 17/8/85) captioned,
Make Your Choice! indicated standards of living to have deteriorated so much that
life inside prisons promises a rosier picture than life outside. The ‘menu’ inside the
prison included ‘rest of mind’, ‘no inflation’, ‘free food’ while that outside prison
offered ‘hunger’, ‘starvation’, inflation’ and so on. And the baffled citizen in the
cartoon is asked to choose between the two options. The other cartoon (Punch),
depicts a helpless Nigerian commoner who, rattled by the hard times, ties all his
belongings in one small back pack and heads towards an even poorer neighbouring
country. The immigration officer at the border post asks him to “Come back when
things have cooled down”.

Another effect of the economic reality was the loss of jobs as exemplified by headlines
such as Retrenchment of Varsity Workers: NANS Plans Showdown (Guardian.
27/6/85), 90 Retrenched NRC* Staff Die in One Year? (Concord. 17/8/85), Axe
Hangs On 3,000 Jobs (Punch, 31/5/85).

6.8 Conclusion

The examination of the framing or characterisation of government in the independent

media was considered an essential exercise in the debate on the role of the press in the
social and political environments that precede military intervention. If, as some
observers contend, the press invite military intervention by the way they present
governments, it was only necessary to examine the nature of such presentations. After

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such an examination, it would be more logical to deduce if the presentations are

deliberate acts of stimulation of military intervention or the products of the dynamics
of news production.

Two administrations which were overthrown in a military coup were therefore studied
three months before their fall. These were a civilian government under Alhaji Shehu
Shagari toppled on December 31, 1983 and the military administration of Major-
General Muhammadu Buhari overthrown on August 27, 1985. Press contents relating
to these administrations in three purposively selected independent newspapers: the
Guardian, the National Concord and the Punch were content analysed.

The results reinforced traditional patterns of news coverage in terms of actors and
topics. Not only were government dignitaries the most frequent actors in the items,
but also the hierarchy of government officials was reflected in the predominance of
government leaders. The president as well as his office attracted the highest coverage,
followed by state governors, and then by ministers. In terms of topics, politics ranked
highest in coverage followed by the economy.

Overall, the items, especially news, editorials and articles, found in all three
publications, were overwhelmingly critical of government. However, of the two
administrations, Shagari’s was by far the more negatively depicted in all three papers.
As it was further demonstrated in the qualitative analysis, there was a swelter of
negative depictions of the Shagari government. The most resounding ones framed the
president himself as a weak and incompetent leader; his government as ridden with
corruption. Equally damaging was the depiction of the Shagari government as a huge
failure especially in the areas of economic management and the provision of basic
social services. Governors were portrayed as irresponsible and power-drunk; ministers
were depicted as incompetent and insensitive to people’s needs, politicians,
parliamentarians and key government officials during this period were depicted as

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corrupt, self-seeking and undisciplined while political parties cut the image of constant
disorder.

The Buhari government had a unanimous portrayal in the publications as an

administration that was out to fight corruption, and this was the only positive depiction
it had. The rest, which were negative, portrayed it as incompetent especially in
economic recovery, and more profoundly as a repressive regime.

Considering that the ills which have endemically plagued the political, social and
economic welfare of Nigeria have existed both in civilian and military administrations,
as shown in the literature on the prevaricating political experiments in Nigeria, the
predominance of negative characterisation on the civilian administration was attributed
to the differences in the nature of democratic and military governance. It was argued
that while laws and repression have not been able to totally cow the independent press
in Nigeria into total submission, they can curtail the fluency and boldness of press
criticism of government in a military dispensation. The Buhari government incidentally
happened to be one that went down in history as the most hostile and repressive to the
press. It came out with the most restrictive decrees aimed generally at the traditional
champions of human rights such as unions, academics and political parties and the
press in particular. Such decrees ousted the jurisdiction of the law courts to question
military decisions and actions, brought in military tribunals instead, and invested the
head of state and his second in command with limitless powers which included the
indefinite detention of persons, the closure of newspaper houses, the banning of
publications and the physical harassment of journalists. These measures were thought
to have seriously affected the usual torrent of critical opinion on government, and is
most likely to have accounted, therefore, for the less critical depictions of the Buhari
government.

There seemed to be an association between attribution and tone of story. In most

cases, news reports which are usually based on information and views of sources were

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not attributed to any sources. Since most of the reports were unsavoury, the lack of
attribution was seen to be a conscious attempt by journalists to protect their sources.
Conversely, in the few stories which were complimentary of government, the sources
were clearly identified.

In response to the core question on whether there were any contents that advocated
for military intervention in politics, none of such content was found. While this finding
may not suggest that journalists do not support coups; while it may not also absolve
the press of their alleged involvement in precipitating military intervention, it shows
that the press can all the same be sensitive about the phenomenon of military
intervention. Considering that journalists and the mass media are the key targets of
almost every military government in Nigeria, it would have been most surprising to
find contents inviting or endorsing military intervention.

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JOURNALISTS’ PERCEPTION OF MILITARY INTERVENTION

7.1 Introduction
Aimed at examining the predisposition of Nigerian journalists to military intervention
in national politics and government, this study first examined how two governments
forced out of office through military coups were represented in three Nigerian
newspapers prior to their fall. Usually, press contents are thought to be largely
influenced by ownership, editorial policy, organisational and professional routines, and
news sources (Sandman et. al, 1976; Gans, 1980; Edeani, 1971, 1988;
Sobowale,1985; Donohew et al.,1985; Okigbo,1993; Nwokeafor et al.,1993). Some
researchers (Hall et al, 1986; Paletz and Entman, 1981; Rainville and McCormick,
1977) have however advanced the argument that journalists’ personal attitudes, beliefs
and values influence their approach to news production. To explore as much as
possible the widening vista of theoretical constructs on the sociology of news
production, therefore, the need was felt to go beyond the social and professional
contexts of news production to seek the personal views of journalists on a matter that
circumscribed their lives like other citizens. It was considered too narrow a
perspective to rely on media contents alone as indices of journalists’ predisposition to
military intervention in political administration.

To complement the data generated from the content analysis, therefore, a sample of
200 Nigerian journalists working in the print media was surveyed, using a
questionnaire. The survey specifically aimed at:
1. Eliciting information on the dominant impression of Nigerian journalists about
military intervention.
2. Finding out if there were occasions when interventions, in the journalists’ view,
could be excused? If so, which particular ones, and for what reasons?
3. Investigating if there were occasions when journalists either wished or called for
military coups, using the mass media or other fora.

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4. Finding out if respondents’ disposition to military intervention has any association

with:
a) age, b)education, c) ethnic origin, d) work experience, e) position
A fifth but delayed aim was the examination of the relationship between the journalists’
responses on their perception of military intervention, and press contents on the same
subject.

The findings are presented in two parts. In the first section, the frequencies of
responses to the questionnaire items regarding biographic data, general impressions
and opinions are presented. For a more lucid appreciation of the journalists’
characteristics as well as the possible association between such characteristics and their
opinions on coups, the biographic data were cross-matched with certain responses, and
the ensuing results are reported in the second section.

7.2 RESPONDENTS’ BIOGRAPHICS.

7.2.1 Gender
Of the 200 journalists surveyed, 170 (85%) were men while 30 (15%) were women.
Considering that gender variables or issues were not the focus of the study, there was
no deliberate attempt to ensure a proportional representation of male and female
journalists in the sample size through stratified random sampling. However, if the NUJ
official record which puts the ratio of male to female Nigerian journalists as 10:1 (Dare
and Uyo, 1996) is anything to go by, it can be said that this sample fairly represents the
population of women journalists in the country.

In a general sense, the dominance of male journalists in the print media in several
countries has been traced to ‘the socialisation process and cultural tenets in patriarchal
societies” which influenced public attitudes and perception of roles, jobs and
professions for men and women merely in a pattern of gender-based division of labour
and economic roles which placed women in secondary positions (Ikem, 1996:185).
Such traditional gender-role stereotypes regarded activities such as trade unionism,
politics and journalism as the exclusive domain of men (Casaburri, 1986; Fishner,

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1986). Relative to journalism in particular, a great deal of studies on women in the

media have reported that such occupational sex-role stereotypes, perceived or real,
have tended to constitute barriers to career advancement for women in journalism
(Ferri and Keller, 1986; Reep and Dambort,1987).

Beyond the inhibitions brought about by traditional gender prejudice, the initial
absence of women in journalism in Nigeria derived significantly from the climate of the
profession at its infancy. The evolution of the print media in pre-independent Nigeria
was characterised, among several features, by aggression and militancy, as newspapers
published solely for nationalist sentiments engaged the colonial authorities in a running
war of words. Nwosu (1987:25) describes that epoch as “a period of increasingly
intensive political awareness among Black Africans, a period of rising expectations and
radical nationalistic demands by Black African leaders, a period which witnessed the
emergence of a good number of indigenous Black African newspapers dedicated to the
fight for political, cultural and economic freedom for Black African states”.
Publications like The Eagle and Lagos Critic. The Lagos Times. The Lagos Weekly
Record, and the West African Pilot were models of nationalist papers founded
primarily for anti-colonialist campaigns in Nigeria. In fact, one of the foremost
journalists of that era, Babatunde Jose, was quoted to have admitted that journalists of
his time “deliberately wrote seditious and criminally libellous articles against colonial
governments in the name of press freedom and nationalism” (Mytton, 1983:61). In
most cases, these publications attracted legal reprisals. The 1909 Seditious Offence
Ordinance, for example, aimed at “newspapers which sought to bring the government
into contempt or cause disaffection among the governed”, and unrepentant newspapers
such as the Lagos Weekly Record. The West African Pilot and The Daily Comet,
along with some journalists, were prosecuted under the law (Ekwelie, 1979).

After independence, militant journalism was to acquire an even more frenzied

momentum as more political publications emerged on the scene, intensifying the
psychological warfare that characterised inter-party exchanges in those teething days
of a nascent nation. According to Mytton (1983), owning a newspaper in that era was
a necessary part of a successful political campaign. Accordingly, two of the major

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political parties then, the NCNC and the Action Group published ten and fourteen
newspapers respectively. The introduction of publications with more relaxing or
entertaining content, especially magazines, in the 1960s is said to have encouraged the
entry of women into an area that had all along been an all-male business. Such
magazines devoted space to topics that were said to be of interest to women, and as
reader interest grew, more and more women were employed to handle such topics. It
must be noted however, that this situation in a way narrowed the breadth of
responsibilities and positions women could occupy in journalism. Confined to
women’s pages, pioneer female journalists seemed to have been stereotypically limited
to agony aunts offering answers to distressed readers on matters usually bordering on
emotional relationships. Other complements of the women’s pages included gossip
columns, social diaries, and articles on domestic affairs, fashion, marriage, beauty and
so on. This was the situation which female critics of women’s performance in
journalism have harped upon in their argument that women themselves contributed to
their low status and denigration in the profession (Bello-Imam, 1985).

In Nigeria, the watershed in women’s participation in the media came in the 1980s and
1990s when a substantial number of women entered the field, not only competing with
male colleagues even in the most daring beats, but also assuming editorial and
proprietorial positions in influential newspapers and magazines. In 1980, for example,
National Concord, one of the leading newspapers in the country blazed a new trail
when it had a woman as its editor-in-chief. Since then other influential publications
such as the Guardian. Daily Times. Business Concord. Triumph. Champion. Quality.
The Sunday Magazine and Classique have had women editors and managers.

It must be noted, however, that continuing stereotypical attitudes about women’s

appropriate roles in society, the career preference of young female journalism
graduates away from certain areas of the profession hitherto dominated by men, career
disruptions brought about mainly by conflicts between family roles and career demands
have been identified as barriers to career stability and advancement for women in the
media in Nigeria, hence the wide gap in male-female journalists’ ratio (Ferri and
Keller,1986; Emenyeonu, 1993).

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7.2.2 Age
A majority of the respondents were young, with the mean age as 36 years. The largest
proportion of the respondents, 114 (57%), were aged between 30 and 39 years while
32 or 16% were in their twenties. Respondents who were in the 40-49 age bracket
were 49 (25%) and those aged between 50 and 59 years were only five. This
compares favourably with an earlier survey in which Akinfeleye (1996:231) reports
that “generally, Nigerian journalists are in their middle ages (25-35)1” and that only
.02% fall within 50 years of age or older. Two factors are perhaps responsible for this
age pattern. One has to do with career advancement. Once journalists have served as
the editor or manager of a magazine or newspaper in Nigeria, they hardly ever return
to active journalism especially as reporters (ibid.). They rather move on to other areas
which would typically include public relations consultancy, publishing and politics.
The space is therefore always left to be filled by new and younger entrants to the field.
This is confirmed by the second factor: the recruitment of new practitioners.
According to NUJ statistics, about 80% of journalism or mass communication
graduates with an average age of 22 years are recruited into media organisations every
year (Dare and Uyo, 1996).

7.2.3 Education
Relative to educational qualification, most respondents had university education. Of
the entire respondents, one had a Ph.D., 58 had a masters degree while 85 possessed a
bachelors degree. Additionally, 45 journalists had a diploma. The rest (12 or 6%)
had school certificates and similar qualifications. This profile reflects the findings of an
earlier study by Golding and Elliot, 1979 (cited in Boyd-Barrett 1995:305) which
observed that most of the staff of news and current affairs section of some media
houses in Nigeria were graduates. It can, therefore, be assumed that a great
percentage of Nigerian journalists are highly educated, especially when compared with

1 T h is a v era g e is m o s t lik e ly b a se d o n th e life e x p e c ta n c y in N ig e r ia w h ich is estim a te d at 5 2 years.

(S e e R ead ers D ig e s t Illu stra ted A tla s o f the W o r ld . L on d on : 1 9 9 7 , p. 2 3 9 ).

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journalists in some other developing countries. For example, in a study which

examined the constraints to professionalism among Sri Lankan journalists, Mendis
(1996) reported that 63 p e r cent of career journalists in the country were drop-outs at
the GCE level. Only 37 p e r cent had pursued higher education.

Table 7.1. Respondents’ Educational Qualification.

Qualification Frequency Percentage
Ph.D. 1 0
Masters 58 29
Bachelors 85 43
Diploma 45 23
WASC/GCE 7 3
Other 4 2
Total 200 100

Contrary to the low estate occupied by journalism at its elemental age in Nigeria,
when, according to chroniclers, it took just a smattering knowledge of English, some
initiative and drive to make a practitioner (Azikiwe, 1964) or when it was seen as “a
place of refuge for a variety of frustrated and distressed people in the nineteenth
century” (Omu, 1980:38), the profession today ranks among the most demanding and
sought after, parading within its fold a considerable array of educated men and women.
As Ibecheozor et al.(1983:17) put it, “journalism has suddenly acquired a new aura; it
now appears to have a peculiar fascination for young people in search of
careers...journalists today can compete with their counterparts in other professions like
law, medicine and engineering” .

Two major sources of influence on the high educational profile of journalists in the
country are easily discernible. One is the revolutionalisation of journalism education in
the country through the introduction of, and subsequent expansions in mass
communication curricula in several Nigerian universities and polytechnics. As of 1996
there were not less than 45 journalism training institutions in Nigeria. Seven of these

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are universities offering mass communication courses at diploma, graduate and

postgraduate levels. The others are mainly polytechnics, journalism institutes and
media training schools which offer diplomas and certificates of professional proficiency
(Nwanwene, 1990; Akinfeleye, 1996).

The second factor is the professional requirement of at least a diploma in journalism

for acceptance and accreditation as a practitioner. Unwilling to take more floggings
from the government and public regarding the shoddy carriage and performance of
journalists due largely to the perception of journalism as an all-comers field, and in a
bid to inch towards professionalism, the NUJ in 1987 prescribed a minimum
qualification in addition to other requirements for the registration of practitioners.
Though the NUJ does not possess the legal instruments to enforce this requirement,
the response, even if only for personal accomplishment in a social milieu in which the
craze for certificates can be quite frenetic, has been enormous, as many practising and
aspiring journalists have besieged universities and polytechnics, enrolling in full- and
part-time degree and diploma programmes. Some have also been beneficiaries of
grants and scholarships that enabled them to study abroad. It can be argued that even
if only an ethical obligation at the moment, the impact of the NUJ requirement on
journalists’ pursuit of higher education is put in contrasting relief by the Sri Lankan
situation where, according to Mendis (1996:127), a majority of the journalists have
low educational backgrounds largely because “it is not considered mandatory for
journalists, unlike those opting for other professions, to undergo a scientifically
oriented training to be formally inducted into the profession”. Further evidence can be
seen in the fact of the commencement of sandwich or evening courses for practising
journalists. The department of mass communication at the University of Nigeria,
Nsukka, for example, was persuaded by a surging number of applicants to start a part-
time diploma programme in 1989, and ever since then figures from the university’s
records office show that applications and intakes have been on the increase each
successive year.

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7.2.5 Professional Status

Respondents reflected the top, middle and lower spectra of positions in the industry.
Four were managing editors while 45 (22.5%) were either editors or deputy editors of
the newspapers they worked for. The majority, 90 or 45% were in the senior reporter
cadre while 61 (30.5%) were ordinary reporters. Considering the position of the
reportorial division as the hub of the news media, the majority of reporters in the
sample reflects a realistic mix of print media personnel.

7.2.6 Regional Base

In terms of geographic spread, a significant percentage of the journalists were from the
Eastern and Western states while the least numbers hailed from the Northern and
minority states. The ethnic factor, especially in politics, is deeply rooted in Nigerian
history. As has been stated earlier in chapter two, the communities that make up the
present-day Nigeria had existed as culturally heterogeneous entities prior to the advent
of colonialism and the eventual political reforms that gave birth to the Nigerian
federation. Within the federation of not less than 250 linguistic groups, three major
ethnic groups; the Hausa-Fulani in the north, the Yorubas of the South-west and the
Igbos of the South-east stand out at the centre while the minorities within the Middle
Belt and riverine communities of Eastern Nigeria make up the periphery of the
country’s social and political mix. Till date, the cultural diversities emanating from this
conglomeration have been influential especially in the political development of the
nation. The need to reflect “Federal character” is enshrined in the constitution, and has
guided policies affecting matters such as state and local government creation,
delimitation of political constituencies, civil service and cabinet appointments, and
even university admission exercise. The observation has been made by several scholars
of Nigeria’s political history ( e.g. Nnoli, 1987; Dudley, 1982; Sklar, 1983; Diamond,
1990; Okigbo, 1992) about the extreme accent on ethnicity in national affairs in
Nigeria. Military intervention in politics, in particular the first two incidents, is one
such aspect of political reality in Nigeria said to have been largely the result of ethnic
power tussles (Ejoor, 1993). According to Okigbo (1992:12), “Ethnic feelings still run
deep and it is easy to identify ethnicity as an important factor in most coups d’etat in

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Nigeria.”. A recent study on conversations of Nigerians on the internet reinforces this

argument. The study showed, among other things, that discourse on national issues
was heavily dominated and influenced by ethnic identities (Emenyeonu, 1997). Mendis
(1996:89) has also reported the existence of “a major polarisation of views (on some
salient national issues) among Sinhala, Tamil and English media journalists, based on
affiliations to nationalist, ethnic and class considerations”. He reasons that that “such
subjective and partisan reasoning is enhanced by the absence of a professionally
stimulating background” (ibid.)

It was, therefore, part of the concern of this analysis to examine if ethnicity had any
influence on journalists’ perception of military intervention, and accordingly, in
selecting the sample for the survey, ample care was taken to ensure the representation
of at least the three major ethnic groups and the minorities at each step of the multi-
step sample procedure.

Table 7.3. Regional Distribution of Respondents

Region Frequency Percentage
East 83 42
West 68 34
North 18 9
Minorities 31 15
Total 200 100

Regardless of the appropriate representation of the entire geo-political regions of the

country with special regard to ethnic groupings and concentration of media
institutions, journalists who were Northerners accounted for a very small proportion of
the entire respondents. They were only 18 or 9% compared to 83 (42%) from the
East and 68 (34%) from the West. It was found that most of the journalists working
in some of the newspapers in the North came from other ethnic origins.

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Traditionally, it would seem that the North has never had a serious interest in the
publications industry. While newspapers sprang up profusely in the other regions
notably, the south-west, during the colonial period, the only considerable publication in
the north was the Gaskiva (Truth in the Hausa language) which started in 1939 as a
medium of literacy enhancement. Even in the period of nationalist struggles when
political exigency catalysed the proliferation of publications; when politicians and
parties from the other regions, notably the AG and the NCNC, set up newspapers as
political outlets, the North and its politicians did not seem to show any interest in the
establishment of the print media.

Some writers have attributed NPC’s non-reliance on the print media during the pre­
independence struggles to its friendly relationship with the colonial authorities. Ejoor
(1993) for instance argues that the British government groomed the north to inherit the
political administration of the country at independence in 1960. Neither the region nor
its main party, therefore, needed any medium to fight its election cause.

Further factors affecting the print media climate in the north today relate to what has
been described as the lack of private sector initiative or entrepreneurship (Haruna,
1996). The argument here is that the average Northern elite has never shown any
remarkable interest in the newspaper industry. As a newspaper editorial put it, “at a
time when the business of publishing is flourishing, with a newspaper or magazine
hitting the news-stand every other day, the relative calm in press circles in the North is
instructive” (The Democrat. May 29, 1994). Without prejudice to this argument, it
can equally be argued that the seeming lack of initiative on the part of Northern
business class may be related to the lack of industrial enterprise and advertising
possibilities in the North, because, by contrast, the Western zones of Nigeria, such as
Lagos and Ibadan which are industrial bases have attracted a majority of Nigeria’s
publishing houses.

The scenario, therefore, is one which has dwarfed the present day stature of the print
media in the North. According to current statistics, the North has not more than three
newspaper groups of note compared to at least 12 in the South (Haruna, 1996).

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Coupled with the above scenario, the career concentration of the Northern elite in
politics, merchandising, agriculture, and the diplomatic corps, has impaired the
availability of highly trained journalists from the North compared to the other Regions.

On the basis of the entire print media scene within which they operate, the few
newspapers in the North had no other option, therefore, than to hire skilled staff from
wherever they could attract them in the country.

7.3 RESPONDENTS * GENERAL IMPRESSIONS ON MILITARY RULE

The phenomenal incidence of military seizure of power which first became something
of a political fad in Africa and Latin America in the 1960s (Okigbo, 1992) has placed
Nigeria conspicuously on the world map of political instability. Regarded as a mere
political aberration aimed at saving a new and fragile democracy from total collapse in
19662, military intervention in government has found a permanent position in Nigeria’s
political lexicon, having occurred repeatedly since then, and perpetuating military rule
till date. Okigbo (1992:1) captures the resilience of the phenomenon when he remarks
that “The disruptive intervention of the armed forces in civil governance has become
such a common feature of the prevailing political topology it has come to be accepted
as nearly normal in many countries of the third world”. For a good number of young
people in countries like Nigeria and other developing regions, he argues, terms like
democracy, election and civilian politics mean no more than theoretical concepts found
in textbooks only.

As a political phenomenon which has exerted far-reaching implications on the entire

facet of national life, coup d’etat has unsurprisingly generated a great deal of discourse
among Nigerian citizens; political scientists, pro-democracy groups and other elites in
particular. One of the most recurring aspects of such discourse is the desirability of
coups.

2 In a c o lle c tio n o f h is sp e e c h e s p u b lish e d in 1 9 6 9 , O d u m e g w u O ju k w u , leader o f the defu n ct B iafran

R epublic, n oted that N ig e r ia n s w e lc o m e d th e first co u p b e c a u se it rep resen ted not on ly an end to th e
clim ate o f d o o m w h ich h u n g o v e r the n a tio n th en , but a ls o ra ise d b ea u tifu l h o p es for the future.

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The feeling in some quarters is that the military, as the last line of defence, is pressured
to intervene in the political administration of the country in a redemptive role. Two
former military leaders had at separate occasions articulated this view. While General
Olusegun Obasanjo (1979:20) observes that “what determines whether the military
remains or does not remain in the barracks is not the doing of the military itself, (but)
the doing of the political leaders and sometimes coupled with the system”, General
Ibrahim Babangida, one of the longest serving military leaders, argues that military
intervention originates from the civilian population, when, as he put it, “people suggest
the sacking of civilian governments by putting pressure on the militarv’YNewswatch.
May 21, 1990). Echoing this line of thought, a writer, Anim (1990) averred that when
things go wrong politically, most Nigerians call the military. He cited the 1983 general
elections whose contentious results led many Nigerians including some internationally
reputable scholars to call for a coup. Reminiscing on the first coup in 1966, another
writer, Agbese (1986) who also sees a great deal of obligation on the part of the
civilian populace argues that ever since the eruption of nation-wide jubilation which
greeted the ousting of the Balewa administration, Nigerians have always seen the
military as an interim political administration, “a necessary evil tolerated for the sake of
bringing sanity and a sense of direction to the polity.”

Arguing in a similar vein, Abdullahi (1990:7) reviewed the 1983 coup and concluded
that the termination of the Shagari administration and the Second Republic was more
the fault of civilians than of the military, for as he argued, “efforts of the civilians then
was in fact to pull down the government.” In a seeming endorsement of Abdullahi’s
contention, particularly the antecedents of the December 1983 coup, Okigbo
(1992:103) recalled that the early days of the second term of the Shagari regime were
inundated with “open calls on the military to intervene and wrest power from the
civilians, who were accused, among other things, of massive rigging of the elections.”

There are, however, opposing arguments which basically hold that the military, for a
number of reasons which shall be discussed in a different portion of this work, merely
latch unto the slightest hitch in civil governance to seize power. Interestingly, a
majority of writers and analysts who have argued against military intervention have

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either served in military regimes or even taken part in some coups. For example, in an
incisive work which examined the possibility of Nigeria surviving without coups, a
former chief of army staff in the Nigerian Army, David Ejoor, wrote:
They (the military) often claimed that it was for their
love of the future of the country coupled with their
desire to ensure the survival of Nigeria, that such
interventions in the nation’s politics had become
necessary. Of course, a number of reasons were
usually advanced, particularly those which derive
from certain obvious ills in society, which coup
planners claim to aim at containing. But all such
reasons and excuses almost always turn out to be
spurious, hypocritically shrouded with the so-called
need to ensure the survival of Nigeria as a nation­
state (Ejoor, 1993:11).

It was Ejoor’s view that there exist other ways of resolving major political and
constitutional conflicts and crises among the political class without recourse to the
military, for as he reasoned, politicians and the legitimate political class must not only
be tolerated especially when they make mistakes in the process of democratic
governance, but they should also be encouraged to evolve as good managers of their
conflicts and crises.

Other writers who have traced military intervention in government to selfish, parochial
and power-seeking missions include Danjuma (1990), Anim (1990), Taiwo (1995),
Katsina (1990), Yakassai (1990). There is even the argument that the so-called
popular support for coups is a misnomer. According to Aka-Bashorun (1990:3),
“Nigerians have never welcomed coups.” He insists that the support soldiers get when
they declare a take-over is simply a protest against the misdeeds of the overthrown
government, a gesture the soldiers wrongly decode as a welcome.

7.3.1 Respondents’ views on the Desirability of Military Intervention

The backdrop of dissenting views on the acceptability of coups cited above fuelled the
curiosity to see how journalists compare with other Nigerians in their perception of the
phenomenon.

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Asked about their impression of military intervention in government, the journalists, in

three outstanding opinions, betrayed a divergence of views that ran along the same
tracks as those of other sources reviewed in the literature on coups. Seventy-two
(36%) said military intervention was “sometimes desirable”. The same number
responded that it was “totally unjustifiable”. Another 44 respondents (22%) agreed
that it was “a necessary evil”. Other respondents were either undecided or unwilling to
give any response to the question. Later in the second section of this chapter, a
classification is made of respondents who gave the three major responses, and their
reasons for offering such responses are also explained. In chapter eight as well the
interpretations made of these impressions are taken up as a part of the discussions of
the overall results in relation to the theoretical approaches adopted for the study.

Table 7.4 Respondents’ Impressions of Military Intervention3

Impressions Frequency Percentage
Sometimes desirable 72 36
Totally unjustifiable 72 36
A necessary evil 44 22
Undecided 6 3
Other 3 1
No response 3 1
Total 200 100

Reacting to specific incidents, more than half the sample (62 % respondents) were of
the opinion that some particular military coups leading to the ousting of either a
civilian or military administration were justifiable; (36 %) had a contrary opinion while
the rest were undecided. Standing on their own, this particular question and its
responses do not say much. Their utility, however, was in the attempt to measure the
consistency of the opinions of respondents on the subject of the desirability of coups.
A more revealing question which was a follow-up to this one asked respondents to go
a step further and identify particular governments which deserved to have been ousted
in a coup.

3 Table relates to item nu m b er o n e in th e q u e stio n n a ir e (A p p e n d ix 1).

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7.3.2 Respondents* Views on Particular Governments Deserving an Overthrow

The respondents indicated that of all the regimes in the country so far, the Shagari
administration which was ousted in December 1983 was the most deserving of such a
change. Seventy-three (37%) respondents identified it as such, while five other
toppled administrations scored much less; the second highest being the Gowon
administration which was identified as worthy of an overthrow by 36 or 18%
respondents.

Table 7.5 Respondents’ Identification of Justifiable Overthrows4

Overthrown Admins. Frequency Percentage
Shagari (1983)* 73 37
Gowon (1975)* 36 18
Balewa (1966)+ 34 17
Shonekan (1993) 30 15
Buhari (1985)* 17 8
Ironsi (1966)+ 7 3

N = 200
+(Ethnically motivated coups), * (Toppled and replaced by ruler from same region)

It had been stated earlier that the coup which toppled the Shagari administration was
among the most celebrated by the vast majority of Nigerians, a feature which formed
one of the criteria for studying that administration. The identification of that regime by
respondents as the most deserving of an overthrow corroborates a body of literature
or extra media data which had expressed a similar verdict. As will be seen in a later
section of this chapter, respondents’ reasons for picking out that regime also tally with
such data. Since The Shagari government was not only one of the two governments of
interest to this study but was also identified as the most disliked, it is worth devoting
some explanation to the question: who was Shagari and what did his Administration
stand for?

4 Table relates to item n u m b er th ree in the q u e stio n n a ir e .

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73.2,1 Alhaji Shehu Shagari and the Second Republic (1979-83^

A farmer from Sokoto State, Shagari’s first and short touch with political leadership
was as a cabinet minister under the Balewa Government in the ill-fated First Republic.
He had also served under Gowons’ government. He was therefore not a political
‘fresher’ when his name was announced as the presidential candidate of the National
Party of Nigeria at the 1979 general election.
Inheriting government after 13 years of military rule was an awesome responsibility as
far as steering the nation away from the mistakes that doomed the First Republic and
democratic rule was concerned. However, Shagari did not seem to be sufficiently
equipped to grapple with the magnitude of the responsibility before him. In the first
place, his first posture on being declared the elected president after a long and heated
legal tussle instituted by the opposition was that his bid for presidency was more as a
result of the persuasion of his colleagues and party members than his own deliberate
will.5 This posture was indeed consistent with the style, priorities and activities of the
President throughout his tenure. Unlike great leaders who come into government to
actualise their visions for the nation, Shagari did not seem to have any ideals or vision.
Agbese (1985:10) described the President’s style of leadership as “simplistic: leave
everyone severely alone to do as he wishes and there will be happiness and satisfaction
in the land”. Another manifestation of this style was his gross inability to dispense the
enormous constitutional powers bestowed on him as the nation’s chief executive. A
few examples illustrate this point. Corruption was one of the factors that led to the
demise of the First Republic and the imposition of military rule on Nigeria. After a
series of coups and counter coups as well as transition programmes, the military finally
restored civilian rule in 1979, after 13 years in office. The hope in most circles was
that “the augean stable had been cleansed; a sense of responsibility and accountability
had been reintroduced in government and a new code of political morality had been
brought to the nation” (ibid.). However, the reality that emerged soon after the
celebration of the new democracy was that of cosmetic changes, for as one writer put
it, “Nothing had changed. Our new political masters were a motley crowd eager not

5 Shagari w as said to h a v e m a d e th is c o m m e n t at a d in n e r party h e ld for h im o n the e v e o f h is

swearing in as N ig e r ia ’s first E x e c u tiv e P r e sid e n t, o n O cto b er 1, 1 9 7 9 (S e e N e w sw a tc h , M a y 2 0 ,
1985, p. 19).

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to serve but to be served...In six months flat, the politicians had broken and bent every
rule in the book and the constitution. They played foul and they played dirty. The
nation was aghast. Never was hope so misplaced. Never was a people so
disappointed. Never was a promise so blatantly broken” (Agbese, 1985). The first
manifest preoccupation of the parliamentarians was the acquisition of wealth, in pursuit
of which they spent the preliminary sessions legislating huge salaries and allowances
for themselves, and seeking membership of committees that would give them more
access to power, influence and material benefits. At the same time, ministers blatantly
helped themselves to whatever gratification they could at government expense. For
example, some ministers and other officials occupied suites at the Federal Palace
Hotel, one of the most expensive in the continent, for about two years, at government
expense, while keeping the official government quarters assigned to them (Newswatch.
August 25, 1986). As will be shown subsequently, key government officials and
leaders of the ruling party embarked on a wanton looting of the treasury through
wasteful and needless contract awards most of whose proceeds they misappropriated
through ‘kickbacks’6 and bribes.

The President did not seem to have done anything to halt the growing menace of abuse
of office. He was in most cases characterised by critiques as “Pontius Pilate, being
afraid of responsibility and preferring not to be held responsible for anything
eventhough he was executive president” (Ekpu, 1985:19). His weakness was further
portrayed in the following remarks: “Where he should be decisive, he vacillated; where
he should be courageous, he weakened; where he should act, he appealed. No one
could catch him giving offence” (Newswatch. May 20, 1985, p. 10).

Not even in matters of self survival did the President act. It is on record that in his first
(four-year) term as President, eight unsuccessful coup attempts were made to depose
him (ibid.). It is also on record that in seven of such attempts none of the plotters was
prosecuted (ibid.). Some observers of that government believe that if the President
had used his position as Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces to curb the initial
attempts, subsequent ones could not have happened (Ekpu et al., 1985). In any case, it

6 A nother term for ille g a l m o n eta ry rew a rd a c c r u in g fr o m th e aw a rd o f con tracts

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was another manifestation of his weak leadership. In place of action and in evasion of
responsibilities, the President took to incessant foreign trips. As undertaken by other
leaders, such trips are inevitable for political and diplomatic reasons, but the motives
and timing of most of the President’s trips were said to be frivolous in the sense that in
some cases, he visited certain countries twice in a year for no significant reason. In
some other cases where national exigencies demanded his presence and immediate
attention, he preferred to take refuge in travelling. According to reports, one of the
most strategic buildings in the country, housing the National External
Telecommunications, was gutted by fire on January 23, 1983, and a number of lives
were lost. The President arrived at the scene, spent a few minutes watching the
blazing fire before driving to the airport from where he flew to India. To most
Nigerians, especially students and the elites, this was a display of insensitivity,
especially since the trip to India was merely ceremonial (Ekpu et al., 1985).

While he virtually abdicated his office, the vacuum he created seemed to have been
occupied by a few power-hungry party officials and ministers. Prominent among such
power-mongers were Sunday Adewusi, the Police Inspector-General, Adisa Akinloye,
the NPN Chairman, Olusola Saraki, Senate Majority Leader and chief financier of the
party, Umaru Dikko, Transport and Aviation Minister, and Bello Maitama Yusuf,
Internal Affairs Minister (ibid.).

As OPEC’s sixth largest producer and exporter of crude oil in the 1970s, Nigeria’s
foreign exchange at that time was estimated at 713 million US Dollars, a figure which
rose to 24.9 billion Dollars in 1980 ( Newswatch, October 5, 1987, p.68). Counting
the fortunes of the nation in that era, one of Nigeria’s foremost writers observed that
“the countless billions that a generous Providence poured into our national coffers
(between 1972 and 1982) would have been enough to launch this nation into the
middle-rank of developed nations and transformed the lives of our poor and needy ...”
(Achebe, 1985:3). But where did it all go?

After a spending spree begun by the Gowon administration during which countless
development projects were executed most of which glamourised the big cities without

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contributing to the welfare of the majority of Nigerian rural dwellers, the military left a
foreign reserve of 2.66 billion Naira for the in-coming Shagari Government, an amount
which rose to 6.4 billion Naira in 1981 following increases in the price of oil (Ekpu,
1987). Though it made food and shelter its cardinal priorities during the campaigns
that brought it to power, The Shagari Government had no serious plans to invest
towards the reinstatement of agriculture which had been the nation’s major revenue
source before the discovery of oil in the 1970s. The Green Revolution launched in
1980 as a programme for achieving self sufficiency in food production turned out a
sham. Most ironically, irrespective of Green Revolution, about N3 billion, according
to official estimates, was spent on food importation between 1980 and 1983
(Newswatch. October 5, 1987). The Presidential Task Force set up for rice
importation, and which was headed by Umaru Dikko, remains one of the most wasteful
sources through which the nation’s finances were mismanaged and stolen. Massive
over-invoicing and abuse of import licences were the major avenues through which
politicians and their colluding contractors defrauded the treasury and laundered their
loot into safe accounts overseas. An official estimate states that about 7 billion Dollars
was stolen from government treasuries between 1979 and 1983 due to importation
scams (ibid.).

With further deterioration of the economy, the plummeting of oil prices, and without
possessing any clues towards turning the economy round, the government resorted to
external borrowing. At the same time, squandering of the available resources
continued. All that the President did to halt misconduct in public office was to set up
costly bureaucracies that had no force to deal with corruption. Both the Code of
Conduct Bureau and the Ethical Revolution set up by the government were charged
with stamping out corruption (Taiwo, 1995), but the main culprits who happened to be
the power wielders in government were beyond whatever sanctions these bodies could
impose. Their impotence and frustration were expressed in the fatalistic resignation of
the Chairman of the Code of Conduct Bureau, Alhaji Isa Kaita, who overwhelmed by
the system in the 1980s, declared that “Only God can save Nigeria” .

7 See N e w sw a tch . O ctob er 5 , 1 9 8 7 .

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Politically, the Shagari government had not shown any direction or promise. First, it
had been accused of manipulating its way into office in 1979. The bitter election
petitions and legal disputes that ensued from the 1979 election results did not set a
stage for political stability and was certainly worsened with the massive electoral fraud
and violence that featured in the 1983 elections which brought back Shagari for a
second term.

From all indications, it would appear that the Shagari Government was lucky to have
survived for as long as it did, given continuous media criticisms against it, the ceaseless
expose of scandals, the worsening economy and mass disenchantment. The comment
that “many attempts at evaluating the Shagari regime usually end with unequivocal
indictment of the President, his party stalwarts and only remotely the opposition
parties” (Okigbo, 1992:56) lucidly depicts the abysmal disrepute with which that
regime was held by a cross-section of Nigerians.

For a President of whom nothing positive other than a misplaced meekness and
tolerance was recorded for his regime, it could not have been a surprise, therefore, that
the respondents identified it as the most deserving of deposition out of six ousted
governments.

7.3.2.2 The General Muhammadu Buhari Administration (1983-85)

Contrary to expectations, however, the toppling of the Buhari government in 1985, did
not seem to attract much of the journalists’ approval despite the regime’s notoriety in
the violation of human rights. The Buhari government came to power when most
Nigerians were said to have desired a radical change in government. Enjoying an
unprecedented welcome and support by the populace, the administration outlined a
series of measures aimed at pulling the nation out of the abyss of economic regression,
political confusion and moral depravity to which it had sunk during the Shagari era. A
remarkable feature of this government, however, was its ruthlessness in the pursuit of
its goals: a posture which corroded almost all fundamental human rights while
unleashing repression on the entire citizenry. As soon as it came to power, the Buhari
administration enacted the Constitution (Suspension and Modification) Decree

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Number 1 of 1984. It suspended portions of the Constitution which challenged the

essence and nature of military rule. For example, Section 1 (2) of the Constitution, the
first to be suspended, provides that “The Federal Republic of Nigeria Shall not be
governed, nor shall any person or group of persons take control of the Government of
Nigeria or any part thereof, except in accordance with the provisions of this
Constitution”.

Sections (30-38) of the Constitution which were not suspended dealt with fundamental
human rights: the right to life, dignity of the human person, personal liberty, fair
hearing, private life and family, freedom of thought, conscience and religion, freedom
of expression and the press, peaceful assembly and association, and freedom of
movement. However, subsequent decrees violated each of these rights to varying
degrees. For example, the State Security Detention of Persons Decree which
empowered the Chief of General Staff in the new military cabinet to detain, indefinitely
and without trial, any person thought to be a security risk, was a serious corrosion of
the citizen’s right to justice and free movement. Furthermore, the Special Tribunal
Miscellaneous Offences Decree not only stipulated the death sentence for a number of
offences but in its first application, it involved cases pending trial long before the
government and its decrees came into being. Other repressive decrees which whittled
the rights to fair hearing and free speech in particular included the Public Officers
Protection Against False Accusation Decree, the Exchange Control Anti-sabotage
Decree and the Federal Military Government Supremacy and Enforcement of Powers
Decree.

Naturally, it would be expected that the repressive style of the government, especially
on journalists, would excite the respondents’ hatred on it, and would therefore dispose
them to identify it as another government whose overthrow was justifiable. On the
contrary, only eight per cent of the respondents thought it deserved to have been
forced out of office. An explanation of this posture may not be unconnected with both
the carry-on effect of the reproach the respondents had for the Shagari government
which the Buhari government immediately replaced, and the initial posture of Buhari’s
administration as one that was out to fight corruption and indiscipline, and which went

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all out on that mission, albeit in a dictatorial fashion. The trials of and sanctions for
official misconduct at the various Recovery of Public Property Tribunals promised to
check the flagrant abuse of office. An example of the acceptance this administration
got as a result of its policies and postures can be seen in its identification as the only
exception to the different civilian and military regimes that waged a “cosmetic
confrontation with the real issues behind corruption” (Taiwo,1995:11). Taiwo admits
that at least public orderliness and environmental sanitation had been imbibed in a short
while albeit through “a heavy dose of external compliance mechanisms relying on
repression” (ibid.).

Another possible reason why the respondents were seemingly not excited about the
ousting of the Buhari government can be linked with the contrast between promise and
actual performance especially in the Buhari government. Though it had stamped its
authority especially in areas regarding the restoration of discipline and moral probity
albeit in a dictatorial fashion, the Buhari administration did not seem to be capable of
containing the economy as well as it had impressed on the minds of Nigerians when it
seized power. Despite the tumultuous welcome it received, its non-performance must
have taught respondents that coups are no solutions to the nation’s problems, so its
quick ousting by yet another military clique could not have attracted much applause. It
is instructive to note here that as will be seen later in this chapter, even respondents
who found certain coups justifiable said they regretted it afterwards, their reasons
including the observation that coup plotters are not often better than those they
displace, and the inability of new governments to fulfil promises. It will also be seen
later that most respondents see the benefits of coups as having a short-term duration.

It is equally interesting to note that the Balewa and Gowon regimes which were sacked
in the maiden and the 1975 coups respectively, on account of widespread corruption,
political disorder and weak leadership: the same ailments that bugged the Shagari
government, did not rank highly in the journalists’ estimation of administrations
deserving a forcible change.

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73.2.3 The Alhaii Abubakar Balewa Government (1960-66)

Relative to the Balewa regime, it will be recalled that the general support that heralded
the announcement of the coup was very brief. It was soon submerged in the
interpretation of the coup, especially the mode of killings (of political leaders), as the
unleashing of ethnic aggression by the South on the North. The tension arising from
that coup not only attracted the counter coup of July 1966 but also precipitated a civil
war in 1967. Subsequent coups: those of 1975 till date, in which a serving Northern
civilian or military leader was toppled by another Northerner, could not be said to be
as decidedly ethnic as the first. It is therefore most likely that the continuing
contention over the real motives of that first coup influenced respondents’ evaluation
of the Balewa government as worthy of a coup or not. While Nigerians have been
known for welcoming the overthrow of inept, corrupt or dictatorial governments,
coups which betray or recall the slightest element of ethnically-motivated aggression
rather than dwell entirely on issues of national interest such as the economy, the
standard of living and corruption, are hardly welcomed or supported by the people. In
most cases, they also hardly ever succeed.

A typical example of such a coup was the April 22, 1990 abortive putsch led by Major
Gideon Orka. In the opening lines of the coup speech8 which took the nation by
surprise, Orka referred to General Ibrahim Babangida and his administration as
“dictatorial, corrupt, drug baronish, evil men, sadistic, homosexually-centred,
prodigalistic, unpatriotic” The rest of the speech was a litany of invectives and
accusations which characterised the Babangida regime as having mismanaged the
economy, eliminated outspoken opponents such as the murdered Newswatch editor,
Dele Giwa, and the former Federal Capital Minister, Major-General Maman Vatsa, and
having become highly autocratic. Undoubtedly, to most Nigerians these and other
allegations levelled by Orka on the government were not controversial. For example,
the SAP programme introduced by the Babangida government not only increased the
gap between the rich and the poor but also threatened an even gloomier future for the
masses. The closure of factories, mass unemployment, spiralling inflation, scarcity of

8 T he fu ll text o f the sp e e c h is a tta c h ed u n d e r A p p e n d ic e s .

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basic commodities and facilities were the order of the day: the social setting in which
Orka and his colleagues made their bid for a change.

Another matter which pitched the Nigerian elites against the Babangida government
was the undue manipulation of the protracted and expensive transition to democracy
by the administration. Apart from postponing the hand-over dates twice, the
Administration dictated its processes such as the formation and registration of political
parties, screening of candidates and the conduct of primary elections. The opinion
soon crystallised in many quarters that such manipulations were part of the grand
design by General Babangida to perpetuate his stay in office, another issue highlighted
in the coup speech. Nor did Babangida help matters by increasingly clustering all the
powerful and strategic apparatuses of State power under his office. After sacking the
Armed Forces Ruling Council in 1989, Babangida took over the positions of Minister
of Defence, Chairman of the Police Service Commission, Chairman of the National
Council of States, Chairman of the Armed Forces Consultative Assembly, and
Chairman of the Council of Ministers. He further transferred a number of departments
such as the Central Bank, the Budget Department, the State Security Service, and the
Directorate for Social Mobilisation to his office.

The argument that the Babangida government had given Nigerians cause to support
the intention of Orka and his men is suggested in the following view expressed in a
study of the failed coup;
Orka’s attempted coup took place within a
context of deepening socio-economic and political
contradictions arising from programmes which have
increased divisions, conflicts, pressures and
insecurity. As well, the military regime’s economic
policy of structural adjustment, the obvious inability
to control corruption in high places, the abuse of
power by security forces, and the open and often
unwarranted attacks on a whole range of critics,
provided enough excuses for a section of the army
to try and topple the Government (Ihonvbere,
1991:614).

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However, for one very reason, most Nigerians did not identify with Orka’s coup
attempt The sensitive issue which robbed the coup bid of popular support was the part
of the speech which announced the excision of five core Northern States (Sokoto,
Borao, Katsina, Kano and Bauchi) from the Federal Republic of Nigeria. According
to Orka, these were the headquarters of the “Northern Aristocratic class (which) had
almost succeeded in subjugating the people of the Middle Belt and making them
voiceless, and was now extending same to the South”. They were, therefore, to be
expelled from the Federation if social justice and equal opportunities were to be
achieved.

As it turned out, this motive was certainly reminiscent of not only the ethnic (North
versus South) clashes surrounding the first coup but also the July 1966 counter coup
and the 30-month bloody civil war that it precipitated. Apart from the political
implications, in Nigeria and the outside world, of expelling the five States, this
intention was read by many as an invitation to another civil war, and as one observer
noted, “Nigerians might want change, but they certainly do not want another civil war,
which would have been the likely outcome of the proposed secession” (Lardner,
1990). Thus, while agreeing with a number of ills identified by the coup plotters and
the solutions they promised, most Nigerians did not welcome the territorial adjustment
which smacked of ‘ethnic cleansing’ and therefore, did not regret the failure of the
coup.

For the same reason: that it was motivated by parochial motives rather than national
interest, especially as a counter coup which was decidedly one-sided in the elimination
of incumbent rulers, the toppling of Ironsi in the July 1966 coup did not attract much
support as it was shown in Table 7.5.

7.3.2.4 The General Yakubu Gowon Administration (1966-75)

In the case of Gowon’s reign, though he shared some characteristics with Shagari
especially in terms of weakness and condoning corruption, there exists a significant
compilation of views which, regardless of his weakness and political naivete, credit his
administration with sterling achievements, not the least the re-unification of Nigeria

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through a reconciliatory end to the civil war, the strengthening of the federal structure
through States creation, and the government’s dynamic and leading role in regional
organisations such as the Organisation of African Unity, the Economic Community of
West African States and the Organisation of Petroleum Producing and Exporting
Countries (Ibeanu, 1986). Sharing a similar view, Akinrinade (1986:32) said of
Gowon:
“Gowon’s declaration of ‘no victors, no vanquished’
at the end of the war in January 1970 won him
world-wide acclaim as a magnanimous leader. He
became the toast of the Western world, a darling of
the Eastern nations and the pride of Africa. ... On
the economic front, Gowon’s achievements are
impressive and have hardly been matched by
subsequent administrations in Nigeria. ...

These achievements may have been the mitigating factors in the respondents’
judgement of whether or not Gowon deserved to have been overthrown.

7.3.2.5 The Chief Ernest Shonekan Interim National Government (1993)

Another surprising result was the relatively small number (30 or 15%) of respondents
who thought the Shonekan Interim National Government deserved to have been
sacked. Its removal was expected to have attracted as much support as was the case
in the ousting of the Shagari regime. Though it could not be associated with the many
deficiencies of the Shagari administration, the ING was still a very unpopular
administration, given the circumstances that led to its installation: the cancelled
election, as well as the number of groups, even democracy advocates, calling for its
termination, albeit, in the false hope of restoring the election results. Given also the
worsening economic conditions, the unabated political violence, continuous strikes by
major unions, the inception of novel terrorism such as the hijacking of the Nigeria
Airways plane in November 1993 by a group9 calling for Shonekan’s resignation, and
the non-feasibility of the tasks set for the ING, especially conducting fresh elections in
the next year, there was no doubt that the administration was doomed to fail. The
most likely reason why its eventual ousting did not attract much approval must be the
fact that it was done by yet another military group. As it might have been their view in

9 T he group id en tified it s e lf as th e M o v e m e n t fo r A d v a n c e m e n t o f D e m o c r a c y (M A D ).

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the case of Buhari whose intervention was heralded at a time the people’s morale was
at its ebb, but which did not effect any significant changes before it was edged out of
office, it is very possible that the political confusion, economic malaise, and social
unrest occasioned by Babangida’s prolonged and wasted transition programme
reinforced the respondents’ view that the solution to the problems lay somewhere
outside military intervention. Thus, the respondents were not very eager to welcome
the ousting of Shonekan by General Sani Abacha.

7.3.3 Issues Identified as Justifications for Military Intervention

Respondents had earlier picked out the Shagari administration as the one most
deserving of an overthrow. When asked to identify the issues which, in their opinion,
constituted a justification for an overthrow of any administration, the respondents
mentioned “political disorder”, “unbridled corruption”, “inept leadership”, “neglect of
masses’ welfare” and “inability to contain ailing economy” in that order of prominence.
Other issues identified by the respondents include “oppressive rule” and “ethnic
domination”.

Table 7.6 Justifications for Overthrow10

Justification Frequency Percentage
Political disorder 82 19
Unbridled corruption 81 19
Inept leadership 73 17
Neglect of mass’s welfare 55 13
Ailing economy 53 12
Oppressive rule 45 11
Ethnic domination 27 6
Other 11 3
Total 427“ 100

N = 200

10 T ab le relates to item n u m b er fo u r in th e q u e stio n n a ir e .

11 T otal due to m u ltip le r e sp o n se s.

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These issues whose frequencies are shown in table 7.6 shall be further explored in a
separate chapter that discusses the relationship between them and coups.
Nevertheless, considering their centrality in the discourse of failed governments and
military intervention as already seen in the content analysis and in some of the
preceding responses in this chapter, it is essential that the most significant of these
issues (on the basis of their prominence in the responses) be discussed a bit further in
the present analysis than their mere mention by respondents. Even the issues which are
not specifically discussed in the process will be seen to be subsumed in those
discussed. In the discussion that now follows, I rely significantly on the extra media
data arising from several sources on the political, economic and social features of
government in Nigeria. This discussion will also strengthen the argument that these
issues have emerged as indices of military intervention in government.

7.3.3.1 Corruption
Corruption in public life has featured prominently in the political, economic and social
discourse of post-colonial Nigeria. Political essayists and analysts too numerous to
count have traced the roots of this endemic malaise in Nigeria to a predominantly
underdeveloped capitalist political economy which nurtures and sustains the craze for
private accumulation. A few examples of proponents of this theory include Claude
Ake (1994); Okwudiba Nnoli (1981); Oyeleye Oyediran (1981); Olukayode Taiwo
(1995); Thomas Aina (1986); Festus Iyayi (1986); Larry Diamond (1983, 1990); Fred
Riggs (1993) and Tom Forrest (1986). Their arguments have been considerably
justified by the recurring attitude of government officials to public office.
In the First Republic, corruption bloomed under the culture of the frantic clamour for
political office as the shortest avenue to wealth and influence. Politicians then saw
national resources as the ‘national cake’ begging to be devoured, and the surest way to
get a large chunk of it was to seat close enough to it at the dining table in government.
This engendered the politics of ethnicity, violence and bribery that marked the
inauguration of the First Republic. Once in office, officials at all arms of government
were in a frenzied rush to either replenish what was invested in the pursuit of electoral
success or to reward party loyalists who put them in office. In the process, abuse of
office, appointments based on kinship and party membership rather than merit and

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efficiency, and the misappropriation of public funds became the order of the day
(Taiwo, 1995). For the fact that the moral fabric of the Nigerian society at that time
was extremely weak, corruption went beyond the political class and permeated almost
all institutions. The multitude of commissions of inquiry and tribunals probing
misconduct in public office in various national institutions beginning from the nascent
period of Nigerian independence till date is an evidence of how corruption has become
endemic in the country. The list of inquiries includes the Foster-Sutton Inquiry in
Eastern Nigeria, the Coker Commission of Inquiry in Western Nigeria in the early
1960s, the 1969 Scania Probe, the 1975 Belgore Cement Probe, the 1975 Public
Officers Assets and Liabilities Probe, the 1975 FESTAC Probe, the 1975 Leyland
Probe, the 1976 Lockheed Probe, the 1980 NNPC Probe, and the 1984 Recovery of
Public Property Tribunal.

The revelations of scandals, abused privileges, and misappropriated and squandered

national resources at these probes are mind boggling. For example, the 1975 Public
Officers Assets Probe, set up by the Murtala Administration which had then ousted the
Gowon government, showed the depth to which governors, ministers, permanent
secretaries and other high ranking officials had pilfered the national treasury. All but
two State Governors under the Gowon administration were convicted of gross abuse
of office, self enrichment and mismanagement of funds for which they were summarily
retired from the army and made to forfeit assets to the Federal Government (Ibeanu,
1986). In other spheres, the roll call of public officers dismissed from office or
imprisoned for official misconduct was limitless12. The new-found petro-dollars had
incensed an orgy of accumulation and the inability of the leadership to curb the
excesses of subordinate officers paved the way for the plunder that took place at that
time.

As it has been stated earlier in this chapter, the general expectation at the restoration of
civil rule in 1979 was that the new political ethos prescribed by the Murtala
government in the handling of corrupt practices, and in the political preparations for
transition to democracy would have engendered a new beginning in the Second

12 S ee J.O O rjiak o’s ( 1 9 7 9 ) 13 Y ea rs o f M ilita r y R u le fo r a c o m p ila tio n o f c o n v icts.

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Republic. Contrary to this expectation, the Second Republic which was ushered in
with the election of the Shagari government in 1979, turned out a reinforced model of
the First Republic in several respects, in particular, political opportunism, corruption
and mismanagement of resources. Almost every writer who chronicled the governance
of Nigeria between 1979 and 1983 ( e.g. Diamond, 1990; Falola and Ihonvbere, 1985;
Forrest, 1986; Babatope, 1986 and Iyayi, 1986) identified corruption, irresponsibility
and squandering of resources as the enduring characteristics of Shagari’s government.
In a further reference to that regime, Taiwo (1995:38) remarked that:
“Two disturbing features distinguished the
corruption of the Second Civilian Republic. First,
the machinery of graft and corruption attained a
transnational efficiency, maturing from purely local
currency deals to exclusively foreign exchange
transactions. The second aspect was that those
involved were the youngest ministers,
commissioners, public and party officials.”

In addition to the modes of scandals identified by Taiwo, the national treasury was
milked dry through uncontrolled importation of useless luxury goods, inflated
contracts for physical projects of doubtful values, ‘settling’13 of legions of party
loyalists and mounting salaries for ‘ghost workers’ as well as for grossly overstaffed
government ministries and companies (Achebe, 1985).

The ‘Fougerolle Deal’ is but one of the endless scandals that exemplifies the goals and
conduct of political office holders and party officials of that era. Having profusely
invested money in the 1979 elections, the ruling party, the NPN, was very desperate to
repay its creditors as well as reward its functionaries at different levels. Furthermore,
on the one hand, the party’s executives submitted frivolous bills for grants to keep the
party machinery going. On the other hand, elected parliamentarians were said to have
clamoured for allowances to run constituency offices as well as monetary gratification
in return for supporting government proposals and bills (Olojede, 1986). Clearly, the
‘cash for consent’ practice was a violation of the code of conduct for public officers
spelt out in the Constitution to the effect that “a public officer shall not ask for or

13 O ne o f the term s w h ic h h a d g a in e d en try in to th e n a tio n ’s p o litic a l le x ic o n during th is p e r io d , it

referred to the rew ard in g o f party lo y a lis ts la r g e ly th ro u g h co n tra c t aw ards and appointm ents.

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accept any property or benefits of any kind for himself or any other person on account
of anything done or omitted to be done by him in the discharge of his duties” (Sec. 6
(1), 5th Schedule, 1979 Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria).

Nevertheless, with the connivance of the newly elected President, top NPN officials
including the party chairman, Adisa Akinloye and the powerful Senate leader, Olusola
Saraki, cornered Fougerolle, a French construction company which was one of the
many contractors bidding for the execution of the multi-billion dollar Ajaokuta Steel
Plant. It coaxed the company to donate some money to the party if it wanted to be
awarded the contract. According to the findings of the Uwaifo Panel which probed
corrupt practices during the Shagari administration, Fougerolle which did get the
contract in 1980, paid a N21.8 million ‘kickback’ into NPN treasury. This and other
revenues derived from other fraudulent sources were then doled out brazenly to an
endless retinue of rapacious government and party officials. Major beneficiaries of this
largesse, according to the panel, included party stalwarts such as Adisa Akinloye (N1.5
million), Bello Maitama Yusuf (N3.29 million) and Ali Makele (N1 million)
(Newswatch. August 11, 1986, p.21).

Other resounding scandals at the national level involved oil deals at the Nigerian
National Petroleum Corporation, the development of the Federal Capital Territory in
Abuja and the Presidential Task Force on Rice Importation. The Transport and
Aviation minister and NPN power broker, Umaru Dikko, who took refuge in Britain
after the 1983 coup, was then declared Nigeria’s most wanted person in connection
with N4 billion which he had allegedly embezzled as head of the Rice Task Force in
1983 (Punch. July 11, 1984).

At the State and Local Government levels, the Governors and Commissioners turned
State treasuries into personal funds which they dispensed to political allies and
personal accounts as they pleased. In most cases, such moneys had been generated
through foreign loans which had been negotiated at high interest rates for the
execution of ‘development projects’. According to the report of the earlier mentioned
Uwaifo Panel, virtually every State Governor in the Second Republic was convicted of

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one misconduct or another. While some of them were ordered to refund large sums of
money misappropriated from the government treasury, the more heavily indicted ones
such as Ambrose Alii, Victor Masi, Adamu Atta, Barkin Zuwo, Abubakar Rimi, Garba
Nadama, Aper Aku, Solomon Lar and Jim Nwobodo were sentenced to several
concurrent terms of imprisonment (ibid.).

It was therefore, not an overstatement when an official record indicated that between
$5 million and $7 million was stolen from the Federal Government coffers between
1979 and 1983 through fraud, extravagance and embezzlement (Newswatch. October
5, 1987). When added to the amount that must have gone the same way in State and
Local Governments, it is not a surprise that the nation quickly became a “debtor and
beggar nation” as the clique that overthrew Shagari in December 1984 put it.

Though he admitted that corruption had overtaken his government, all that President
Shagari did was to launch an ‘Ethical Revolution’ in 1982. Ironically, the same
government officials who preached moral regeneration in the government-owned
electronic media turned out to be the chief culprits of moral depravity as shown in the
post Shagari administration probes. An irate writer painted the scenario thus:
The Shagari regime was an unmitigated disaster.
Gross abuse of power, squandering of riches,
outright stealing of public funds, stinking corruption
and massive rigging of elections were the hallmarks
of the wasted years of his administration. Rumours
of coup attempts filled the air to a suffocating point
but the serene, if not politically naive Shagari did
nothing to ameliorate the deteriorating conditions in
the country. Like Emperor Nero, Shagari chose to
fiddle while his Rome was burning” (Omotunde,
1990:29).

Given the prevalence of such a political culture over the entire history of Nigerian
governments as outlined above, and considering its unsettling effects on the political,
economic and social facets of national life, it could not have been a surprise that
corruption emerged as a significant factor related to military intervention in the
perception of respondents, just as it must have been viewed by informed sources in
other walks of life in the country.

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73.3.2 Political Disorder

As it has been stated at the beginning of the discussion on corruption, one other sad
feature of Nigerian life with which corruption has a cyclic relationship is the culture of
establishing political supremacy by all means; a culture which features manipulations,
intolerance, intimidation, violence, commodification of nominations and votes,
electoral fraud and bitter post-election relationship among parties. These make up
what the respondents identified as ‘political disorder’.

Rooted in the political economy of wealth accumulation through the control of power,
the conduct of political party affairs, campaigns and elections has always generated
uncontrolled aggression, unregulated competition and undue intrigues beginning from
the First Republic. The politics of ethnicity, the manipulation of census figures and the
rigging of election results which generated so much crisis, especially in Western
Nigeria in the 1960s are all relics of this political culture under discussion. Regardless
of the fine and liberal provisions of the constitution meant to guide political contest as
a civilised tussle, political parties and leaders in Nigeria have always focused their
energies on one matter: the ascent to office and the exploitation of its perquisites.

As in the case of recurring corruption, politics in the Second republic was a

resurrection of old political cultures in new political parties (Omotunde, 1990;
Diamond, 1990). Despite constitutional novelties which provided for liberalism,
widespread political participation and national rather than regional base for parties, and
other accessories of presidentialism; the formation of political parties in 1978 presaged
the politics of ethnicity. The actual conduct of campaigns featured the indiscipline and
intrigues of the First Republic politics while the election results unsurprisingly reflected
its inconclusive outcome. The confusion shrouding the translation of ‘12 and two-
thirds States’ in the 1979 presidential election as well as the narrow victory margin of
the NPN re-invoked party alliances of convenience as was the case in the Balewa
regime. More for sharing offices than for national interest, the NPN secured an
alliance with the NPP, while the other parties coalesced into an opposition under the
name of ‘The Progressives’. Yet, none of the parties in the alliances could work

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together for a long time in the interest of the nation. The result as usual was the
splitting of the coalitions and the inception of bitter recriminations which led to
impeachments, threats of impeachment and inter-party wrangling which in turn eroded
the legitimacy of the Republic. These clashes came to a climax in the 1983 elections.
Diamond (1990) notes that the election was doomed to erupt into chaos right from its
earliest process: the registration of voters. The voters’ register which finally emerged
at the end of the exercise, and which was to be the basis of voting statistics was said to
have generated much protests by opposition parties who accused the Federal Electoral
Commission of manipulating the register to favour the incumbent government.
Campaigns featured the harassment of the opposition by hired thugs, the abuse of the
power of incumbency, and the bribery of election personnel. All the parties were said
to have been involved in the massive rigging which led to the determination of most
results in court. The outcome, in most cases, led to widespread violent demonstrations
in 1983 in which at least 100 lives and property estimated at $100 million were lost
(Diamond, 1983). The primitive rivalry and rowdiness which marks political contests
in Nigeria is summarised by an observer who said, “Elections in Nigeria are a contest
of guts, blood and tears, a contest serviced with sacks of Naira, private armies, hired
crowds and babalawos14. The end justifies the means. The important thing is winning,
not how” (Ekpu, 1986:26).

As in the phenomenon of corruption, political disorder and intolerance have also been
linked with all interventions in which the military ousted a civilian government. Its
identification by respondents as one of the significant justifications for the overthrow
of a government is, therefore, a reinforcement of the argument that political
indiscipline or disorder is yet another issue closely related to military intervention.

7.3.3.3 Inept Leadership

Another significant issue identified by the respondents as a justification for military
intervention is inept leadership. This malady which was personified in Shagari’s
presidential tenure has already been elaborated upon in a preceding section that
focused on why the Shagari administration was singled out as the one most deserving

14 Yoruba name for psychics.

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of being forced out of office by the military. Furthermore, as it was extensively

outlined in chapter two, smother ruler who shares a similar characteristic, and on
account of which he was overthrown, was Yakubu Gowon. It may be worth
reiterating here that his ineptitude consisted largely in his inability to curb the alarming
rate of abuse of power among his governors, commissioners and other top cabinet
officials. It was also manifested in his dithering over the hand-over of power to
civilians, a vacillation which critics of his government (e.g. Ejoor, 1993) attributed to
his being controlled by powerful interest groups from the North.

Though it may not be easy to extricate the issue of inept leadership from others
discussed earlier such as corruption and political indiscipline, it can be seen to have
been given a special mention in coup speeches including those marking the ousting of
the Balewa, Ironsi, Gowon, Shagari, and (even dynamic ones such as the) Buhari
governments (See excerpts of these speeches under Appendices). Its identification by
respondents as a justifying factor in overthrown administrations includes it among
factors which they could recognise and identify with in their perception of military
intervention.

7.3.3.4 Ailing Economy

In the 1950s and 1960s, agriculture was the mainstay of Nigeria’s economy. Blessed
with a persistently good climate and an abundance of fertile vegetation and plains, the
nation had 80 per cent of its then estimated 53 million people engaged in agriculture.
With the large-scale production and export of cocoa, groundnuts, oil palm produce,
cotton, rubber, timber and livestock, agriculture contributed 85% of the total foreign
exchange of the nation (Federal Office of Statistics, Lagos).

At this period, oil exploration, which has today overshadowed agriculture, was a low
key activity begun by an Anglo-Dutch Consortium, Shell D’Arcy, the forerunner of the
present day Shell Petroleum Development Corporation (Newswatch, October 5,
1987). In 1958, for example, only five thousand barrels of crude oil were produced
daily, while in 1964 crude oil export generated only 15% of the foreign exchange.
Steadily, however, the prominence of oil in the nation’s economy, especially its

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contribution to foreign earnings, continued to rise: 33% in 1966; 58% in 1970 and
87% in 1972 (Federal Office of Statistics, Lagos). Today, with a contribution of more
than 95% of foreign exchange, the oil sector has almost totally taken over the
economy.

The new economic reality began in the 1970s when oil exploration intensified with the
proliferation of oil companies such as Shell, BP, Gulf, Mobil, Agip, Texaco, Elf and
Ashland. Nigeria not only became the world’s sixth largest producer of oil then but
also joined the ranks of other world oil producers in OPEC, the international oil cartel,
in 1971. The nation’s oil fortunes in this decade were further boosted by the 1973
Arab oil boycott (Omonubi, 1987).
The military government of Yakubu Gowon which inherited this fortune seized the
opportunity to actualise a paradigm of development which was seen mostly from the
perspective of installing impressive physical structures (ibid.). Accordingly, the Third
National Development Plan (1975-1980) which had already been costed at N33 billion
received an upward revision of N43 billion, and there was a feverish award of
contracts for the construction of high rise buildings, stadia, flyovers, highways, hotels
and airports in Lagos and other major cities (Newswatch. October 5, 1987).

On the international front, the government was out to flaunt the new found wealth
judging by its willingness to single-handedly host and pay for international
engagements such as the conferences of ECOWAS and the Festival of Arts and
Culture which took place in Lagos in 1977.

Other features of the Nigerian economy at this period included the boom in
construction companies, banks, insurance companies and import trade. It also featured
the upward revision of salaries (Udoji awards), the rising of per capita income (from a
modest N60 in 1960 to N575 in the 1970s and 80s) (ibid.) and an urban drift as the
search for blue-collar jobs and the appetite for imported luxuries sidelined rural life
characterised by subsistence agriculture, small-scale commerce and the lack of social
amenities.

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The diversification of the economy through investment in other sectors such as

agriculture and the petrochemical industry which offered promising potentials did not
seem to attract as much attention as physical development and the importation of
luxuries. The Petrochemical industry estimated in the 1970s to cost $2 billion (ibid.)
and the Liquefied Natural Gas project, for example, have all been on the drawing
board since then.

It was within this prevailing economic scenario that the military handed over power to
a civilian government in 1979. As the expectations from oil earnings soared, especially
in the 1979-83 period when the nation had a record production quota of 2.3 million
barrels a day, the pattern of development priorities of the 1960s and 70s persisted.
The Fourth National Development Plan (1981-85), for example, was put at N82
billion. Incidentally, for a number of macro-economic factors, this period marked the
beginning of a serious decline in oil income in Nigeria. In the first place, non-OPEC
countries at that time such as Brazil, Mexico, the defunct USSR, Egypt and Malaysia
had become large suppliers of oil to the international oil market, thereby weakening the
monopolistic or bargaining influence of OPEC and its member nations. Accordingly,
OPEC’s share of the world oil market dropped to 29% in 1983 as opposed to 55% in
1974 (Newswatch. June 10, 1985, p. 16). Secondly, it was a period in which most
industrialised nations, assisted by the International Energy Agency (IEA), had resorted
to alternative fuel sources in the bid to free themselves from the strangle-hold of
OPEC. Coal, gas, nuclear and solar energy sources became more convenient than oil
(ibid.).

Thirdly, in the bid to retain some power in the oil market, especially in view of the
afore-mentioned challenges, OPEC imposed production ceilings on member nations.
Nigeria’s quota of oil production fell from 2.3 million barrels a day to 1.3 million
barrels a day (ibid.). To worsen the situation further, Nigeria was forced by the
cheaper prices offered by its competitors to slash both its production quota and barrel
price in 1983 (500,000 at 28 dollars per barrel) (Federal Office of Statistics, Lagos).
Thus, the Fourth National Development Plan projected at N82 billion on the basis of
2.3 million barrels a day at $35 per barrel became severely impaired. That too marked

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the end of the oil boom and the beginning of the hard days which have been the lot of
many Nigerians till date.

The Shagari Government (1979-83) resorted to a profusion of external borrowing

which went into political projects, notably the development of the new capital in
Abuja, and food importation. Though the economy, influenced largely by global
economic recession, had already begun to decline before Shagari assumed office in
1979, two indices reveal how badly the government compounded the problem. The
first is that Nigeria’s external reserve plunged from N5.6 billion at the inception of the
Shagari government in 1980 to an all-time low of N0.9 billion at the exit of that
government in 1983. Additionally, the country’s foreign debts rose geometrically, for
example, from N2594.7 million in 1982 to N7.9 billion in 1984 (Newswatch. June 19,
1985).
The immediate impact of the ailing economy on the average Nigerian was untold
misery occasioned by the closure of industries and unemployment, scarcity of food and
essential goods and a spiralling inflation as well. It was against this economic
background that the Shagari government was overthrown in December 1983.
Economy was a major issue in the speech of the military group that effected the
overthrow.
That group which formed the next government headed by General Buhari, promised to
address the root causes of the depressed economy, but this was only explored from the
sole perspective of whether or not to take an IMF loan mainly for the purpose of
servicing foreign debts in order to restore the nation’s credibility in the international
market. While the proposal was considered, the military government imposed a series
of coercive austerity measures which further compounded the plight of the people.
Throughout the short tenure of the Buhari regime, industries remained shut while the
scarcity of essential commodities escalated.
The Babangida administration which displaced Buhari in the August 1985 coup also
cited the ailing economy as its priority. Its own programme for turning it round was a
package dubbed Structural Adjustment Programme (SAP) whose core element was the
Second Tier Foreign Exchange Market (SFEM). Announcing this package on June
27, 1985 President Babangida explained it as a move towards the gradual reduction of

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the over-valued Naira. To this end, therefore, SFEM was designed primarily to guide
the efficient rationing of scarce foreign exchange among competing users within the
nation. It was also meant to catalyse the correction of the structural distortions in the
domestic economy, discourage the dependence on importation and encourage the
diversification of the economy by strengthening the international competitiveness of
non-oil products.
Regardless of the rapidity at which these fine economic theories tumbled out of the
finance ministry under the Babangida government, the economy showed no signs of
improvement before Babangida’s exit in 1993. Continued external borrowing, the
removal of subsidies on local services and goods, retrenchment of workers and
inflation were some of the features which pointed to the continuing illness of the
economy (Ihonvbere, 1996). Nor has the situation improved under the present military
government. Perhaps this remark by Waziri (1983:11) sums up the cycle of
squandered wealth and betrayed expectations over the years: “the crux of Nigeria’s
problem is inefficient resource management”.
This attempt to summarise the handling of the economy by the various governments in
Nigeria, should make it easier to appreciate why in the respondent’s opinion, the issue
of economy, (just as corruption, political instability and inept leadership) relates to
military intervention in politics.

7.3 .3.5 Oppressive Rule

Referring mostly to military rule, the issue of oppressive rule is equally appreciable.
The nature of military rule has been discussed in chapter three (on the aspect dealing
with the relationship between government and the mass media in Nigeria).
Furthermore, some of its peculiarities, especially the provisions of decrees and their
impact on fundamental rights have also been discussed in chapter two and sections of
the present chapter as well. To recapitulate, the spirit of such enactments such as a
crusade against indiscipline, corruption, economic sabotage and political anarchy was
in most cases lost in the harshness and arbitrary application of the decrees: in a manner
which violated basic individual and group freedoms. For example, while the Recovery
of Public Property Special Military Tribunals Decree of 1984 could be seen at its face
value to be aimed at the restoration of order and accountability in public service, the

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nature and procedure of the hearings negated the principles of justice. In the first
place, the procedure, even in other cases involving death sentences, placed the burden
of proof of innocence on the accused. Whereas natural justice places the burden of
proof of guilt on the prosecutor and holds the accused innocent until found guilty, it
was the onus of the accused public officers arraigned before the tribunals to prove that
they had not unjustly enriched themselves. Even more burdensome was the
responsibility of journalists or other persons charged under the Public Officers
Protection from False Accusation Decree to prove that their reports were true in
every material particular.
Other negations of justice inherent in the decrees and their procedural application
include the facts that the tribunals largely comprised military personnel while trials
were held in camera and the right of appeal was not allowed (Ojo, 1987).

7.3.4 Respondents' Willingness to Call for Coups

Respondents were asked if they ever felt like writing an article or issuing a press
release or granting an interview or organising a public rally for the purpose of
expressing the wish for military intervention in government in reaction to their
frustration with any administration. Most of the journalists did not respond to the
question. As stated earlier, this survey was done a few months after the trial and
imprisonment of some soldiers and civilians accused of planning to overthrow the
incumbent military regime in 199515. Some of those jailed were journalists who had
been accused of knowledge and concealment of information relating to the abortive
coup. This was then followed by the trial in a military court and hanging of nine
civilians led by the environment activist, Ken Saro-Wiwa. There is no doubt that these
events would have engendered a climate of fear and insecurity across the nation.
Though they were clearly assured of their anonymity as well as the purely academic
utility of the survey, most of the respondents must have been inhibited in their response
to this particular question which seemed to be the most sensitive at the time. It was,
therefore, safe for such respondents to keep quiet on this issue.

15 Note, however, that the proposal for the study and the research design had been concluded in
England long before the occurrence of these events.

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Even among those who offered an answer, the majority indicated that they did not feel
like using any of the channels to express the wish for a coup. Table 7.7 shows the
details of the responses.

Table 7.7 Respondents’ Desire to Call for Military Intervention16

Channel Yes No No response
Article 86 (43%) 75 (37%) 39(19%)
Press release 8 (4%) 75 (37%) 117(58%)
Press conference 16 (8%) 73 (36%) 111 (55%)
Public rally 28 (14%) 71 (35%) 101 (50%)
N = 200

Of those who answered in the affirmative, a prominent proportion (86 out of 138) said
they preferred writing an article to the other channels. It is not a surprise that writing
an article was the most preferred channel among this group. Being journalists, that
would be the most professional way of expressing themselves. Moreover, it is not a
common practice in Nigeria for individual journalists to lead rallies on political matters
or hold press conferences or issue personal press releases for the same causes. They
only exploit these channels in matters affecting them as a union.

It is equally instructive to note that though some of the respondents 86 (43% of the
sample) said they felt like expressing the wish for a military intervention by writing
articles, none of them had done so, as indicated in their response to a follow-up
question.
Responding to the sources of their inhibition, they identified “fear of reprisals from the
incumbent government” and “editorial censorship” as the most common hindrances.
Though the fear of repression cannot be underestimated, especially in military regimes
that promulgated a litany of decrees aimed at restricting media criticisms, respondents’
inability to publish articles advocating for coups (further demonstrated by the results of

16 See item number five in the questionnaire.

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the content analysis) can be argued to be subsumed in the gate-keeping theory. While
accepting that journalists are responsible for a great deal of the routinely produced
contents of the media regardless of the looming powers of media owners, some
researchers (Okigbo,1987; Davidson et al, 1976) admit that the extent to which
journalists contribute their quota or the manner in which they do so are influenced by
several social factors which compulsively shape mass media products. Forces such as
editorial policy and ideological leaning of key gatekeepers in a particular media
organisation can limit expressions of views on sensitive issues such as advocacies for
military intervention, considering the anti-democratic effluents of such interventions.

7.3.5 Respondents’ Views on Whether Politicians Provoke the Military to Seize

Power
The discourse on military intervention often tends towards the justification of coups on
grounds of political expediency. A common argument among proponents of military
intervention is that the legitimate political class repeatedly tend towards plunging the
nation into economic bankruptcy and anarchy, a situation which the soldiers are
believed to aim at forestalling each time they intervene. Ademoyega (1981:56), one of
the brains behind the first coup, for example, argues that the army’s intervention was
necessitated by the fact that national unity was seriously threatened “as the struggle for
primacy between the political parties intensified and got complicated by the fraud
which accompanied the 1964 elections”. This argument is supported by Omotunde
(1986:9) who agreed that “prior to the January 1966 coup, the country had been on a
trajectory course of destruction”.

However, as in the case of the debate on the desirability of coups, the messianic
philosophy of military intervention has been dismissed as mere rationalisation even in
some military circles. In a controversial lecture in 1990, Retired Lt.-General
Theophillus Danjuma, who was among the three top leaders of the Murtala/Obasanjo
military administration, astonished his audience when he remarked that “thirty years or
so of military rule has shown that the soldiers are our own people; our blood runs in
them; they are no angels. Just as there are corrupt predatory politicians, there are
corrupt predatory military rulers.” Another retired soldier who played a prominent role

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in military politics bluntly ascribes the objective conditions that foster coups to “the
desire for office, lust for power and indiscipline in the armed forces” (Katsina, 1990:5).

It was against this background that the survey sought to find out how the journalists
stand on the issue of military intervention as a product of political provocation. More
than half the respondents, 121 or 61% said “yes” when asked if they thought that
Nigerian politicians provoke the military to take over power. Those who thought
otherwise were 58 (29%) while 17 respondents said they did not know. As it was
indicated in the preamble to this question, there is plenty of argument in support of the
proposition that the political class invites military seizure of power. Respondents who
took a similar stand are those overwhelmed by the reoccurrence of the acts of
selfishness, misconduct, insensitivity and irresponsibility on the part of government
officials in both Republics as seen in preceding analyses.
Regardless of the predatory effects of these ills on the political and economic stability
of Nigeria as well as their debilitating effects on the standard and dignity of life of the
average Nigerian over the period of two failed Republics and a protracted corrective
military rule, public office seekers have not shown any determination to forge a new
ethos of public service. In the following remarks, a writer describes the consistently
notorious carriage of the Nigerian political class: “The behaviour of politicians in the
First, Second and Third Republics has been nothing but a disgrace: their buffoonery,
irresponsibility and mediocrity have made them vulnerable to manipulation and to
military intervention” (Ihonvbere, 1996:217). Zooming in on the legislators of the
short-lived Third Republic, who were elected as a preliminary step to, and test of the
viability of, a transition to civil rule, Ihonvbere further regretted that that they showed
no signs of having learnt any lessons from the past. Citing some telling statistics, he
said of them: “In less than 60 days of their inauguration, the parliamentarians had spent
over N89 million on accommodation alone. Indeed, by October, the Assembly was
reportedly spending N45 million weekly on hotel expenses in a country where teachers
could not be paid, workers were on strike, school libraries and laboratories were empty
and unemployment was ravaging the economy” (ibid.).
The posture of politicians regarding the cancellation of the June 1993 elections was
equally deplorable. Considering that the elections, as indicated in chapter two, had

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been adjudged free and fair by independent observers from within and outside the
country, it was expected that the political class, had they had the interest of political
development at heart, would have put aside party differences or fortunes aside to
pressure the military government into restoring the election results. But it was the
biblical metaphor of the two women who went before King Solomon in contention
over the living child: out of envy, the bereaved party did not care if the living child was
divided in two. Politicians of the National Republican Convention, which lost,
according to the tentative results of the election, not only endorsed the cancellation but
also threatened violence should the nullification be rescinded (Campbell, 1995).
Seen in such wasteful, greedy and unprincipled moulds, it was natural for a significant
percentage of the respondents to believe that politicians provoke military intervention.

7.3.6 Factors Related to Politicians* Provocation of Military Intervention

In response to how, in their opinion, they thought politicians provoke military
intervention, “Political intolerance and rivalry”(97 or 30%), “corruption”(87 or 27%)
and “the lack of political direction”(66 or 20%) ranked among the most frequent of
multiple responses. Interestingly, these same issues recurred prominently in earlier
questions regarding the overthrow of governments. Though they have been discussed
in this chapter, the significance of their concurrence will be further explored in the
chapter on discussion of results.
Respondents who did not think politicians provoke the army to seize power (fewer in
number than those who thought so) must have been influenced by the endless cycle of
broken promises and the ineffectiveness of most intervening military administrations.
As it was observed in the introductory chapter, apart from striking when mass
confidence in an incumbent government is at its ebb, intervening groups usually
posture themselves in a salvific fashion. The people’s expectations build up very
easily, and so do the frustrations that come with the inability of the new
administrations to either avoid or deal with the flaws of the governments they deposed.
For example, the installation of sustainable democracy has been mentioned as the
motive of almost all military administrations in Nigeria. As it has been indicated
previously in chapters one and two, each administration has embarked on complex
political reforms aimed at this goal. Nevertheless, with the exception of the

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Murtala/Obasanjo administration, no other military government has ever lived up to its

promise of installing democratic rule. The instances of the tortuous and prolonged
transition programmes of the Gowon and Babangida administrations are too familiar
now.

Nor has the military solved the riddle of poverty, corruption and other social ills of the
country. At best, there have been flashes of action and compliance steeped in coercion
as in the Murtala and Buhari eras. But the persistence of the ills after the short tenures
of their initiators proves how such measures merely scratch the surface of the problem.
In union with proponents who argue against the relevance and usefulness of the
military in political administration, and whose arguments have also been cited earlier in
this chapter, some Nigerian journalists who do not think the actions of politicians
provoke military intervention can be said to express the belief that despite their initial
promises and postures, the military are not a better alternative to the political class.
This is further confirmed in the major reasons they gave for their position. The
respondents who did not think the behaviour of politicians was too intolerable to invite
military intervention were 58 who were also allowed multiple responses to explain
their stand. A majority of the responses (47 or 46%) stated that “the military have no
business in political administration regardless of the mistakes of an incumbent
government”. Another significant response in this case (29 or 28%) was that “the
military are so power-hungry that they only cash in on the slightest controversy to take
over government”. These responses find corroboration in the views held by writers
and commentators who argue that selfishness and lust for position are the true motives
of most coups. Such views which had been cited earlier in this chapter are exemplified
by Yakassai (1990) who advances the argument that the army have not only tasted
power but have also enjoyed the paraphernalia, patronage, publicity, fame, name and
bounty accruing from it, and are therefore not eager to withdraw from politics.
The above position is even strengthened by a separate result in which a majority (114
or 57%) of the respondents who accepted that there was some justification for some
coups, said they regretted their judgement after the take over. Only 35 respondents
(18%) said they would not change their minds afterwards. The rest of the respondents
were 35 who gave no answers and 16 who said they did not know how to respond.

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Table 7.8 Respondents’ Regrets After Coup17

Regrets about new admin. Frequency Percentage
Not better than the former 88 37
Can’t deliver promises 46 19
Became dictatorial 42 18
Economy got worse 49 21
Other 11 5
Total 23618 100

The former had no responses because they must be among those respondents who saw
no justification in any coup, and, therefore, had no cause to regret when it happened.
For those who changed their minds after the coup had taken place, the most prominent
reason once more was that they “soon discovered that the new administration was not
better than or preferable to the one overthrown”. Other reasons for the change of
opinion are indicated in table 7.8 above.

7.3.7 Respondents’ Reactions to Reasons Given by Intervening Coup Plotters.

Whether they had wished for a coup or not, respondents were asked if they agreed
with some of the reasons given by some of the military juntas for taking over power.
By a slight margin, as shown in table 7.9, respondents who were agreeable (92 or
48%) were more than those who disagreed (86 or 43%).

Table 7.9 Respondents’ Reactions to Justifiability of Reasons for Power Seizure

Response Frequency Percentage
Justifiable 92 48

Not justifiable 86 43

Undecided 15 8

No response 7 3

Total 200 100

(Table relates to item number thirteen in the questionnaire)

17 Table relates to item number twelve in the questionnaire.

18 Total due to multiple responses.

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I
When pressed for further confirmation of their opinions, those respondents who agreed
that certain coup makers had justifiable excuses for edging out a ruling government
identified such excuses as high corruption in government circles, political disorder,
inept leadership and collapse of the economy; once again highlighting the association
between those issues and the probability of military intervention.

7.3.8 Benefits and Adversities of Military Intervention

Respondents were further asked to state what, in their opinions, constituted either the
benefits or adverse effects of military intervention. Relative to the benefits, 71
respondents (20.3%) said there was none at all. These, once again, are respondents
who share the view that military rule has no place in the nation’s governance.
Table 7.10 Benefits of Military Intervention in Politics
Benefits Frequency Percentage
Restoration of law and order 88 25
Stoppage of unhealthy political rivalry 68 20
Executing projects without pol. bureaucracy 36 10
Feeling of national unity due to unitary govt. 39 11
Checking Excesses of former govt. 39 11
None at all 71 20
Other 8 3
Total 34919 100

N=200
However, those respondents who credited military intervention with some gains (as
shown in table 7.10 above) mentioned the restoration of law and order in the body
politic and the disbanding of unhealthy political rivalry as the two most evident. It has
been previously stated that the civilian rulers of the two Republics were so
overwhelmed by party interests and economic problems that they could hardly be seen
to be the real captains of the ship of State. Shagari, it must be reiterated, is a typical
case. Through their inaction or complacency, they created a sharp contrast to the
military dispatch with which the likes of Murtala Mohammed and Muhammadu Buhari
instilled discipline and order into the society in a very short time. In his short but

19 Total due to m ultiple resp onses.

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deeply philosophical treatise on ‘The Trouble With Nigeria’, Achebe (1985) pins
Nigeria’s perennial problems on the failure of leadership. He reminisces how the
Nigerian society especially in the ever rowdy city of Lagos characterised by lateness to
work and chaotic traffic congestion was automatically transformed into an orderly
society overnight due to Murtala’s reputation for ruthlessness. The same could be said
of the manner in which the governments of Mohammed and Buhari dealt with corrupt
government dignitaries who had hitherto carved the image of untouchables as they
abused their offices and embezzled public funds. Even if the measures were
ephemeral and their procedures repressive, they proved that political power could be
exploited towards changing certain aspects of society.
However, I have also found it logical to argue that if any thing, the nature of these
benefits (dwelling on the curbing of politicians’ excesses) further reinforces the
respondents’ earlier identification of political disorder as a major factor associated with
coups.
Remarkably, a highly significant proportion of the entire respondents, (98 or 46%),
was of the view that whatever the gains of military intervention may be, they were
defeated by their short term tenacity. This view stems from the discontinuities arising
from incessant and unpredictable coups and counter coups. Due to the fear of being
accused of unnecessary intervention, there is hardly any in-coming administration that
builds upon any programme or policy initiated by the deposed administration, no
matter how laudable such programmes might have been. Even where such policies are
adopted, they are renamed and redesigned. An example was the case of the Babangida
administration which came out with the Mass Mobilisation for Economic Recovery and
Social Justice in 1985 which was in principle the War Against Indiscipline initiated by
the Buhari government in 1984. The point to be made here is that the swift change in
governments detracts from the impact of government measures that might have
contributed positively to national well-being. Other factors which contribute to the
evanescence of the gains of military intervention relate to the diversion of government
attention from national interests to personal or sectional interests, and the abuse of
power in seeking compliance to decrees. A good example was Buharis’ War Against
Indiscipline which was soon hijacked by power-hungry military governors and other
military personnel who exploited the authority invested in them in the enforcement of

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the tenets of the programme as means of witch-hunting and the display of naked power
(National Concord. July 4, 1985).
Only six (3%) respondents saw such gains to be long-term. Other (79) respondents
gave no responses while 12 said they did not know.

On the other hand, violation of rights, reluctance to restore democratic rule, and poor
external image shared the front line in the opinion of the respondents who identified
the adverse effects of military intervention.
Table 7.11 Adverse Effects of Military Intervention
Effects Frequency Percentage
Violation of rights 176 16
Reluctance to restore democratic rule 171 15
Poor external image 151 14
Corruption due to lack of checks 150 14
Disruptions of programmes/policies 133 12
Economic Deterioration 110 10
Political instability 110 16
Ethnic Divisions 61 5.5
Other 38 4
Total llOO20 100
N = 200

7.3.8.1 Reluctance to Return Power to Civilians

These issues identified by the respondents as the adverse effects of military rule are
familiar features of military rule which every knowledgeable follower of Nigerian
government can identify with. The issue of rights violation has already been treated.
Relative to the issue of the reluctance of military rulers to restore democratic rule, two
classic cases were the Gowon and Babangida administrations. As it was pointed out in
chapter two, Gowon came to power following the counter coup that ended Ironsi’s
seven-month old government on July 29, 1966. Despite accusations of corruption
levelled on his administration as well as its weakness in dealing with it, Gowon

20 Total due to m ultiple responses.

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remained in power for nine years (1966-75) including the period of the 30-month civil
war. At the end of the war in 1970, and in recognition of the popular wish for a return
to democracy, Gowon initiated a number of measures (outlined in chapter two)
preparatory to the restoration of democratic rule in 1976. In 1974, however, as the
nation warmed up for the return to civil rule, Gowon announced the indefinite
postponement of the transition deadline. His explanation of this decision was that
those who aspired to lead the nation in the Second Republic had not learnt anything
from past experiences (Akirinade, 1986). For a ruler who could not muster enough
moral courage to sack his commissioners and governors who were known to be
corrupt, this argument was seen by critics (e.g. Ejoor, 1993) as a veneer over his love
of power. It was therefore a source of national discontent, and one which attracted the
nation’s support for the group that overthrew Gowon in 1975.

Babangida was yet another military ruler whose eight-year reign nearly equalled
Gowon’s protracted stay in office. In fact, it has been widely argued that Babangida
had plans to perpetuate himself in office (Campbell, 1995). This clandestine plan,
referred to by his critics as the ‘hidden agenda’, was said to be inherent in the multiple
postponement of transition dates, the manipulation of the electoral process, the
formation and control of the two grassroots political parties by government, the
concentration of power under the presidency and finally the cancellation of the 1993
presidential election (Ihonvbere, 1996).

7.3.8.2 Poor External Image

The issue of poor external image arises from the nature of military rule which includes
the two preceding factors: the violation of human rights and the corrosion of
democracy. In the international community, military rule is regarded as an ominous
deviation from almost all the hallmarks of civilised polities. In an era in which
democratic reforms and economic liberalisation even in the erstwhile fortresses of
authoritarianism is the dominant political doctrine, the prevalence of unaccountable
power, dictatorship, corruption, and incoherent policies is a major factor that attracts
an unsympathetic attitude of liberal Western democracies towards military
governments in developing nations.

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Nigeria’s bid for yet another democratic polity reached a peak during the presidential
elections held in June 1993. Beginning from the multi-step transition programmes
which preceded the election, political events in Nigeria attracted an enormous
international interest. As Africa’s largest nation, Nigeria was expected to play a
leading role in the democratisation of governance, and by so doing, inspire a change in
the same direction in other developing countries shackled by political instability. In a
swift move, however, Babangida deflated the mounting morale with the cancellation of
the election for no justifiable reasons. The reaction of the international community was
typical. The United States of America condemned the cancellation and threatened to
back an international pressure to stop Babangida from staying in power beyond the
transition deadline of August 1993. The US State Department translated the
government stance into action by expelling Nigeria’s military attache from the Nigerian
Embassy in Washington and by a threat to sever diplomatic relations with Nigeria as
well as freeze a $22.8 million aid package to it (Ikim, 1993). On its part, the British
government described the situation as ‘regrettable’ and swiftly withdrew its military
advisers from Nigeria’s war college. It also announced a number of sanctions
including the cancellation of on-going aid packages and the denial of entry visas to
officials of the recalcitrant military government (Ihonvbere and Vaughan, 1995).
Canada was another country that expressed its unreserved opposition to Babangida’s
action by imposing sanctions and withdrawing aid packages (Obiagwu, 1993).

The current suspension of Nigeria from the Commonwealth following the brutal
hanging of Ken Saro Wiwa and nine other MOSOP activists by the Abacha
government in November 1995 evokes yet another symbolic posture of the
international community towards hindrances to the course of democracy.
Other adverse effects of military intervention prominently identified include the lack of
continuity in government programmes and policies, political instability and economic
deterioration. These have already been treated in previous sections of this chapter.

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7.3.9 Aspect of National Development that Suffers Most or Gains Most from
Military Intervention
Asked to specify the aspect of national development that either suffers or benefits most
from military seizure of power, the respondents identified a wide range of issues on
both sides, but the modal responses were human rights and national unity respectively.

Table 7.12 Most Prominent Gains and Pains of Military Intervention21

Suffers Most Frequency Percent Benefits most Freq. Percent
Human rights 70 35 National unity 75 38
The economy 44 22 Sports 24 12
Political stability 35 18 Pol. reforms 13 6.5
Education 28 14 Economy 3 1
External image 7 3.5 Education 1 0
Other 13 6.5 other22 72 36
No response 3 1 No response 12 6
Total 200 100 Total 200 100

The issue of human rights violation by the military has been amply discussed in this
chapter. What needs to be explained here is the issue of national unity as the aspect of
national development that benefits most from military rule. Being an autocratic and
hegemonic system that brooks no opposition, a military administration enjoys the
leverage of making and implementing its policies and programmes with minimal
opposition from or obstruction by groups or individuals inside or outside government
circles. Take the case of State creation as an example. In civilian governments, this
would be a long and controversial process unduly influenced by political and ethnic
interests. It would also involve litigations by groups which feel disenchanted with the
exercise. In a military dispensation, however, the exercise is accomplished with little
or no consultation, and is accepted with little complaints. It is therefore no surprise
that all the States creation exercises so far (1967, 1975, 1987, 1991 and 1996) have

21 Table relates to items 18 and 19 in the questionnaire.

22 This category represents miscellaneous responses which could not be classified under any
particular heading.

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been earned out by military administrations. It is this kind of situation that must have
influenced the respondents who identified national unity as the most positive product
of military rule. A point which must be clarified here, though, is that the lack of
opposition to government programmes is usually due to coercion and autocracy and
does not necessarily translate to national unity or consensus. Table 7.12 (p.292) gives
a comprehensive presentation of the issues identified as benefits and losses of military
rule.

7.3.10 Respondents’ Positions on Out-lawing Coups and Power-sharing Between

Civilians and the Military
As a final test of the tenacity of their opinions on military intervention in politics,
respondents were requested to indicate how strongly or otherwise they felt about two
proposals. In response to the first proposal: that military intervention in government
should be outlawed, 72% of the respondents were in favour. The breakdown
comprises 118 respondents (59%) strongly agreed and a further 27 (13.5%) merely
agreed, leaving smaller percentages of responses for those who were undecided,
disagreed or strongly disagreed. The feeling was confirmed by responses to the
second proposal: that a political and constitutional provision be made for the military
to share political power with the civilians, a dispensation otherwise known as Diarchy.
Seventy-four per cent disagreed. Of these, one hundred and nine respondents (54.5%)
strongly disagreed, and another 39 (19.5%) disagreed as opposed to two
respondents{ 1%) who strongly agreed, and 14 (7%) who agreed. The rest of the
frequencies were for either the undecided or the non-responding.

The overwhelming view that military rule should be outlawed as well as the rejection
of the proposal for a joint military/civilian government, can only be seen as the
respondents’ recognition of the futility of military intervention in Nigerian politics as a
solution to the nation’s problems. If after six coups, 26 years in office and a continual
tinkering with the political process by different groups of military personnel, Nigeria’s
political, economic and social problems persist, surely the answer must lie outside
military intervention. As Taiwo (1995) argues, addressing Nigeria’s problems requires
an attack on the structural and historical features that contribute to the reproduction of

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the problems rather than mere ideological changes. This is the logic behind the
respondents views on the out-lawing of military rule and joint military/civilian
government.

7.4 CROSS TABULAR CORRELATION

Beyond the general frequencies generated from the foregoing analysis, this section
takes a closer look at the relationship between respondents’ biographic characteristics
and the responses. In the bid to derive a defensible answer to the basic question of
journalists’ predisposition to military intervention in politics, the need arises to
segregate respondents along variables such as age, education, position, length of
experience and ethnic origin. The intention is to find out how the respondents within
the emerging attributes or categories of each variable differ on or agree with some of
the issues raised in the questionnaire. Conclusions in this section have been drawn
mainly from results relating to five questions eliciting the respondents perceptions of
various issues related to coups. These questions dwelt on respondents’ general
impression of coups, their views on the justifiability of coups, their opinions on
whether the political class provoke the military to seize power, and what they think
about out-lawing coups and joint military-civilian governments. Apart from their
consistency in probing the respondents’ predisposition to military intervention, these
questions had no provision for multiple responses. Their responses could therefore be
easily matched with the categories of the five biographic variables without any
overlapping results. With the emergent results, it can then be easy to tell how
respondents with varying biographies aggregate or differ on the coup-related issues
under examination. Several researchers have successfully adopted this method as a
non-statistical alternative in a study of the influence of biographic and psychographic
variables on workers’ perception of certain economic packages in Nigeria.

Based on the results of the cross-tabulation, conclusions were drawn as to whether

such variables had any association with respondents’ views (perception) or not. It
should be noted that the conclusions are not significantly imperilled by not including
more questions, especially those with multiple responses, in the analysis considering
that they are mostly complementary to those which were analysed.

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7.4.1 Respondents’ Biographies and Impressions of Military Coups

The three main responses which betray the impressions of Nigerian journalists on
military intervention in national politics are that the phenomenon is:
(a) Sometimes desirable (72 or 36%)
(b) A necessary evil (44 or 22%)
(c) Totally unjustifiable (72 or 36%)

The distribution of the respondents’ biographies: age, education, rank, length of

experience and regional origin within these three blocs of impressions are displayed in
Tables 7.13 and 7.14.

Table 7.13. Distribution of Respondents’ impression of Coups by Rank and

Experience
Position (rank) Sometimes desirable Necessary evil Totally unjustifiable
Managing editor 1 (1%) 3 (7%) 0 (0%)
Editor 20 (28%) 10 (23%) 12(17%)
Senior reporter 32 (44%) 18 (41%) 37 (51%)
Reporter 19 (26%) 13 (30) 23 (32%)
Row Total 72(100%) 44(100% ) 72(100%)
Years of experience

1-5 19 (26%) 15 (34%) 21 (29%)

6-10 22 (31%) 9 (20%) 24 (33%)
11-15 19(26%) 7 (16%) 16 (22%)
16-20 8 (11%) 9 (20%) 8(11%)
21 + 4 (6%) 4 (9%) 3 (4%)
Row Total 72 (100%) 44(100%) 72(100%)

For the fact that the respondents’ impression of coups ( in three major classifications:
‘sometimes desirable’; ‘necessary evil’ and ‘totally unjustifiable’) is considered as the
dependent variable, while biographies (rank, length of service, age, educational

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qualification and region of origin) is considered as the independent variable, the

percentages in these tables are based on the sub-totals of each of the three response
categories (73 for category (a), 44 for category (b) and 72 for category (c) ). Such
subtotals are indicated in the row totals. Furthermore, it would be wrong to base the
percentages on the entire sample (200) since not all the respondents contributed to the
three major responses. (12 gave no answers or were undecided). In any case, even if
the percentages were to be based on the entire sample (200), the distribution of modal
frequencies of responses within the various biographic variables will not be altered. In
the tables, the modal frequencies are highlighted.
Table 7.14. Distribution of Respondents’ impression of coups by Region, Age
and Education.
Region Sometimes desirable Necessary evil Totally unjustifiable
East 32 (44%) 19 (43%) 29 (40%)
West 23 (32%) 13 (30%) 28 (39%)
North 5 (7%) 6(14%) 4 (6%)
Minority 12(17%) 6(14%) 11 (15%)
Row Total 72 (100%) 44(100%) 72(100%)
Age
20-29 7(10%) 5 (11%) 14 (20%)
30-39 46 (64%) 21 (48%) 42 (58%)
40-49 16 (22%) 17 (39%) 15 (21%)
50-59 3 (4%) 1 (2%) 1 (1%)
Row Total 72 (100%) 44(100%) 72(100%)
Education
Ph.D. 0 (0%) 1 (2%) 0 (0%)
Masters 22 (31%) 9 (20%) 26 (36%)
Bachelors 30 (42%) 20 (45%) 26 (36%)
Diploma 16(22%) 13 (30%) 15 (21%)
School certificate 4 (6%) 1 (2%) 5 (7%)
Row Total 72 (100%) 44(100%) 72(100%)
N=200

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7.4.1.1 The ‘Authoritarian’ School

The first category which we have, for the purpose of this study, identified as the
‘authoritarian’ school is made up of journalists who think coups are sometimes
welcome as a solution to Nigeria’s political problems. These are the respondents who
not only expressed the belief that some coups are justifiable but also went further to
identify, with reasons, some administrations which, in their judgement, deserved an
overthrow. They also shared the belief that politicians, by their misconduct in office,
provoke the military to intervene in politics in a corrective capacity. Like other
citizens of a nation plagued by perennial political problems, economic adversity,
corruption in public places and the lack of purposeful leadership: issues which have
already been discussed in detail in the preceding sections of this chapter, journalists
who belong to the authoritarian school are not immune to the feeling of revulsion
which often translates to the wish for a change of government, perhaps in the
continuing quest for national salvation regardless of how violent or undemocratic such
changes may be.
The cross-tabular analysis of the response that coups are ‘sometimes desirable’ and
respondents’ biographic variables shows that constituents of this school (72 in a ll) are
mainly senior reporters (32 or 44%) and editors (20 or 28%). They are also journalists
who have worked for a minimum period of six years. Twenty-two (31%) of these
had worked for 6-10 years while another 19 (26%) had worked for 11-15 years.
Furthermore, the ‘Authoritarian’ journalists are more likely to be from Eastern (32 or
44%) and Western (23 or 32%) Nigeria, and aged between 30 and 39 years (46 or
64%). Relative to educational background, they are more likely to be holders of
bachelors degree (30 or 42%) and Masters degree (22 or 31%).

7.4.1.2 The Fatalist School

The second group are more sceptical about the effectiveness of military intervention.
They realise the abnormality, shortcomings and even harmfulness of the phenomenon
but all the same accept that it cannot be wished away, given the social peculiarities
under which it usually occurs. Their judgement can also be argued to be based on the
growing politicisation of the military not only in Nigeria but in the entire Third World

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where class struggle or ordinary ambition can drive the military to seize political
power, and where the people have been known for their inability to resist such power
usurpation. Based on their seeming resignation to the situation, these can be referred
to as the fatalist school.
The distribution of members of this school (44 in number) along the five variables
shows that they are more likely to be senior reporters (18 or 41%) and reporters (13 or
30%). They are also more likely to have worked for not more than five years (15 or
34%). Relative to age, most of them (21 or 48%) are aged between 30 and 39 years,
followed by those who are aged 40-49 years (17 or 39%). Once again, they are more
likely to be bachelors degree holders (20 or 45%) and either Easterners (19 or 43%) or
Westerners (17 or 39%).

7.4.1.3 The Uncompromising School

The third group which we have conveniently identified as the uncompromising school
can be said to be those irrevocably opposed to military intervention no matter the
circumstances leading to it. Respondents in this category believe that military
adventure into politics is an aberration, and , therefore, regardless of political problems
or misdeeds, the military have no business in government. They do not see any
benefits in military intervention in politics, and would certainly not have wished or
called for coups.
An explanation of the disposition of respondents in this category must relate to the
repeated frustration they must have experienced due to the inability of most of the self-
styled corrective regimes to deliver their promises. Instances of such broken promises
as well as their impact on the endless cycle of political instability have already been
discussed in preceding sections which dwelt on issues like corruption, the ailing
economy and the manipulation of transition to democracy. It is instructive, however,
to note at this juncture that even the respondents in the authoritarian school who
believed that some coups were justifiable said they regretted their judgement after the
coups had taken place.
Once again, most of these journalists (37 or 51%) were senior reporters, and had
worked for 6-10 years (24 or 33%). They were also mostly from the East (29 or 40%)
and West (28 or 39%). Another similar attribute which this group shares with the two

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others is that its members are mainly bachelors and masters degree holders (26 or 36%
in each case).
The overall result as far as the question of the impressions of respondents of various
educational qualifications, ages, regional origins, ranks and lengths of experience is
concerned shows that each of the three schools (impressions) is predominantly made
up of journalists of similar ages (30-39 years), educational qualification (bachelors and
masters degrees), position (senior reporters) and regional origin (Easterners and
Westerners). The only variable where, by a slight margin, this pattern did not occur
was length of service in which respondents who had put in 5 years of service (15 or
34%) were more likely than those in other categories of length of service to express
the view that coups are a necessary evil. On the other hand, respondents who had
worked for 6-10 years (24 or 33%) were more likely to see coups as totally
unjustifiable while more respondents in the same category (22 or 31%) believed that
coups are sometimes desirable. The interpretation that can be given to this result is
that journalists who have the least experience in the field are more likely to see coups
in one perspective: as a necessary evil while those with a slightly longer experience are
more likely to be diversified in their perception of coups. At one end are those who
think coups are sometimes desirable. At the other are those who think it is totally
unjustifiable.
Ordinarily it would seem that this result is influenced by the predominance of
journalists who shared the same biographic attributes in the overall sample. For
example, relative to age, respondents who were aged between 30 and 39 were in the
majority (114 or 57%), while in terms of region, respondents from the East (83 or
42%) and West (68 or 34%) out-numbered those who were from the other regions or
zones (e.g. 18 or 9% from the North). Furthermore, respondents with a bachelors
degree (85 or 43%) and those with a masters degree (58 or 29%) dominated the
statistics on the educational qualification of respondents. Senior reporters (90 or 45%)
were in the majority as far as rank was concerned. Nevertheless, it must be noted that
an effort was made to ensure the representation of respondents with varying biographic
variables through the randomness of the sample selection. In cases where efforts were
made to ensure regional representation because of its importance in this analysis, such
efforts were only confined to drawing samples in a manner that would be

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representative of the geo-political mix of the country. It is important to reiterate the

fact that a zone like Lagos (from where half the sample alone was drawn) is more like
a neutral ground because of its strategic position as a cosmopolitan city and as the
economic capital of the country. As it was also stated in section 7.2.6 of this chapter,
most of the respondents surveyed in the North were not necessarily from the North.
Based, therefore, on the argument that the sample reflects the biographic identity of a
majority of Nigerian journalists, the conclusion is that the prominence of journalists of
similar ages, educational qualification, rank and regional origin in all three schools
suggests that the journalists’ impression of coups is not dependent on at least these
four variables.

7.4.2 Associations Between Respondents’ Biographic Variables and their

Perceptions of Coups
Virtually the same as the above analysis, the following exercise seeks further evidence
for the above conclusion by subjecting the same five biographic variables to a cross-
tabular analysis with four different questions all aimed at cross-checking the
respondents’ predisposition to coups:
1. Are coups justifiable?
2. Do politicians provoke the military to seize power?
3. Should coups be outlawed?
4. Should the civilians share political power and government with the military?

7.4.2.1 Respondents' Opinions On Justifiability Of Coups

On the question of the justifiability of coups, 123 (62%) respondents were of the view
that some of the coups which had taken place in the country were justifiable while 71
(36%) said they were not. The rest were three respondents who were undecided and
another three who did not offer any response at all.
It was further examined how respondents in different categories of the five biographic
variables were distributed within the two basic opinions.
As can be seen in Tables 7.15 & 7.16, in every single category of the same four
variables (rank, education, age and region) the respondents who thought that some
coups are justifiable were more than those who did not think so. I was again

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encouraged to conclude that respondents’ opinion on whether coups are justifiable

(excusable) or not does not seem to be associated with any of the four variables.
The exception once more was in the variable - length of service - where more of the
respondents who had served for not more than five years (the younger and less
experienced ones) thought that some coups are justifiable, a close agreement with their
earlier posture that coups are a necessary evil. Conversely, a majority of the
respondents who had served for 6-10 years (more experienced) thought otherwise. In
a preceding result it was seen that the respondents in this same category of length of
service were more likely than others to see coups as totally unjustifiable.

Table 7.15 Distribution of Respondents’ Opinion on Justifiability of Coups.

Position Justifiable Not Justifiable
Managing editor 4 (3%) 0 (0%)
Editor 28 (23%) 16 (23%)
Senior reporter 55 (48%) 32 (45%)
Reporter 36 (29%) 23 (32%)
Total 123 (100%) 71 (100%)
Years of Experience
1-5 39 (32%) 18 (25%)
6-10 30 (24%) 25 (35%)
11-15 27 (22) 17 (24%)
16-20 18(15%) 8(11%)
21 + 9 (7%) 3 (4%)
Total 123 (100%) 71 (100%)

N = 200

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Table 7.16 Distribution of Respondents’ Opinions on Justifiability of Coups

contd.
Region Justifiable Not Justifiable
East 51 (41%) 30 (42%)
West 38 (31%) 27 (38%)
North 12(10%) 5 (7%)
Minority 22(18% ) 9(13%)
Total 123 (100%) 71 (100%)
Age
20-29 16(13%) 14 (20%)
30-39 71 (58%) 40 (56%)
40-49 32 (26%) 16 (23%)
50-59 4 (3%) 1 (1%)
Total 123 (100%) 71 (100%)
Education
Ph.D. 1 (1%) 0 (0%)
Masters 32 (26%) 25 (35%)
Bachelors 54 (44%) 26 (37%)
Diploma 29 (24%) 16 (23%)
School certificate 7 (6%) 4 (6%)
Total 123 (100%) 71 (100%)

N = 200

7.4.2.2 Respondents’ Biographies and their Views on Whether Politicians

Provoke C oups
The most relevant variable in this question was region of origin. Since almost all the
civilian governments had been formed and run by politicians from a certain part of the
country, it was thought that respondents’ views on the issue of politicians provoking
military intervention would be the most likely to be influenced by the regional origin of
the respondents.

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A cross-tabulation analysis, however, showed that no matter their regional base, most
respondents were inclined to believe that politicians provoke soldiers to seize political
power. For example, 49 respondents from the East thought so, compared to 28
others from the same region who did not. In the West, 39 respondents shared that
thought while 21 did not, while in the North 10 respondents thought so while one said
no. The other factors such as age, rank and educational status yielded the same
similarities in the association between the biographic variables and this view. For
example, the only Ph.D. holder in the sample thought so, 36 of the 54 respondents
who had masters degree were agreeable, and 52 out of 76 bachelors degree holders
also shared this belief. (Full details of these figures are presented in Table 7.17 under
Appendices)

7.4.2.3 Respondents’ Biographies and their Views on Whether Coups should be

Qut-lawed
The leaning of respondents toward the proposal that military intervention in politics be
out-lawed was also examined. One hundred and eighteen respondents or 59% of the
sample strongly agreed while another 27 (14%) agreed. In all categories of working
experience, position, educational qualification, age, and region of origin, the majority
of respondents strongly agreed, and when combined with those who agreed, they
overwhelmed the rest who disagreed or were undecided, (see table 7.18 under
Appendices)

7.4.2.4 Respondents9 Biographies and their Views on Diarchy

The second proposal, namely, the creation of a political dispensation where the military
shares political office with elected politicians, elicited strong disapproval from all
respondents. One hundred and nine (55%) strongly disagreed with the proposal and
another 39 (20%) disagreed. The cross-tabular analysis further showed that this
strong disapproval was held by respondents regardless of age, education, position,
length of experience or region, (see table 7.19 in appendices).

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7.5 Conclusion
The results of this survey show that Nigerian journalists share different impressions of
military intervention. At one extreme there are those (the authoritarians) who believe
it is both justifiable and desirable at times. At the other are those (the
uncompromising) who do not see any sense in military intervention no matter the level
of social upheaval or political chaos in society. In between are a third group (the
fatalists) who, cognisant of the inherent problems of military intervention, do not
endorse it as a means of change of government, but all the same admit that it is
inevitable and can be accepted for practical reasons. Such reasons dwell on the
predatory political and economic conditions under which the military intervene as well
as the fact that the civilian society has no means of resisting any coup.

It was remarkable, however, to find a convergence of opinions among respondents

from all schools: a common agreement that military intervention is not a perfect
solution to Nigeria’s political and other problems hence respondents almost
unanimously agree that coups should be outlawed while rejecting the proposition that
the military be granted a constitutional status to govern in conjunction with civilians.

Another interesting result was the identification of the same set of issues in all
questions relating to coups. Questions regarding why respondents think coups are
justifiable; why a particular administration deserved being sacked in a coup; how, in
their opinions, politicians provoke military intervention all elicited the same responses:
corruption, economic mismanagement, self-seeking leadership, political intolerance,
weak leadership and autocracy. Considering that these same issues featured both in
the characterisations of the two administrations studied in the content analysis, and in
the coup speeches heralding their overthrow, it was concluded that these very issues
could be read as indices of military intervention.

The above argument is further strengthened by the equally interesting finding that the
Shagari regime which was the more negatively characterised of the two governments
studied in the content analysis, re-emerged in the survey as the administration
identified by respondents as the one most deserving of being forced out by the military;

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the common denominator being his personification of the issues that make military
intervention attractive.
Finally, there was the observation that the variety of impressions held by journalists on
military intervention had no association with biographic variations in age, educational
qualification, rank and ethnic origin. As it was pointed out earlier in this chapter,
ethnicity is one of the factors that are most likely to influence the views and
perceptions of most Nigerians on political issues. In this study, the question of
whether politicians or civilian rulers provoke the military to seize power, for example,
was deliberately asked to test this assumption. It is a major and interesting finding in
this study that ethnicity as well as the other three factors (education, age and rank) had
no association with journalists’ impression of or predisposition to military intervention
in politics.

This conclusion was reinforced by similar results in four additional cross-tabular

analyses which were meant to cross-check the initial one. These were cases in which
the respondents’ views were sought on the justifiability of coups, whether politicians
provoke military intervention, whether coups should be out-lawed and whether
civilians should share political power and offices with the military.
The reasons for, and the theoretical implications of these results are further discussed
in the next chapter which relates results to the theoretical constructs adopted for the
research.

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DISCUSSION OF RESULTS

8.1 Introduction

This chapter discusses the results of a bifurcated research approach aimed at examining
the predisposition of the Nigerian independent press to military intervention. It starts
by providing answers to the research questions that guided the two research methods
adopted for data collection. Such answers are drawn from the relevant findings in both
the content analysis of the selected publications and the survey of journalists.
Thereafter, a synthesis is made of common findings in both methods which is then
related to general literature on coups, especially the mission statements of various
military governments. This is expected to provide a common ground for relating
media contents to crises, in the mould of theoretical arguments on media roles such as
agenda setting, or the role of news sources in media manipulation, with particular
reference to the framing of issues, events and personalities in the mass media.

The discussion also examines the historical role of the press in the democratisation
process both in pre- and post-independent Nigeria as a practical reality that reinforces
the theoretical arguments. It then relates findings to arguments on the dynamics of
news construction as well as the influence of news sources or agenda building in media
representations.

8.2 RESPONSES TO RESEARCH QUESTIONS

8.2.1 Did the print media carry news, editorials, articles or other contents that
called for or endorsed military intervention?

The reference to military governments naturally tends to rope in the entire military
institution in the business of governance wherever the military have seized political
power. But this is not always the case, for as Riggs (1993) is quick to point out,

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coups are planned and executed by small conspiratorial groups or factions of a few but
not all military officers. And it stands to reason that the cabinets that emerge from
such successful coups are made up of the members of the group or their proxies. If
this is the case, how do such small cliques gain control of the entire bureaucratic and
political power to establish and run a government?

A resounding argument regarding the rapidity of coups in Nigeria is that without the
withdrawal of the people’s support from irresponsible, selfish and inept political
leaders, and without the support of civilians who collaborate with military officers in
conspiracies to seize power, and participate, thereafter, in ruling the country, coups
can hardly ever succeed (Riggs, 1993).

In Nigeria, this view is shared by a wide spectrum of commentators ranging from coup
actors themselves to writers and scholars of Nigerian political history. While it does
not explicitly indict civilians as partners to military officers in coup plotting, this
viewpoint is suggestive of the support of interest groups; a support which tends to
justify the intervention of the military as well as boost their credibility.

Before handing over power to a civilian regime in 1979, the then head of state, General
Olusegun Obasanjo, had argued that “what determines whether the military remains or
does not remain in the barracks is not the doing of the military itself, but the doing of
political leaders, and sometimes coupled with the system” (Daily Times. Feb., 1979).
This argument resounded in Omowa’s (1988:10) justification of coups on the grounds
that “no coup can succeed if it is not popularly invited, tolerated and supported by the
civilian population”.

The context that predisposes such popular support is further suggested in a similar
remark by Nigeria’s military president from 1985-93, General Ibrahim Babangida. In a
VO A programme in 1985, he stated that “coup d’etat comes into the political system
of any country if the country prepares the ground for such an event to happen. There

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has to be frustration within the society before the military ventures to get involved in
the political process of those countries”. He repeated this claim in a magazine
interview in which he remarked that “people suggest the sacking of civilian
governments by putting pressure on the military” (Newswatch May 21, 1990). Other
writers who have advanced similar arguments include Abdullahi (1990), Anim (1990)
and Oyewole (1991).

Several writers have further supported this line of argument by citing instances of the
approval and celebration of military intervention by Nigerians beginning from 1966.
Relative to the maiden coup, one of its plotters, Ademoyega (1981:90), wrote that
“everybody everywhere in the federation rejoiced at the overthrow of the Balewa
Government and toasted the revolutionaries”. Even if it was hyperbolic and self-
glorifying, Ademoyega’s claim finds support in the works of internationally reputed
scholars like Larry Diamond who has intensively followed the travails of democracy,
especially in Nigeria’s First and Second Republics. He observes that the disgust of the
revolutionaries “with the First Republic was shared by a cross-section of the
population which welcomed the coup in an effusive outpouring of joy and relief’
(Diamond, 1990:13).

Another regime whose overthrow, according to available literature, was preceded and
heralded by uninhibited popular support for military intervention was the Shagari
Government (1979-83). Okigbo (1992:103) asserts that “the early days of the Shagari
regime were inundated with open calls on the military to intervene and wrest power
from civilians who were accused, among other things, of massive rigging of the (1983)
elections”. This feeling must have endured up until the eventual breakdown of that
regime, for as Diamond (1990:25-26) reports, his pre-election opinion survey in
Northern Nigeria in 1983 indicated that “a majority of the electorate (in Kano State)
and two-thirds of voters in Kano city favoured” military intervention as the best option
to get rid of the deepening rot and incompetence under the Shagari Government. It
was no surprise, therefore, as he concluded, that the December 31, 1983 coup that

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brought the military back to power “was widely welcomed and celebrated around the
country”.

Civilian complicity in, and support for military intervention reached an unprecedented
peak in 1993 following the cancellation of the June 12, 1993 elections, and the
appointment of a make-shift Interim National Government (ING) by the out-going
Babangida government. By the motive and manner of its appointment, as well as its
make-up, the ING was clearly not in a position to grapple with the climate of political,
social and economic unrest prevailing in the country at that period. Whether they were
reacting to the ING’s inability to contain the unrest, or battling Chief Ernest Shonekan
personally for what they saw as his ‘betrayal’1 by accepting the headship of the ING,
the political class, in particular those sympathetic to Abiola’s claim to victory in the
cancelled elections, were said to have “openly invited conservative army officers to
intervene, and held consultations with them before they did so” (Ihonvbere, 1996:194).
But the political class were not the only champions of this novel development. In what
seemed like a roll call of the growing community of civilian supporters of the military
intervention that sacked the ING, and bought in General Sani Abacha, the incumbent
head of state, Ihonvbere discloses that “a number of pro-democracy activists and
human rights activists” either wrote to or consulted General Abacha to oust the ING2
(ibid. p. 194).

If what has been referred to as popular support for coups were to be more
categorically defined, civil servants, academics, students, politicians and interest
groups, in particular human rights activists and pro-democracy lobbies, can be seen to

1 M ost o f the in d iv id u a ls a n d g ro u p s a g ita tin g for th e d is m is sa l o f th e IN G , esp ecia lly th ose from
S o u th -W estern N ig e r ia , w e r e a p p a lle d b y the fa c t that S h o n e k a n a ccep ted th e h ead sh ip o f the IN G , an
a ction w h ic h c o m p r o m ise d th e c h a n c e s o f h is k in sm a n , A b io la , b e in g in sta lle d as the duly elec ted
P resid en t.
2 G en era l A b a c h a c la im s th at M o s h o o d A b io la , th e m a n at th e ep icen tre o f th e elec tio n con troversy,
p ressu red h im to g e t rid o f th e IN G , w ith th e h o p e o f b e in g restored as the e lec ted p resid en t
thereafter. C lip s o f A b io la ’s v is it to G o v e r n m e n t H o u se , w h ere th e appeal w a s su p p osedly m ad e to
A b a ch a , w ere r e p ea ted ly s h o w n on te le v is io n w h e n , after th e o u stin g o f th e IN G , and in the n o n ­
r ea lisa tio n o f h is g o a l, A b io la b e g a n to a c c u se th e A b a c h a ad m in istra tio n o f an ti-d em ocratic stance.

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be prominent among the mass of supporters who have aspired for the intervention of
military officers in government at one time or another (ibid.).

The allegation has further been made that journalists can be added to this list. For
example, while addressing a forum of journalists, a political science lecturer and writer
on Nigerian democratic reforms maintained that Nigerian journalists must accept some
responsibility for military intervention in politics, a charge which rests on the claim that
“almost all journalists supported the coup that overthrew the Shagari administration,”
and that “many journalists wrote as if they themselves realised that they were very
much responsible for the change in government” (Oyewole, 1991:12).

Another indictment of journalists comes from Othman (1985:1846) who singles out
some journalists and a particular media organisation for using “all the weapons
available in their journalistic arsenal to fight the Shagari Government”.

Based on the entire argument on civilian calls for and complicity in the forceful
overthrow of civilian regimes by the military, and with particular interest in the claim
that journalists are no less involved than other groups of interests, it was considered an
essential part of the investigation of Nigerian journalists’ predisposition to coups, to
examine the contents of selected publications for any invitations of military
intervention whether direct or discreet.

A sample of 252 issues of three independent newspapers(the Guardian, the National

Concord and the Punch) over the two-year period of study (1983 and 1985) yielded
381 items including news, features, editorials, cartoons and letters. From the analysis,
there was not a single item containing an invitation or support for military intervention.
The possible explanations of this result are given in the section that discusses the
theoretical implications of findings.

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8.2.2 What discernible position did the press take, through editorials, news
slants, cartoons and articles, on an overthrown government?

As if pre-emptive of the reticent results in research question number one above, this
present question was designed to serve as an alternative route in the investigation of
the possibility of media support for coups. Here, therefore, rather than look for clear
and unequivocal support for or endorsement of military intervention, the focus is on
characterisation or representation or framing of the two governments studied. It is
expected that the emerging picture can give clues to the degree of provocativeness of
media contents relative to military intervention.

Almost every successful coup in Nigeria has taken place in the midst of social,
economic or political crisis. There is no doubt that writers who have argued that the
Nigerian mass media are pro-military intervention belong to the same school of
thought as those who advance the crisis promotion role of the media in Chile
(Buckman, 1996), in the Persian Gulf (Kellner, 1992) and other developing nations in
which the military may have intervened to contain real or imagined crisis.

More for viewing the pattern of framing of government and leaders at such crises
situations, and for attempting to understand the forces behind such framing, than for
establishing whether military intervention was the direct result of such framing,
selected media contents were examined for their characterisation of government
officials, programmes and policies.

Major actors to whom media contents referred were key government officers in the
executive, legislative and judicial arms of government at both federal and state levels.
They include the president or head of state as the case may be, ministers, governors or
administrators, senate president or house of representatives speaker, parliamentarians,
supreme and high court judges, and political party leaders, among other key players in
the formulation and implementation of government policies and programmes.

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The analysis as presented in chapter six showed that there were 176 items which
clearly referred to one or more of these actors. Due to multiple references, these
actors were mentioned 208 times. There were also stories and comments which
merely laid their criticisms or praises on the doorsteps of particular offices or positions
such as the ‘presidency’, ‘the cabinet’ or ‘the judiciary’ without directly mentioning
any official. In order to arrive at a fair interpretation of the characterisation of the
various actors designated above, it was considered that broad references to offices, as
in the ‘presidency’ or ‘the national assembly’, for example, should not be ascribed to
the president or any particular legislator respectively, on mere presumptions. While
realising that the references to these offices implied their operatives, it was thought to
be more realistic to code such references under a separate category called ‘other
actors’. At the end, the characterisation of both ‘actors’ and ‘other actors’
complemented each other to reveal the portrayal of different arms of government.
There were 205 items in which the reference was made to ‘other actors’. A common
trend in the reference to both ‘actors’ and ‘other actors’ was the fact that the president
attracted the most attention out of a category of fifteen different actors, just as his
office got the highest reference among all offices or positions referred to in press
contents.

Most significantly, the analysis sought to reveal the kind of characterisation given to
these actors, and for this purpose, some labels were adopted as criteria for adjudging
characterisation as either negative or positive. Full details of these labels and their
frequencies are presented in table 6.7 in chapter six. But a quick recapitulation of
relevant highlights suffices here. Labels denoting positive characterisation include
‘responsible’, ‘dynamic’, ‘progressive’, ‘anti-corruption’, ‘humane’. Examples of
negative labels, on the other hand, are ‘weak/incompetent’, ‘unpatriotic’, ‘oppressive’,
‘corrupt’, ‘immoral’, ‘inhuman’ and so on.

The analysis showed that government and its agencies were heavily reported in a
negative light. Of 381 items analysed, only 58 had positive labels, and regardless of a
provision for the coding of multiple references, these items had a paltry 70 positive

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labels only. The most visible of these were cases in which the proposal, action or
reaction of one government official or ministry was commended as dynamic (17 cases),
anti-corruption (16 cases), and responsible (11 cases).

Conversely, there were 305 items containing negative labels. Due to coding of
multiple references, once more, these items yielded 621 negative labels, with the
Shagari regime which represents the 1983 period, taking about 80% of the labels. In
115 cases, government was characterised as weak and incompetent, and as unpatriotic
in 105 other cases. Other resounding negative labels with which government was
characterised were ‘oppressive’ (99 cases), ‘corrupt’ and ‘inhuman’ (79 cases each),
and ‘immoral’ (67 cases).

A further step was taken to illustrate this reality through the presentation of headlines
and excerpts of stories and comments purposively selected from among the items with
negative labels. Being purely a descriptive exercise, this part of the analysis was
concerned with the revelation of the substance of the enduring labels or
characterisation of the two governments. The focus was therefore on the texts which
portrayed such characterisation with great lucidity rather than a deliberate attempt to
represent the frequencies of each characterisation. In other words, the illustrations
were not chosen in proportion to the occurrence of the various characterisations.

As stated earlier, the Shagari regime was by far, the more negatively framed of the two
governments. There was a preponderance of news, editorials, articles and cartoons
which depicted

a) President Shagari as weak and inept

b) ministers and governors as irresponsible and incompetent

c) politicians as self-seeking, and parties as perpetually in disarray

d) the Shagari government as corrupt

e) the Shagari government as a failed and non-viable regime, especially on the

economic front.

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Relative to the Buhari administration, there were two major negative characterisations.
The more visible was that of a repressive junta which had personalised government in
the hands of only two officials: the head of state and his second-in-command. The
other was the depiction of the administration as a failure as far as containing the
nation’s economic problems was concerned.

8.2.3 Similarities between media characterisations of overthrown governments

and justifications for coups as given in coup speeches.

A supposition of the thesis that the mass media framing of crises or characterisation of
government officials paves the way for military intervention is that the justification of
such interventions by the military are built upon media agenda. Writing about the
litany of charges levelled against the Babangida government by a band of majors whose
bid to overthrow him in April 1990 ended in failure, an editor of one of Nigeria’s
leading and authoritative magazines in the mid 1980s, Dan Agbese, said there was
nothing novel or strange about such accusations. “Most of the charges are those
frequently read in the press; even the reasons for the coup are familiar criticisms of the
administration” (Agbese, 1990:32). I shall return to this interesting contention as this
discourse progresses.

Having identified the major frames within which the Shagari (1983) and Buhari (1985)
governments were portrayed by the press, a next and necessary step was to cross­
check such portrayals or characterisations with similar themes or charges in the
speeches outlining the reasons for, or justifications of, the coup by the group that
overthrew each of the two governments.

There were, in deed, clear parallels between all negative characterisations of both
governments in the press, and the accusations levelled against them in the coup
speeches. Although coup speeches have been attached as part of the appendices to
this thesis, relevant portions of the speeches regarding the two coups under study are

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hereunder cited. Furthermore, the striking words, phrases or sentences that match the
negative characterisations cited above, are emphasised in bold print.

Announcing the overthrow of Shagari on national radio and television on the night of
December 31, 1983, General Sani Abacha, the incumbent military head of State, who
was then a brigadier, said among other things:

... You are all living witnesses to the grave

economic predicament and uncertainty which an
inept and corrupt leadership has imposed on our
beloved nation for the past four years. I am referring
to the harsh intolerable condition under which we
are now living. Our economy has been hopelessly
mismanaged. We have become a debtor and beggar
nation. There is inadequacy of food at reasonable
prices for our people who are now fed up with
endless announcements of importation of food
stuffs. Health services are in shambles as our
hospitals are reduced to mere consulting clinics,
without drugs, water and equipment. Our
educational system is deteriorating at alarming
rates. Unemployment figures, including
graduates, have reached an embarrassing and
unacceptable proportion...Yet our leaders revel
in squandermania and corruption, and
indiscipline continues to proliferate public
appointments in complete disregard of our stark
economic realities...

Reiterating these charges in his maiden speech as the new head of state, Major-General
Muhammadu Buhari stated that,

... The premium on political power became so

exceedingly high that political contestants regarded
victory at elections a matter of life and
death... corruption and indiscipline... attained
unprecedented heights. The corrupt, inept and
insensitive leadership...has been the source of
immorality and impropriety in our society...

As can be seen from the highlighted portions of these speeches, it is the same
characterisations with which the press depicted Shagari and his government: economic

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mismanagement, inept leadership, failure to provide the people with basic social
services, corruption, indiscipline, and political chaos, which run through the speeches
with which the intervening military officers sought to convince the nation about the
necessity of their action.

In the case of the Buhari administration which was overthrown in 1985, there were
two major negative characterisations as indicated in the content analysis: autocratic
rule and inability to contain economic crisis. As can be seen in the following citations,
these characterisations were among the criticisms levied on that government by the
military faction that plotted its overthrow.

The first announcement on the overthrow of the Buhari government on August 27,
1985, was made by Brigadier Joshua Dogonyaro who said inter alia,

... The ruling body, the Supreme Ruling Council has,

...progressively been made redundant by the
actions of a select few members... The concept of
collective leadership has been substituted by
stubborn and ill-advised unilateral action,
thereby destroying the principle upon which the
government came to power. Any effort made to
advise the leadership was met with stubborn
resistance and was viewed as a challenge of
authority or disloyalty. But the scene was being
set for a systematic elimination of what was
termed opposition... The government had started
to drift. The economy does not seem to be getting
any better... The government had distanced itself
from the people, and the yearnings and aspirations
of the people as constantly reflected in the media
had been ignored... Furthermore, the initial
objectives and programme of actions which were
meant to be implemented since ascension to power
of the Buhari Administration in January, 1984, have
been betrayed and discarded ...

Major-General Ibrahim Babangida who became the new ruler reinforced these same
charges in his maiden broadcast to the nation as president:

... Since January 1984, we have witnessed a

systematic denigration of hope. It was stated then

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that mismanagement of the economy, lack of public

accountability, insensitivity of the political leadership
and a general deterioration in the standard of
living... were the reasons for the intervention.
Nigerians have since then been under a regime that
continued with those trends... Regrettably, it
turned out that Major-General Muhammadu Buhari
was too rigid and uncompromising in his attitudes
to issues of national significance... Major-General
Tunde Idiagbon was similarly inclined in that
respect. As Chief of Staff, Supreme Headquarters,
he failed to exhibit the appropriate disposition
demanded by his position. He arrogated to himself
absolute knowledge of problems and solutions,
and acted in accordance with what was
convenient to him, using the machinery of
government as his tool. The situation was made
worse by a number of other government
functionaries and organisations, chief among which
is the Nigerian Security Organisation ...

8.2.4 What is the dominant disposition of Nigerian journalists to military

intervention in politics?

There exists a marked expression of interest in research which aims to examine the
influence of journalists’ personal characteristics, especially their perceptions, attitudes
and values, on the manner in which they respond to the demands of their profession.
While a great deal of attention has been paid to institutional and social factors which
shape the performance or output of journalists, some researchers believe an equally
significant factor must be journalists’ personal attributes or biases. One of the earliest
arguments in this respect can be extracted from White’s (1950) gatekeeping study, in
which he reported that the gatekeeper not only admitted having biases naturally, but
also acknowledged that such biases influenced what he allowed to be published or
discarded. Pool and Shulman (1959) have advanced a similar argument, stressing that
‘fantasies’ of reporters as well as editors can translate to bias in the coverage and
presentation of events and news actors. More recently, this argument has been
championed in the works of researchers such as Bennet (1982), Nasser (1983) and
Singh (1994).

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As citizens of Nigeria who, like other people in other walks of life, are affected by the
programmes and policies of the government of the day, and more importantly, as
human beings with personal political and cultural biases within a complex socio­
cultural system, journalists have got their own impressions of the realities they report,
even if they are, in most cases, professionally forbidden from injecting such
impressions in their reports. (One controversial issue which affects the lives of almost
every Nigerian is military intervention) This fact, therefore, compelled the need to
examine, first the personal views of journalists on the phenomenon of military
intervention, and later, compare such views with the kind of coverage which has been
blamed for military intervention. Is it possible that personal bias was influential in the
framing of government?

Two hundred print media journalists were interviewed to solicit information on their
predisposition to military intervention. There were three blocs of opinions among the
entire sample. The one group (36%) said military intervention was “sometimes
desirable”, the second group (22%) identified it as “a necessary evil” while the third
group also representing 36% of the sample, saw coups as “totally unjustifiable”. For
the purpose of the analysis, the three groups of respondents were classified as the
‘authoritarian’, the ‘fatalist’ and the ‘uncompromising’ schools. If the authoritarians
and the fatalists were to be regarded as journalists who are in principle tolerant of
military intervention, it would appear that a majority of Nigerian journalists are not
irrevocably opposed to military intervention. Responses to subsequent questions will
however show a more realistic picture of their stand.

Furthermore, slightly less than half the sample (including some respondents who do not
favour military intervention) admitted that they agreed with some of the reasons given
by some military officers for seizing power. Incidentally, the most dominant reasons
identified by these respondents included corruption, political disorder, inept leadership
and economic failure.

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Remarkably, more than half the sample (60%) believed that politicians provoke the
military to intervene. Once more, corruption, political intolerance, and the lack of
political leadership ranked prominently in the judgement of these respondents who
share this belief.

Considering that respondents had also identified ‘breakdown of law and order’,
‘unbridled corruption,’ ‘inept leadership’, ‘neglect of masses’ welfare’, ‘inability to
contain ailing economy’ and ‘oppressive rule’ as the issues which constitute a
justification for the overthrow of a government whether civilian or military, it is equally
interesting to note that of all overthrown governments, that of Shehu Shagari (1983)
was, in the view of the respondents, the most deserving of a forceful ejection. Does
this confluence of reasoning explain, even if in principle, the pattern of framing of the
two governments studied? Is it just a coincidence that the Shagari government, for
example, was heavily framed, using precisely the same negative characterisations as
shown in the content analysis? The deductions that can be made here are that:

a) the journalists were influenced by such personal opinions in their coverage and
presentation of the Shagari regime,

b) they relied heavily on the tradition of negativity as a predominant news value,

c) they were reflecting the social, economic and political reality during the Shagari
administration as seen also in the extra media data cited in both chapters two and
seven,

d) they were unconsciously serving as conveyor belts for interested groups (news
sources) who may have found the need to create a climate of media or public opinion
that would make military intervention seem inevitable.

These arguments shall be pursued further in subsequent sections of this chapter

bordering on theoretical implications of the overall findings.

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8.2.5 Does the disposition of journalists to military intervention have any

association with ethnic identity, age, education and other biographic variables?

Biases, attitudes, values and dispositions to issues do not form by themselves. Within
a social environment, especially in a multi-cultural and pluralistic one such as Nigeria,
individual prejudices are shaped by a wide range of factors intrinsic and extrinsic to the
social setting. In the case of professionals such as journalists, there are indications that
factors which can influence their personal and professional prejudices include
education, cultural identity, class and political ideology (Mendis, 1996).

While not disregarding the relevance of these factors, it can be argued that the single
most forceful issue that circumscribes almost every aspect of Nigerian life is the ethnic
factor. Writers such as Nnoli (1882), Diamond (1990) and Okigbo (1992) have
highlighted the pervasive influence of ethnicity in Nigeria’s politics, governance and
failure of democracy. In fact, it is impossible for most sources to discuss military
intervention without a background scenario of Nigeria as a curious mix of ethnic
discontinuities. It is worth reiterating here that the first coup was hailed initially as a
popular revolution aimed at halting a fast deteriorating national decay, but ended up
creating wider gaps between sections of the country. As its dust began to settle, the
coup was seen by the Northerners as a benign assault by the Easterners to wrest power
from the North, and accordingly, the second coup which followed a couple of months
later was clearly a revenge mission by the North. As indicated in the introduction,
several other coups which could not be overtly identified with ethnic power stmggle,
have all the same been obliquely linked with ethnic chauvinism (Ejoor, 1993).

The above realities underscore the need to examine the possibility of journalists being
influenced by ethnicity and other factors in their impressions on military intervention.
As indicated in the results of the survey, in chapter seven, a cross tabulation of some of
the responses that were designed to solicit respondents’ disposition to military
intervention, and five variables (ethnic origin, age, education, rank , length of
experience on the job) did not reveal any association. In other words, journalists’
opinions on military intervention were independent of what part of Nigeria they came

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from, how old they are, what level of education they had attained, and what positions
they held in their organisations. The only variable in which a particular category did
not predominate in all categories of the selected responses was length of service.
Given the serious accent on ethnicity in almost all ramifications of life in Nigeria, this
represents a very interesting finding. Factors which are likely to have influenced this
result would include academic and professional socialisation.

It was found that a majority of the journalists surveyed had at least a bachelors degree.
Apart from the skills and knowledge it imparts on students, there is no doubt that
university education would have contributed significantly in dispelling the prejudices
and other personal or cultural attributes that nurture ethnicity. Studies on the politics
of ethnicity in Nigeria (Nnoli, 1978) have traced the origin and survival of ethnicity in
Nigerian life to the activities and ambitions of political opportunists who exploited the
vulnerability of the illiterate and ignorant masses for political gains. Such political
demagogues, who began by crusading for self rule, were intent on acquiring political
power by all means at the departure of the colonial administration. A very effective
strategy adopted by them was the propaganda of enmity between one cultural entity
and another. The Hausas of the North, for example, were indoctrinated by their
leaders that inhabitants of the southern zone of the country were not to be trusted.
Even among the southerners, the Igbos and the Yorubas, goaded by their political
icons, were always in constant misunderstanding (ibid.).

While it cannot be claimed to have completely solved the problem, education,

especially at higher levels, and the exposures it must have provided for the journalists,
can be argued to have helped in reducing the stress on ethnic affiliation in the treatment
of national issues. Two separate findings in two Third World nations reinforce this
point. In the first case, journalists in Sri Lanka were said to have betrayed undue
accent on ethnic affiliations in their professional duties, a situation which was
attributed to their low educational backgrounds (Mendis, 1996). From the second
perspective, Malaysian journalists’ attitudes in shaping news is said to be associated
with journalism training. It is believed that training at institutions of higher education

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and on-the-job courses dispose journalists towards professional ideals and therefore
the abandonment of narrow personal world views (Shaari, 1997). With a significantly
high educational profile, Nigerian journalists can be argued to have a similar
disposition.

Secondly, journalists are very likely to have put their commonness as members of a
profession before cultural or ethnic identities. It had been noted earlier in chapter three
that the confrontational relationship between journalists and governments in Nigeria,
makes journalism a hazardous profession. This in itself has always prescribed the need
for journalists to present a common front. Journalists understand that when a reporter
or an editor is arrested, prosecuted or jailed for contravening the provisions of one
decree or another, it is because of his role as a journalist, and not because of his ethnic
origin. This realisation is reflected in the formation of unions and professional bodies
aimed among other things at protecting practitioners. Apart from the Nigeria Union of
journalists which is the main umbrella union of all practising journalists, there are more
localised associations within specific areas of communication, all formed for the
shielding of members. Examples include the Nigerian Guild of Editors (NGE),
Newspaper Proprietors Association of Nigeria (NPAN), National Association of
Women Journalists (NAWOJ), the Broadcasting Organisation of Nigeria (BON),
Sports writers Association of Nigeria (SWAN) and so on.

When newspapers are proscribed, or individual reporters detained or harassed by

government agencies, these associations not only pressure government to rescind its
decision, but also cater for the legal representation of members as well as the welfare
of their families. For example, When the Concord. Punch and Guardian groups of
newspapers were proscribed by the Abacha government in 1995, it took the combined
mediation of the NGE and NPAN to get government to de-proscribe the newspapers.

It would not be out of place to argue that the unifying orientation of such associations
which emphasises the common constituency and destiny of journalists is capable of
playing down ethnic considerations in journalists’ views on sensitive matters such as

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military rule. In such cases they would be more likely to employ professional or
intellectual judgements more than ethnic biases.

8.3 THEORETICAL IMPLICATIONS

8.3.1 The Predominance of Negative Characterisation of Government

There are strong theoretical reasons to argue that the preponderance of negative
characterisation as seen in the presentation of news and opinions on government in the
three Nigerian independent newspapers is more a product of the influence of a
combination of several institutional and non-institutional factors shaping the overall
process of news gathering and presentation than a deliberate attempt to instigate
military intervention as some would suggest. Two of such factors which are most
relevant in this situation are news values and the routinisation of news production
processes.

Ever since Galtung and Ruge’s (1965) seminal work on news criteria, the significance
of news values in the manufacture of news has attracted the attention of not a few
researchers. As shown in the review of theoretical approaches to the study of news
production in chapter four, various sets of journalistic criteria for news gathering,
writing, selection and display have been put forward in different studies (Tunstall,
1971; Golding and Elliot, 1979; Galtung and Ruge, 1981; Negrine, 1994). Prominent
among the most widely adopted news values is negativity - the reportorial flair for the
odd, the abnormal, the exceptional, the disruptive, the scandalous and the shocking
(Golding and Elliot, 1979; Brucker, 1973; Murdock, 1980, Traber, 1987).

While it was initially associated with capitalist or market-driven media of the

industrialised nations, negativity has been found to occupy a recognisable place in the
definition and production of news in developing nations as well, regardless of the
exhortations of political leaders in these regions that the mass media be used, in co­
operation with government, for development purposes. African communication

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researchers (Pratt, 1974; Mwaffissi, 1989 and Zaring 1994) have demonstrated the
predominance of negative portrayals of African governments, institutions and issues in
the independent press of most African nations where the political dispensation allows a
tolerable latitude of press freedom. Furthermore, characterised by a tradition of
vibrant press spanning over almost one century, Nigeria has resounded in most studies
in which the construction of government and public issues heavily feature the negative.
(Nwosu, 1987; Sobowale, 1987; Nwuneli et al, 1994).

Generally, the reliance on negativity in news selection has been attributed to the
historical antecedents of news coverage: reporting had its roots in surveillance services
for business organisations whose interests were interruptions or disruptions in business
(Golding and Elliot, 1979). It has also been explained in terms of news media trying to
satisfy the audience members who everywhere have an insatiable appetite for stories
with shock values (Brucker, 1973).

Beyond such generalities, however, peculiarities of the Nigerian society and press
system demand a more specific explanation of the social contexts that predispose the
independent Nigerian press toward the negative framing of government as shown in
this study. One such context derives from the press-politics role relationship.

Seen as a formidable political institution, the mass media have been either assigned
functions or associated with the performance of certain roles in the politics and
government of nations (Janowitz, 1981; Blumler and Gurevitch, 1986; MacQuail,
1987; Downing et al, 1990). While such prescribed and observed roles differ from one
social context to another, the most commonly discussed usually include acting as a
channel between government and the people, educating or informing the people about
public issues affecting their lives, and mirroring government or acting as a watchdog
for the governed.

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The independent press in Nigeria are actively involved in these and more roles.
However, what is more pertinent and instructive in the explanation of predominant
negative characterisation of government is the nature of press-govemment relationship
and how it affects the performance of these roles in the independent press. Shaari
(1997) has observed that there are two extremes in press-govemment relationships. At
one end it can be that of a mutual co-operation and a symbiotic interdependence as
exemplified by the Malaysian mainstream media which adopt the concept of ‘guided
press freedom’ in acceptance of government partnership for the unity of a society made
up of different ethnic groups with multiple cultural, religious and racial sensitivities. A
similar relationship also exists between the press and government in most African
nations which began life as independent nations under the monolithic philosophy of
single party regimes. Even in more politically pluralist states such as Nigeria, such a
smooth and symbiotic relationship or understanding exists between government and
government-owned media.

The point of departure, however, lies in the detachment of the Nigerian independent
mainstream press which unlike their type in Malaysia have always had an adversarial
relationship with government. Wherever this kind of relationship exists, there is an
atmosphere of mutual distrust and unease between government and the press. In such
a dispensation, government figures or political actors stigmatise the press as being
biased or partisan, slanting coverage against government, invading the privacy and
vilifying the personality of government leaders, and working hard in conjunction with
opposition to wreck government (Reedy, 1974). On the other hand, the press sees the
government as high-handed, hostile, repressive, unnecessarily secretive, hiding or
suppressing information, scheming to control and manipulate the media for political
gains, curbing press freedom, personalising political office, and not wanting to
account for their actions (ibid.).

In a cyclic pattern, the press, provoked by such government characteristics, become

more curious, aggressive and confrontational in their approach to government matters,

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and government becomes even more hostile to, distanced from and suspicious of the
press.

This situation expresses itself in different degrees in civilian and military governments
in Nigeria. Considering each type of government separately sheds much light on why
the negative portrayal was more rife in the civilian government of Shagari than in the
military administration of Buhari.

In the typology of modes of government, political scientists have come up with

concepts such as ‘rule-derived’ and ‘constitutive’ polities to distinguish between
democratically elected governments and political aberrations such as military
administrations (Oyewole, 1990). The basic difference lies in the foundation and
operation of democratic governments on Constitutions. In Nigeria, civilian
governments have been run on different kinds of Constitutions. Regardless of their
classification: parliamentary or presidential, the Nigerian Constitutions have always
defined the roles and responsibilities of both government and the press. It is very
essential to mention here that the manner in which such roles have been pursued by
both parties has equally nurtured the adversarial press-govemment relationship. The
following citations elaborate this point.

In ten sections (13-22), chapter two of the 1979 Constitution outlines the
“fundamental objectives and directive principles of state policy”. It begins by spelling
out the philosophical basis of the Federal Republic of Nigeria as:

1. “... a state based on the principles of democracy and social justice,”

2. a political entity where “sovereignty belongs to the people of Nigeria from whom
government through this constitution derives its powers and authority,”

3. a society in which “the security and welfare of the people shall be the primary
purpose of government,” and

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4. where “the participation by the people in their government shall be ensured in

accordance with the provisions of this constitution”.

It then goes ahead to define about seven broad objectives which encapsulate the
responsibilities which the government owes the governed. The spectrum covers
political, economic, social, educational, foreign policy, national culture, and national
ethic objectives. Due to its definitive summation of the role of civilian governments,
and therefore its relevance to the analysis of press government relations, it is worth
citing some portions of these objectives. The most salient points of these quotations
are highlighted for emphasis.

In section 15(5), for example, it states that the political objective of the state is to
abolish “all corrupt practices and abuse of power”, while section 22 defines the
national ethic as “discipline, self reliance and patriotism”.

Earlier in section 13, it had stated unequivocally that “it shall be the duty and
responsibility of all organs of government and all authorities and persons
exercising legislative, executive or judicial powers to conform to, observe and
apply the provisions of this chapter” i.e. the fundamental objectives of government.

Furthermore, under its economic objective, section 16 (2b & 2c) states that “the State
shall direct its policy towards ensuring that...the material resources of the
community are harnessed and distributed as best as possible to serve the
common good,” and that “the economic system is not operated in such a manner as to
permit the concentration of wealth or the means of production and exchange in the
hands of few individuals or of a group.”

Under the same chapter, in section 21, the constitution assigns a very sensitive role to
the mass media: that of policing government actions and guarding the peoples’ liberty.
It states that “the press, radio, television and other agencies of the mass media shall, at
all times be free to uphold the fundamental objectives contained in this chapter and
uphold the responsibility and accountability of the government to the people.”

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It can, at this juncture, be safely argued that in addition to the historical antecedents of
the Nigerian independent press as an institution that was bom into and nurtured on the
culture of feeling free to comment on, criticise and scrutinise government plans and
activities (as shown in chapter three), a major factor related to the nature of press-
govemment relations and press role in the politics and government of Nigeria during
both civilian and military administrations is this particular constitutional provision. In a
way, it can be linked with the prevalence of negativity in the presentation of
government in the private press as seen in the results of the content analysis. As the
following argument tries to elaborate, most journalists have tended to derive their
inspiration in the unceasing criticism of government or exposure of its misdeeds from
this constitutional exhortation.

Based on the directives and objectives of state outlined in sections 13-22 of the
Constitution, political parties frame their manifestos which are expected to be the focus
of their contract with the electorate when they come to power. In the case of Alhaji
Shehu Shagari, the National Party of Nigeria (NPN) under which he was elected into
office in 1979 had the provision of food, shelter, quality education and social
infrastructure as its cardinal objectives3, and these can be said to have been the promise
on which the party was voted into power. It is on record, however, that the Shagari
government was about the most incompetent, insensitive, appalling, corrupt and
wasteful in the history of Nigerian governance (Ihonvbere, 1996; Ihonvbere and
Vaughan, 1995; Diamond, 1990; Taiwo, 1995). Beginning from the war-like scenarios
under which the campaigns were held, the bribing of voters, the electoral fraud that
marred the conduct of the election itself, and the legal tussles that ensued from the
declaration of results claimed to have been rigged, it was obvious that members of the
political class were more interested in the perquisites of office than serving the needs
of the people or upholding the provisions of the Constitution which ironically had been
fashioned by themselves (Campbell, 1995). Shagari was reputed to have ‘folded his
arms’ and ‘looked the other way’ while governors, ministers, parliamentarians, party

3 S e e T h e N P N M a n ife sto , 1 9 7 9 .

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leaders, and even career technocrats went about acquiring ill-gotten wealth and
squandering Nigeria’s resources in the most wanton manner (Ekpu et al., 1985).
Contracts were awarded not for the necessity of the projects but for the purpose of
getting a significant percentage of the usually hyper-inflated cost from the contractors;
frivolous overseas trips were made by legislators, ministers and other key government
figures; budgetary allocations were misappropriated and records destroyed through the
sporadic fires that engulfed strategic public buildings. Even the Green Revolution
programme which was supposed to have launched the nation on its way back to
agricultural productivity became an avenue for siphoning public funds into private or
party pockets. The following remark is representative of the manner in which a
majority of observers and writers on the Shagari government have judged that era,

Three years of civilian rule in the Second Republic

had bled the nation dry, mismanaged huge oil ‘rents’
more than doubled the foreign debt profile,
destroyed the manufacturing and productive base,
and accentuated social tensions and conflicts to
unprecedented proportions (Ihonvbere, 1996:196).

Relying on the constitutional charge to “uphold the responsibility and accountability of

the government to the people,” and in the face of incontestable government violation
of its social and constitutional obligations to the people, the independent media as
represented by the Guardian, the Concord and the Punch were characteristically
heavily critical of the government. Perhaps the following comments by a Nigerian
journalist is very instructive here:

The constitution did not say the media shall be

fettered in upholding these principles, and it also
stressed that the media vigilance shall be ‘at all
times’, not when prescribed, permitted or conceded
by any whimsical authority or individual (Jason,
1996:31).

The argument that the press was acting in its watchdog capacity can be further
reinforced by the mirror approach to the analysis of press roles in government. It
seeks to establish the neutrality of the press, especially in adversarial situations (as is
the case in Nigeria) by pointing out that the press are not manufacturers of news, but

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merely reflect the social reality with minimal or no distortions (Gans, 1979; Giltin,
1980). A proof of the level of political decay and social malaise that the newspapers
concentrated on during that government lies in the countless governors, ministers,
party leaders and civil servants who were prosecuted and jailed after the failure of that
regime in 1983. The cases of Umaru Dikko and Akinloye, two NPN stalwarts who
were said to have stolen billions from the national coffers, and who took refuge in
Britain in 1984 still resound in the saga of that era (The Uwaifo Tribunal Report.
1985).

In the case of military governments, the adversarial relationship is even more

pronounced, and a number of reasons are responsible. In the first place, the very
nature of military rule is absolutist. It assumes both executive and legislative functions
of government, and possessing no technical skills to take over the judiciary, it makes
the courts subordinate to its decrees. Military mle is presented as a revolution aimed
at restoring normalcy to an endangered polity, and does not make pretences to the
curbing of fundamental rights in the process. It is the end that justifies the means.
Since it comes to power by force and violence, a military regime is also ever
suspicious of other sources of power. It either controls them or eliminates them. This
results in the suspension of all or sections of the Constitution, ousting of the
jurisdiction of courts in several matters, the banning of political parties and unions, and
the suppression of civil liberties. Relative to the mass media, the military view reflects
the Napoleonic paranoia: “three hostile newspapers are to be feared more than a
thousand bayonets”. The Nigerian situation is clearly put by Oyewole (1991:20) who
observes that “military governments do not feel secure when there are institutions they
cannot control, they understand that information is power, and regimes that want to
usurp all authority need to control information”.

Regardless of this setting, especially the suspension of the sections of the Constitution
that confer on the mass media the duty to uphold government accountability and
responsibility, the press carries on with the watchdog role. In most cases, journalists
and publications in the private sector explain their role in military regimes as offering a

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parliamentary platform for the discussion and evaluation of government activities

(Ogbondah, 1994). They also defend their role on the basis of acting in what is in the
national interest. Political scientists believe that this is the confluence that breeds
hostility between the press and the military. Oyewole (1990), for example, points out
that the private press forget that the military do not receive their power from the
people, but come to power to impose their will on the people. The fundamental
conflict is usually over who defines what is in national interest, and has led to the most
repressive decrees like the Official Secrets Act, the State of Emergency Decree, State
Security (Detention of Persons) Decree, Offensive Publications Proscription Decree,
and Newspaper (Registration) Decree Number 43. It has also led to the closure of
publishing houses, seizure of copies of papers and magazines, restricted circulation of
publications and mass detention of journalists. The tussle for the control (over the
definition and guarding) of national interest between the press and the government can
be exemplified by the events that were sequel to the banning of Newswatch in April
1987. The Newswatch had published an unedited version of the Political Bureau
Report (on political transition) before it was made public by Government. According
to Newswatch executives, a member of the Bureau who feared that the military
government might ‘doctor’ the report before releasing it to the public, had leaked it to
Newswatch. Government intelligence officials, aware of the leak, led several
delegations to persuade Newswatch not to publish the report, arguing that its
publication at that time would endanger national security (Oyewole, 1991). But
Newswatch went ahead to publish the report claiming to have done so in national
interest. As soon as the issue was on the news-stand, the magazine was banned under
a decree designed specifically for it (Newswatch Proscription Decree No.6 of 1987).
Earlier in 1986 Newswatch had engaged in a similar battle with military authorities
over the issue of national interest. By then it was planning a story on the controversial
and clandestine attempt by the Babangida administration to register Nigeria as a full
member of the Organisation of Islamic Conference (OIC): a sensitive matter which
suggested the islamisation of a multi-religious country in which freedom of religion
was guaranteed. The police demanded to censor the story before its publication. Dele
Giwa, then editor-in-chief of the magazine, refused, stating that Newswatch is
responsible to Nigeria and its people and not the police, and that it was acting in

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national interest. Defending the deliberate confrontation of the private press with
military authorities, Jason (1996:34) argues about the press being alive to its
“responsibilities towards the public and the inalienable rights of the people to know”
He further admits that “the disposition of the press is to first and foremost uphold the
rights of the people to know, and to think of the unpleasant consequences later.”

Another factor related to the confrontational press-govemment role relationship which

derives from the coercive nature of military rule lies in its secretiveness. In military
regimes almost every piece of information is classified as confidential. Keane
(1992:22) refers to this attribute in terms of “the growing quantity of political power
which is normally accountable neither to citizens or to the mass media nor subject to
the rule of law.” At best, it is a selective or ‘card-stacking’ mode of release of
information on government activities to the public through the media. In what has
been likened to the front stage and back stage scenario, Giddens (1984) illustrates how
authorities give out information that is suitable to its purpose through the front stage
while it hides those it considers prejudicial to its interest at the back stage to which the
media and the public are offered no access.

What follows this dispensation is a climate of curiosity and suspicion, and the quest for
the media to try to unravel the ‘facts’ shrouded by government might. And in the
absence of official sources, the press relies solely on rumours, speculations and one­
sided information provided by both solicited and unsolicited alternative sources.
Government, in turn, resorts to harsh legal and extra-legal measures to intimidate and
keep the media at bay. The ensuing relationship becomes one that is mutually
adversarial to both parties. As Bruckman (1996) points out, in most cases, the more
repression the government unleashes on the media, the more the media react with
stronger criticisms.

Having argued extensively about the factors that engender press-govemment

adversarial relationship in military rules, it is necessary to point out that the same

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factors, especially the authoritarian and coercive nature of military rule as opposed to a
more permissive and liberal attitude of civilian regimes, are responsible for the
reduced visibility of negativity in the presentation of the military government in the
three publications analysed. The fact has been reiterated by several communication
researchers that no matter the tradition or media culture the press operates in, no
matter how clement the media climate might be at any time or community, the press
can never attain absolute freedom to operate as it wishes (Horton, 1978; Shaari,1997).

8.3.2 Other Explanations of Negativity: Routinisation and its Influence on

Topics and Actors

The concept of routinisation is yet another source of the dominance of negativity in the
coverage of government in the three newspapers. As it was seen earlier in the review
of the dynamics of news production in chapter four, routinisation is an institutional
habit which denotes the set of rules which result in bureaucratically patterned and
repetitive practices in news gathering (Tuchman, 1980). Reflected mostly in the
delineation of news beats, story assignments, news-gathering sites, reliance on certain
regular sources, and attention on certain events or issues, routinisation is seen
primarily as a managerial strategy necessary for the day-to-day running of news media.
However, on a more intrinsic level, it influences to a considerable extent what is
selected as news, beginning from the collection of raw information.

Relative to the on-going exercise - the explanation of the prevalence of negativity in

government characterisation in the independent press in Nigeria - routinisation makes
its contribution in two ways; the focus on certain news actors and topics.

In the first case, as shown in the content analysis, the president, governors, ministers,
parliamentarians and other key government actors were the subjects of a majority of
the items carried in the papers. Given the climate of indiscretion which characterised
the activities of these officials, and considering the role of the press in reflecting these
realities, it is not a surprise that the resulting coverage was overwhelmingly negative.

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Of course, it must be mentioned at this juncture that the design of the research is in a
way contributory to this reality. Being an examination of government presentation in
the selected press, the selection of items for analysis depended to a great extent on
their focus on government operatives and activities. This, therefore, predetermined the
actors of the stories as government officials. However, the apparent bias in this design
is neutralised by findings cited earlier which showed that even in the overall study of all
kinds of actors, government officials always constitute the cynosure of media
coverage. Gans (1980), for example, classifies news actors as either the ‘knowns’
(political, economic, social and cultural giants) and the ‘unknowns’ (ordinary people),
and observes that actors in the former category are the frequent news actors while
those in the latter appear in the news either as statistics or under certain socially
abnormal circumstances (crime, protest, natural disasters etc.).

In the second situation, the analysis showed that politics ranked highest in the
frequency of topics covered in the three publications. Once again, since politics in this
context reflected largely the processes and activities of government which in
themselves were contrary to public welfare, it could not but attract negative coverage
in the press.

8.4 The Mass Media and the Mediatisation of Crisis: News Sources and Social
Control

Another perspective from which the role of the Nigerian press in military intervention
may be assessed is to discuss the findings of the content analysis in terms of the crisis
mediatisation approach which is closely related to another theoretical approach chosen
for this study: Agenda setting.

Earlier it had been stated repeatedly that this study does not seek information on the
direct causes of military intervention in Nigerian politics. Apart from the discrepancies
in the contentions and arguments about the potency of the mass media in moulding
social reality, especially by setting the agenda for public and government actions and

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decisions, the rapidity and yet unpredictability of coups in Nigeria makes an empirical
search for the precise causes of the phenomenon an unrealistic task.

It would therefore be reasonable to argue that whether the dominantly negative

framing or characterisation of government leaders and their programmes is provocative
enough to stimulate military intervention cannot be proved by this study. However, an
offshoot of the crisis mediatisation discourse which can suggest the role the media play
in crisis (as in coups in the case of Nigeria) is the question of whose agenda is
deliberately or unwittingly promoted through such media framing of government.
Which brings us to another aspect of the theoretical approach: the issue of agenda
building or the role of sources in media agenda. In other words, who controls the
production of meanings and whose interest do such products serve?

The phases of change in the conceptualisation of agenda setting have already been
pointed out in the theoretical chapter. It was seen that while earliest discourses on
agenda setting tended to associate the mass media with the power to structure social
reality and even set the agenda for public decision-making, more recent debates have
dwelt on the often invisible but powerful influence of sources, who are in most cases
interest groups seeking to exploit whatever weakness or inadequacy the media face in
collecting information, to promote their well-defined agenda. This is based on the
presumption that the mass media are mere conveyors of the ideas, information and
views they gather from those Hall et al (1981) would choose to call ‘primary definers’.

Traditionally, newspapers obtain information for their stories from a number of

sources depending on their objectives, organisational routines and other differentiating
characteristics. A government tabloid and an underground publication, for example,
would not have similar sources. A classification of sources which covers all the
avenues of information gathering among Nigerian newspapers is Sigal’s (1973)
routine, informal and enterprise channels. Routine channels comprise all the official
sources of news, mainly leaders in government, business, social and political circles.

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The conventional avenues of obtaining information through these sources include

interviews, press conferences, press releases, official reports and routine coverage of
their activities.

Opposition leaders, non-governmental figures, pressure groups and organised labour

unions usually make up the alternative channels of information. In most cases, these
are the sources who feed the press with scoops and leaks on government activities.

The third channel entails a more independent sourcing of news by reporters and writers
through personal and professional initiatives as in first hand observations, research and
investigations.

As it was stated earlier in the explanation of findings in the content analysis in chapter
six, it would very much seem that the three newspapers gather their stories from all
three channels, but rely most on informal and enterprise channels, a conjecture which
arises from the fact that most of the stories were not attributed to any identifiable
sources. As stated in that chapter also, this was most likely because of the need to
maintain joumalist-source confidentiality.

Having said that, it is pertinent to consider how this pattern of information sourcing
can affect the mediatisation of crisis. Raboy and Dagenais (1992:12) have observed
how both political office seekers and those already in authority, conscious of the fact
that information control and manipulation, especially through the media, is a form of
political power, and eager to propagate ideas that will benefit their own interest, have
“mastered the ground rules governing media operations.”

In a developing country such as Nigeria where a combination of government

intimidation, paucity of equipment and inadequate financial independence impairs the
coverage of news, especially through investigative journalism, the concept of
‘information subsidy’ becomes all the more irresistible. Independent news
organisations rely heavily on regular (informal) sources to reduce the cost and risk in

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investigation (Fishman 1980). The snag is that this reliance has all the potentials of
rendering such news media vulnerable to manipulation by sources who happen to have
certain ideas ‘up their sleeves’. Unwittingly, the mass media not only offer them
credible outlets for the reproduction of their definitions but also impose on the public
the hegemony of such power mongers. Kellner’s (1992:58) observation about the
subordination of the media to the whims of such manipulative news sources
underscores the situation: “the media are prone to wait until a major political figure or
established expert speaks against a specific policy and that view gains certain
credibility as marked by opinion polls or publication in ‘respected’ newspapers or
journals”. The danger, according to Raboy and Dagenais (1992:4), is that following
such leads often makes journalists susceptible to paying “even more attention to a
fabricated crisis than to one that can stake a material claim to reality”, especially where
news actors realise that “provoking a crisis is a form of empowerment or social
control.”

Nigeria offers a typical political environment where hidden power seekers can goad an
unguarded medium into painting a scenario that can easily be seen as very close to
anarchy. In such situations, the agenda of the sources could range from discrediting
their opponents in government or creating an atmosphere that can make their removal
by non-constitutional means justifiable. As most writers (Diamond, 1990; Ihonvbere,
1991, 1995) have pointed out, it is the scenario of inordinate power struggle
compelled by the perquisites of office rather than leadership service, a situation which
pitches opposing camps in a matter of life and death battle for political power. Editors
of reputable newspapers and magazines in the country, have often admitted being sent
what they regard as “juicy scoops” from factions of the ruling military junta who are
dissatisfied with the existing dispensation but lack the freedom to express themselves
at meetings of the Ruling Council. In other instances, it is ideologues, especially the
socially inclined ones who are not happy with the predatory impact of bourgeois
capitalism on the economic, social and political development of the country that feed
the press with most damning information on government misdeeds. The claim of the

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latter group is that their intention is the radical restructuring of the political economy.
The means of doing so does not seem to matter much to them.4

Furthermore, the possibility of opposition parties and other interested groups using the
media to drum up social unrest, especially where the party in power uses the machinery
of incumbency to thwart the electoral process, as has been the case in most elections in
Nigeria, cannot be ruled out. In fact, this point is strongly supported by the increasing
case of disenchanted power elites advocating for military intervention in chaotic
civilian administrations in recent times. The coup that brought in the present Abacha
government provides unambiguous examples. In a very revealing article titled “The
military and the crisis of democratisation in Nigeria”, Julius Ihonvbere (1996) lists the
profile of leading members of the political class, pro-democracy activists, human rights
activists and key figures in the Second Republic who either wrote to General Abacha
or held consultations with ‘conservative army officers’, appealing to them to intervene
as the imposition of an unworkable Interim National Government worsened the
political problems arising from the cancellation of the June 12, 1993 presidential
election results. If anything, this suggests that such advocates of military intervention
can as well manipulate the media to paint a most irresistible atmosphere for a forcible
change of government.

Journalists themselves are not unmindful of the vulnerability of the press at the hands
of such interest groups. The following comment by a journalist working for one of
Nigeria’s leading newspapers has a lot to say about journalism at the command of
powerful interest groups:

There is often the temptation to get emotionally

involved in current political controversy as if the
press is a party to the confrontation or is an official
organ of a political party or interest group. The
press, especially during the tyranny of military rule is
easily tempted to arrogate to or impose on itself
roles that are not in accord with journalism (Jason,
1996:36).

^ "pjiese v iew s w ere o ffer e d by s o m e e d ito r s w h o w ere in te r v ie w e d in form ally at the m e e tin g o f the
N igerian G u ild o f E d ito rs in S o k o to , in Jan u ary, 1 9 9 6 an d w h o d o not w ish to b e id en tified .

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The admission can further be seen in the note of caution sounded by some journalists
who have prescribed a more sensitive or self restraining approach to the presentation
of governments. According to one of the veterans of journalism in Nigeria, Babatunde
Jose, “there is no reason for African journalists to still believe that a good press is one
that is in constant state of war with the government or that a progressive journalist is
one who writes anti-govemment articles” (cited in Mytton, 1983.)

8.5 Journalists9 Personal Orientations Versus Institutional Forces

Proponents of the culturological approach to the analysis of news production

processes focus their attention on journalistic autonomy or the identity and action of
the individual journalist. The argument here is that the cultural background of
journalists as signified by their culture, personal attitudes, values, beliefs, biases, and
even fantasies influences the way news is gathered and written (Rainville &
McCormick, 1977; Paletz& Entman, 1981). To analyse the process of news
production, therefore, demands an understanding of the cultural attributes of the
journalist.

While not buying this approach in its entirety, due mainly to its reductionist flaws, it
was considered an interesting aspect of the search for journalists disposition to military
intervention, to elicit certain opinions from practising journalists on the subject.
Thereafter, a comparison was made between such personal opinions and the actual
current of news and opinions produced by journalists in the three newspapers.

According to the results of the survey in chapter seven, Nigerian journalists are not
irrevocably opposed to military intervention. Asked among other things what they
thought about the intervention of soldiers in Nigerian politics and government, 36 per
cent said they thought it was ‘sometimes desirable , while another 22 per cent
described it as a ‘necessary evil’. Those who said it was ‘totally unjustifiable’ made up
36 per cent of the sample size.

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Other responses which further betrayed journalists’ tolerance of military intervention

were derived from questions on particular governments which, in their judgment, were
most deserving of being thrown out in a coup, and whether they as individuals felt so
frustrated with such governments that they wished to express their desire for a change
by military might, using any particular medium or channel of mass communication.
Understandably, a majority of the respondents did not respond to the latter question.
The period of the survey, preceded by the jailing of several prominent opposition
leaders and journalists for an alleged plot to overthrow the Abacha government was
undoubtedly not a friendly time for those who may have wished for coups to say so.
However, among those who were daring enough to respond to the question, a majority
said yes, with several of them preferring to write an article to express their wish for a
coup. It must be noted that in actual fact, none of the respondents did express the
wish for military intervention either in an article or any other means.

This result portends some relevance to the theoretical background of this study,
especially the analysis of factors shaping news content. The absence of news contents
advocating for coups in newspapers produced by journalists some of who sometimes
accept or find some justification in some coups, and who, if they had their way, would
even write articles calling for military intervention in some governments says
something about the subordination of culturological factors to institutional ones. It
simply shows how social control in the news room (Breed, 1978), gatekeeping and
other institutional factors prevail over personal beliefs or attitudes in the complex
process of news production. This is not to deny that journalists’ personal values have
any influence in shaping news or presentations. However, based on this finding, it
would appear that such personal factors become minimal in the face of overwhelming
institutional and external forces acting on news production. These are the forces
which, according to Davidson et al (1976), circumscribe and limit what the journalist
can or cannot do in the news production process.

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Once again, this can be seen as a plus for the argument that the presentation of the two
governments in the independent Nigerian press was largely dictated by the adherence
to professional forces rather than conscious attempts to instigate military intervention.

8.6 Conclusion

Recent studies in the political roles of the mass media have tended to ascribe to them
increasing powers not only in the shaping of political realities but also in effecting
tangible political changes. Examples include the Iranian revolution and the toppling of
the totalitarian reign of the Shah (Srebemy-Mohammadi and Mohammadi, 1994); the
disintegration of the Soviet Union (Downing, 1995); the collapse of single-party
regimes in Africa (Maja-Pearce, 1995), and more specifically, the forced exit of the
dictatorial Babangida administration in Nigeria in 1993 (Diamond, 1995; Campbell,
1995; Ihonvbere, 1996).

Theoretical conceptualisations supporting this role speak of the mass media as agents
which create the atmosphere under which social and political crises which precede or
precipitate such political changes flourish. This is believed to arise from the manner in
which the media ‘mediatise’ crisis or frame political issues arising from government.
Put another way, this can be seen as the ability of the mass media to set the agenda for
political change.

Based on this premise, the central goal of this study was to examine the role of the
Nigerian independent press in precipitating the crisis that precedes change of
government by military force, and this chapter has been devoted to the discussion of
the entire results of the study, based on the major theoretical approaches which formed
its background.

A finding which attracted in-depth discussion in this chapter was the prevalence of
negativity in the characterisation of government in the three papers analysed. This was
attributed to factors related to:

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1. the influence of news values in news selection, writing and presentation,

2. the impact of media routinisation and other organisational forces shaping media
contents, especially in source preference, news actor focus and regularity of topics. (It
was argued that these elements in the news production process contributed to the
prevalent mode of characterisation).

It was further argued that the above theoretical explanations were reinforced by some
practical realities inherent among the independent press in Nigeria as well as in the
political administration of the country in both civilian and military dispensations.
These include,

3. the tradition of detachment from and opposition to government among the

independent press in Nigeria,

4. the mirroring function of the press, especially in view of that tradition, and

5. the adversarial press-govemment role relationship,

Relative to the government, such realities revolve around the endless cycle of abject
failure on the part of government leaders to fulfil the obligations the state owes the
people.

Another issue which prompted serious thought was the role of sources. According to
the content analysis, it was found that a majority of the sources were not identified, a
finding which could not have been unrelated to the negative tone of the stories, and
therefore, the need to protect them from possible government reprisal. It was,
however, argued that given the increasing restlessness of certain political pressure
groups, especially in the Nigerian political context, the possibility of media
manipulation by such groups who double as the regular sources of information for the
press could not be ruled out. This possibility finds support in both agenda building
research and the more recent mediatisation of crisis approach.

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Finally, it was argued that journalistic autonomy or the influence of personal

orientations, values and attitudes in news production could be reduced to an
insignificant proportion by institutional, organisational or professional forces. This
was based on the finding that media contents did not necessarily reflect the views of
individual journalists on the desirability of military intervention. Moreover, judging
from the results of the cross-tabular analysis of respondents’ views on military
intervention and their biographic attributes, journalists’ predisposition to the
phenomenon of military intervention in Nigerian politics does not depend on personal
characteristics such as age, education, official rank and ethnic origin.

With particular reference to the ethnic factor which was expected to produce
variations in the views of respondents based on ethnic loyalties, this study produces a
finding which differs from the commonly held view that opinions on most political
issues among Nigerians are shaped by ethnic identity and affiliation.

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SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONS

9.1 Summary

This study has been devoted to the examination of the predisposition of the Nigerian
press and journalists toward military intervention in politics. For purposes of
recollection, it is worth reiterating that military intervention in government through
coups d ’etat has been both the index and product of political instability in Nigeria for
more than two decades now. The first attempt at democratic governance in the country
saw the adoption of the parliamentary system of government in the First Republic
(1960-66), and a presidential model in the Second Republic (1979-83). Both attempts
were, however, stifled in a recurrence of military coups that some have come to view
as an undeniable part of Nigeria’s present political reality (Agbese, 1986; Okigbo,
1992). Beginning from the first coup in January 1966, Nigeria has been under military
mle for 26 years, having witnessed not less than six successful coups.

Regardless of the widely held notion among Western democracies that military mle is a
political aberration, some scholars of Third World politics have argued that the military
can play significant roles in the social, economic- and political development of countries
in this part of the world (Pye, 1962; Shils, 1962; Johnson, 1964). The basis of the
argument by these apologists of military involvement in political governance can be
summarised as their belief in the efficiency and discipline of the military institution
(Odetola, 1982).

From several indications, however, the Nigerian situation does not seem to tally with
the above argument. Take political development as an example. Most of the
intervening military administrations have made political reform a core programme of
their administration, and in each case the promise is that such reforms would bring
about lasting democracy and political stability. Examples include Nzeogwu’s
‘democratic socialism’, Ironsi’s ‘unitarism’, Gowon’s transition programme in the

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1970s and Babangida’s eight-year political transition programme, which were not only
inconclusive but also generated even more political instability in most cases. Of all
these, the most classic case of a wasted journey must be the costly and protracted
transition programme which was expected not only to inaugurate the Third Republic
but also evolve a political culture that would guard it from the ‘premature death’ of the
First and Second Republics. Regardless of the manipulations of its process by the
government, it ended up in a free and fair election that was remarkably devoid of
undue ethnic and religious cleavages (Campbell, 1995). Even if it was not without
some level of electoral malpractices, the fact that it was unanimously approved by
disinterested international observers as the nation’s freest election (ibid.), and that it
was certainly not worse than previous elections which were all the same upheld, should
have encouraged the government to hand over power to a duly elected civilian regime
in August 1993 as planned in the transition time table. But the Babangida
administration, in a bizarre turn, cancelled the election. The aftermath of that singular
action has its gloomy imprints all over the nation’s fate, the most significant being the
political uncertainty shrouding the nation, the resurgence of coups and (alleged)
counter coups, continuing economic crisis and the violation of human rights under the
present Abacha military government.

The economy, which has also been anything but healthy and stable has been identified
as a source of concern by most military governments. As in political reforms, Nigeria
has experimented with a long list of economic packages all of which were adopted as
the panacea to the Nation’s economic malady. The list would include counter trade,
IMF and World Bank loans, austerity measures, currency devaluation and trade
liberalisation. The most outstanding, the Structural Adjustment Programme, once
again, was applied during the Babangida years. However, in the absence of indices of
economic growth, if not deteriorating conditions of living, it is obvious that the root
cause of the problem has yet to be addressed (Taiwo, 1995).

Corruption is yet another defiant social problem which has had a deleterious impact on
national development. In most cases, the administrations which have been disbanded

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because of corruption have been civilian, and the succeeding military administrations
have in some cases demonstrated considerable passion in the trial and punishment of
offending public officers as seen in the multiple military tribunals. Yet, corruption has
remained a visible feature of almost all walks of life in the country. While some
observers, including past military rulers, (Danjuma, 1990; Ejoor, 1993) have argued
that the military institution is not immune to corruption, and therefore cannot be in a
position to fight it effectively, scholars of the Nigerian political economy (Nnoli, 1981;
Joseph, 1983; Ake, 1985; Taiwo, 1995) have pointed to the inability of the
governments to address the structural economic factors that nurture the problem.

While they are not exhaustive of the areas in which the military have failed to translate
their well publicised programmes of ‘national salvation’ into fruition, the above
examples illustrate the earlier argument that as far as Nigeria is concerned, the
paradigm of development as a product of military governance is not very realistic.

It is against this background that the advocacy and support for military intervention by
Nigerians becomes puzzling. Even more puzzling is the claim that the mass media are
equally involved, if not playing leading roles in such an advocacy. Those who have
championed the argument of mass media support for military intervention (Othman,
1985; Anim, 1990; Ademoyega, 1990; Diamond, 1990; Oyewole, 1991) explain their
view on the basis that even if it is not a direct call for intervention, the intensity of
media criticisms of certain governments makes military intervention an attractive and
justifiable option. This, in summary, is the basis for the examination of the
predisposition of the mass media and journalists toward military intervention in politics
and government in this study.

The perspective adopted in this study is the combination of an examination of the

presentation of government in Nigerian independent press and a survey of journalists
perceptions of military intervention in government. This approach was considered
because relative to the sensitivity of the subject, it was believed to be the most
practical and realistic way to assess the possible role of press agenda in the political
and social scenario within which military intervention takes place in Nigeria.

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Specific questions asked for the purpose of defining the focus of the study and for
guiding data collection and analyses include:

• whether the press carry news editorials, articles and other items that advocate for
military intervention in government as a solution to the nation’s problems,

• the discemibly dominant characterisation or framing of governments shortly before

their fall,

• whether there are thematic similarities between such press characterisation and
justifications for coups in the speeches of those who take over,

• the dominant disposition of Nigerian journalists to the phenomenon of military

intervention,

• the possible influence of background variables such as age, education, ethnic

identity, official position and length of professional experience on such disposition.

Two research methods: content analysis and questionnaire interview were adopted for
data collection. Content analysis has emerged over the years as a reliable research
methodology in communication audits. Its merits lie in its precision and replicability in
the examination of attributes of documented communication, which as Holsti
(1969:19) points out, “may (otherwise) escape casual scrutiny”. (See Chapters six and
eight).

On its own part, the usefulness of the survey derives from its effectiveness in eliciting
attitudinal or perceptive responses from respondents The questionnaire survey in
particular is credited with the advantage of minimising if not eliminating biases usually
caused by interviewer presence. It also enhances the validity of the study by ensuring a
standardised presentation of questions (Preece, 1994).

Two hundred journalists working in different newspapers across the country were
randomly sampled for the interview, using a 27-item self-administered questionnaire as

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the instrument of data collection. The central objective in designing the structured and
unstructured questions in the instrument was to obtain responses regarding the
dominant disposition of Nigerian journalists to military intervention.

In the content analysis, three private, independent and leading newspapers published in
Nigeria: The Guardian, the National Concord and Punch were purposively selected for
the study. Apart from their attributes as being independent of government, having a
considerable degree of editorial autonomy, enjoying the widest possible circulation,
and a reputation for boldness, their selection was based on regularity of publication
during the period thought to be most appropriate for the study: three months before
the December 1983 and August 1985 coups. Apart from the fact that all three papers
were in publication in the specific months chosen for the study of the two periods
(which was not the case in other coup periods, and which excluded other independent
papers from the study), it was thought that the comparison of press presentation of
government in both military and civilian governments might shed some light on the
dynamics of media role in politics and government.

Based on the supposition that the two governments: the civilian regime of Alhaji Shehu
Shagari (1979-83) which was toppled in December 1983 and the General Buhari
administration ousted in 1985 shared the characteristic of being highly unpopular
(Diamond, 1990), and were therefore thought to be likely to attract comments and
news advocating a change of government; and based on the assumption that press
criticism of these unpopular governments would have peaked at least three months
before their fall, issues of the three papers published during three months preceding the
fall of each government were chosen as the sample population. These were October,
November and December for the 1983 period; and June, July and August for the 1985
period. A sample of fourteen issues per month was drawn for the actual content
analysis which yielded a total of 252 issues. In each copy, issues relating to
government constituted the units of analysis.

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The major focal points of the analysis included item type, placement, central theme,
actors, news sources, topic, tone or depiction. The frequencies of numerical variables
like item type, placement, publication, authors, sources and actors were presented in
percentages and frequencies in the quantitative analysis. Furthermore, the
characterisation of government (which aims at contributing to the examination of the
predisposition of the press to military intervention) was presented both quantitatively
(in the frequency of positive and negative labels) as well as in the qualitative analysis
which featured extracts illustrating such labels.

While most political science scholars and researchers have devoted attention to the
social and economic contexts of coups, as well as the fecundity of political theories
that explain military intervention, the volubility of findings has not seriously focused on
media roles, short of the usual pointing of fingers on the mass media as promoters of
change, including that related to political systems and offices. So far, the focus of
researchers seems to be on the roles the military play in politics and the entire
development process.

From the communication perspective, most literature on the media and military rule
have tended to dwell on the effects of militarism on freedom of the press, among other
institutions. Military juntas, known for their undemocratic, coercive and repressive
characteristics (Oyewole, 1991), hardly ever allow the expression of dissenting views,
especially through mass mediated channels. Given the historical background of the
Nigerian press which imbued the independent press with an irrepressible culture of
vigilance and outspokenness, scholars such as Ekwelie (1979), Aboaba (1979),
Ogunade (1981), Oreh (1976), Onyedike, (1984), Utomi (1981) and Ogbondah (1994)
have studied in detail the nature of the relationship between the mass media and
various administrations, especially the confrontations between intolerant military
governments and the independent private press. A common theme in these studies has
been the analysis of the repressive approaches, especially decrees, adopted by the
military in their quest to subjugate the entire civil society, the mass media in particular.
Prohibitions inherent in decrees such as the State Security and Detention of Persons

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Decree, the Public Officers Protection Against False Accusation Decree, Newspaper
Circulation Prohibition Decree and the Newspapers Registration Decree have
undoubtedly diminished freedom of expression and press freedom in Nigeria.

While drawing from the wealth of literature availed by such works, and curious about
claims of media complicity in military intervention, I have taken a different approach by
trying to devote this study to the investigation of the possible role of the media in
either the promotion or denunciation of military intervention in Nigerian politics and
government. This constitutes the point of departure from other existing works on the
press and military rule in Nigeria.

As it was indicated in the statement of the problem of this study, this attempt does not
seek to unravel the influence of the media as causative agents or agenda setters of
military coups. It is rather an attempt to examine, within the framework of relevant
political and communication theories on the control of social reality, whether press
coverage of governments prior to coups, as well as journalists’ views on coups, can be
said to be sympathetic to military intervention or merely reflective of the conceptual
arguments regarding social and professional factors that shape media contents.

It is also hoped that the approach to this study and its results will contribute to the
discourse on the mass media and politics in Nigeria by adding to the literature on the
military and the mass media.

Most importantly, as Nigerians hopefully await the restoration of democratic rule in

1998, the timing and findings of this study are very apposite. As will be seen later in
this chapter, it has been argued that (rather than seeing the critical characterisation of
government in the press as an invitation for military intervention) the convergence of
findings in both the press contents and journalists’ opinions as well as speeches of coup
makers which concentrate on issues like corruption, incompetence, greed for wealth,
economic mismanagement, insensitivity to people s welfare, and repression can be read

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as the harbingers or indices of military intervention. They should therefore be of

instructive value to the Nigerian elite, especially politicians who shall be aspiring to
engage in the contest for the leadership of the nation in 1998 should the present
military administration honour the deadline and other provisions of the transition
programme. As was seen in the extra media data cited in the explanation of the
findings in the survey, these issues have repeatedly contributed to the fragility of
democracy, the decline of the economy and the stultification of the development
process in the country. There is sufficient reason to argue that as long as these issues
are swept under the excitement of transition programmes, especially the rush for
political office, the cycle of military intervention will continue to render sustainable
democratic rule a huge mirage.

The content analysis showed that no single issue of the publications analysed contained
any item directly or indirectly calling for military intervention. Though this was not
regarded as sufficient proof to conclude that the press was not supportive of military
intervention, it was all the same interpreted as indicative of the ability of the press to
apply self restraint on such volatile national issues like coup plotting. The result also
presented a reasonable logic to relate such self restraint to some theoretical concepts
which explain the news filtering process in the mass media: gatekeeping and editorial
policy. As the results of the survey showed, some respondents admitted their desire to
write articles to call for military intervention. As they pointed out subsequently, apart
from self-censorship arising from fear of reprisals especially when the military were in
government, the possibility of editorial censorship was another factor to which such
respondents attributed their inability to actualise such a yearning.

A most pertinent question in the research was the dominant framing of the Shagari and
Buhari governments in the three newspapers through news reports, editorials,
cartoons, articles and other letters. It was found that both governments had more
negative depictions or characterisation than positive ones, with the 1983 period
attracting the most overwhelming negative characterisation. While it may ordinarily
suggest that the 1985 period had a better government, it is incumbent to point out here

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that the difference in the frequency of critical characterisation of the two

administrations is largely attributable to the repressive nature of the 1985 period which
had a military government. It was an administration which promulgated so many
decrees aimed at silencing media criticism. In chapter three it was noted that one of the
earliest statements of the Buhari administration was the threat to ‘tamper with freedom
of the press’. And from all indications, this was not an empty threat. The indiscriminate
arrest and detention of journalists, the closure of media houses and the imprisonment
of the two Guardian reporters under the Public Officers Protection from False
Accusation Decree Number 4 of 1984 are just a few examples of the extent to which
the Buhari government went to control freedom of expression and the press. No
matter how resilient the private press in Nigeria may be, there is no doubt that
operating under such a climate of repression can significantly impair press freedom.

Having said that, a question with which this study is concerned is: how does the
preponderance of negative characterisation for both governments relate to the concept
of news production and social control, and how does this apply in the case of the
independent press in Nigeria? One of the arguments held by the theorists of news
production sociology is that within media organisations there are certain news criteria
that tend to determine and define the issues that become the news of the day. Among
such theorists, there is the common argument that news is most often defined and
presented as disruptions or oddities in life (Davidson et al, 1976; Golding and Elliot,
1979). The prominence of such types of media contents often seen as ‘negative news’
are associated with both the human flair for news that has shock value and the
influence of a highly competitive media market (Brucker, 1973). It would therefore
appear that the major consideration for news production which stresses the negative is
financial profit, a situation which critics of the ‘market-driven’ media have deplored as
unethical, irresponsible, lopsided and counter productive in several studies (Fortner,
1978, Altschull, 1984). These accusations which were the basis of the Hutchins
Commission on Freedom and Responsibility of the Press (1947) resurfaced in the
argument of the proponents of a new world order of information and communication
(Macbride, 1980). One of the major arguments of the Third World advocates of the
new order is that the mass media whose contents concentrate on accounts of oddities,

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crises and disasters not only present an unbalanced view of society but also easily lapse
into the stereotyping and misrepresentation of certain regions of the world, especially
the developing countries.

The emphasis on the exceptional in news reporting is not only equally rife in the mass
media of developing nations (Pratt, 1974; Nwosu, 1987; Traber, 1987; Nwuneli et al,
1994) but has also been explained in terms of news criteria and other factors that hold
sway in the production of news in the Western media. In this study, it has been
observed that the concentration of attention on government officials as news actors
and the focus on political issues are some aspects of media habits (routine) that can
explain the dominance of critical contents. The reasoning here is that if the
predominant topic, politics, breeds such a chaotic atmosphere, and the actors
repeatedly wallow in official misconduct, news about them is bound to be distasteful.
Based also on the finding that the sources of most news items were not identified, it
was reckoned that they were likely to be anti-government, and if this is the case, it was
further argued that the reliance on such sources of information can also affect the tone
of news.

However, beyond the mere observation that the contents were mainly critical, and their
explanation on the basis of some institutional values and routines, the fundamental
question here is: why are such stories critical? Are they the inventions of mischievous
and mercenary news organisations (out to wreck governments or sell their wares on
the appeal to sensationalism) or are they a reflection of the realities or peculiarities of
the society within which they operate?

As it was stated in the introductory chapter as well as in the beginning of the present
chapter, some politicians and political observers believe that journalists and the mass
media deliberately promote the fall of governments through the bombardment of the
reading public with critical and damning framing of the activities of government
officials. The revelations become too unsettling; mass disenchantment with such

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officials builds up until it climaxes in a popular clamour for change. And in the absence
of institutionalised democratic processes of effecting such a change, forceful change
becomes the only option. And then, the military as the only institution capable of
effecting a seizure of power wade in.

One of the strengths of this study is the finding that this does not appear to be the case
as far as the independent press in Nigeria is concerned. Based on their consistency with
not only the views expressed by the respondents in the survey but also the outpouring
of extra media data on the blatant ineptitude, corruption, mismanagement of resources,
political indiscipline and irresponsibility of government leaders, the dominant
characterisation of the government in the three Nigerian newspapers whose contents
were analysed, showed a reflection of the social, economic and political realities of
Nigeria during the periods studied. To bring the point home, it will be recalled that the
Shagari government, for example, which, according to the extra media data, was
undoubtedly an epitome of political misrule, attracted the most critical comments both
in the content analysis and the survey. If that government was credited with all the
misdeeds seen in such extra media data, and for as long as no one is contending the
accuracy of such evaluations, it can only be seen as passing the buck if the unpleasant
consequences of such misdeeds, in this case military intervention and its inherent
problems, are blamed on the mass media. In a social milieu in which the management
of national resources has been a repeated saga of broken promises and the neglect of
the welfare of the masses as demonstrated in the literature cited in several sections of
this study, the point must be made that the press was left with little or no option in its
overly critical or negative characterisation of the government.

It must not be forgotten that the evolution of the private press in Nigeria, especially in
the pre-independence era, was characterised by an enduring scrutinisation and criticism
of government programmes and actions. And at independence that role seemed to have
been bolstered by a constitutional provision which charged the press to uphold the
responsibility and accountability of the government to the people.

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Nevertheless, the critical predisposition of the independent press toward government

cannot be said to stem only from the zeal to maintain the responsibility and
accountability of the government to the people. It is important to point out that the
culture of secrecy and media repression, especially in military administrations, which
pitches the government and the press in a mutual distrust and adversarial relationship
contributes its own quota in the disposition of the press to be critical of government.
Furthermore, political opportunists seeking to exploit the perennial atmosphere of
political confusion to promote their selfish political agenda can easily find an outlet in a
predominantly critical press. While not suggesting that the press are that vulnerable,
two factors are capable of making the option of ‘information subsidies’ (Gandy, 1982)
very attractive. One such factor is the existence of political pressure groups and other
interests which have been reported to have resorted to an open consultation with the
military for a forcible change of government, especially during the short tenure of the
Interim National Government (Ihonvbere, 1996), The second is the lack of
independent investigative journalism (Mytton, 1983). This point will be recalled in a
later section of this chapter.

Relative to the dominant disposition of Nigerian journalists to military intervention, the

study came out with three classifications of impressions. In the first class, denoted as
the authoritarian school, there were journalists who saw coups as “sometimes
desirable” based on the unbearable nuisance of certain government leaders. They were
termed authoritarian in the sense that they betrayed some fancy for the rule of force
rather than law. Among the second group termed the fatalist school, there were
journalists who, unlike the ‘authoritarians’ do not necessarily fancy military
intervention but all the same surrender to its inevitability given the political
peculiarities of Nigeria especially the lack of strong mechanisms or will to resist
military abduction of the political process. They see coups as “a necessary evil”. The
third group, the uncompromising school, have no reservations in their rejection of
military intervention. No matter how precarious the situation could be prior to any
intervention, the uncompromising school firmly believes that the military have no
business in the political administration of the country, hence their stand that military
intervention is “totally unjustifiable”. By merging both the authoritarians and the

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fatalists as those who favour military intervention, albeit to different degrees, the
immediate posture appeared to be that a majority of the respondents were not
irrevocably opposed to military intervention. Subsequent responses, however, showed
that such a seemingly dominant predisposition was only in principle, and that the
journalists recognise the futility in relying on military intervention as a solution to the
problem of leadership in Nigeria. For example, regardless of the above mentioned
classes, the respondents indicated that the benefits of military rule are not only
ephemeral but are also far outweighed by its adversities. Furthermore, respondents
who were inclined to favour military intervention in certain chaotic and appalling
political scenarios admitted that they had cause to regret their wish for such an
intervention after it might have happened. Their reasons included the observation that
in most cases the interventionists did not justify their claims for seizing power and
were in some cases even worse than those they displaced. However, two questions in
which the respondents indicated their unanimity in the disapproval of military
intervention were whether military intervention should be out-lawed or whether the
role of the military in politics should be made legitimate by allowing joint military and
civilian governments. An overwhelming percentage of the respondents agreed that
military intervention in politics should be outlawed while rejecting the proposal for
power sharing by the military and the civilians.

9.2 Conclusions

As an institution that is not immune to external social forces, the mass media in Nigeria
cannot be isolated from the factors that shape media products all over the world.
Regardless of the differences in social settings and media roles in developing nations, it
must be remembered that the media in these regions are susceptible to the
homogenising influences of global media practices. It would, therefore, not be a
surprise if the organisational factors and news values which influence news production
in developing nations do not differ remarkably from those of .the Western media.
Beyond these similarities, however, there is the need to examine how much these
practices in a developing nation such as Nigeria defer to the theoretical
conceptualisations widely used in the analysis of such practices, especially in the West.

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Relative to this study, these theories are agenda setting and the sociology of news
production. The influence of news values as a significant aspect of the sociology of
news approach has already been examined in a preceding section of this chapter. Based
on the peculiarities of the social setting within which the Nigerian press operate, it was
concluded that news production as exemplified by the characterisation of government
was more of the reflection of social reality than a compulsive adherence to traditional
news values. The following section shall therefore concentrate on agenda setting. It
should be noted however that the conceptual similarities between agenda setting and
the sociology of news as pointed in chapter four means that some of the issues in this
section may as well apply to news sociology.

9.2.1 Agenda Setting and Social Control

Conceptualised initially as the examination of the media function of imparting salience

to issues (Cohen, 1963; McCombs and Shaw, 1972), agenda setting has undergone a
series of revisions. Of these, the most pertinent to this study is the construction of
social reality through the framing of issues and personalities (Giltin, 1980; McCombs
and Shaw, 1993; Dearing and Rogers, 1996). In a radical departure from incipient
assumptions of merely drawing public attention to certain issues, these new
assumptions make more daring claims about the ability of the mass media to
manipulate public perception of issues through the selection of issues for attention and
the manner in which such issues are framed. While most of the studies upon which
these new assumptions are based are mainly on elections and public agenda, the aspect
of framing identified in chapter four as the ‘mediatisation of crisis’ is the most relevant
to the study of the predisposition of the Nigerian press to military intervention. To
recapitulate, proponents of the ‘crisis mediatisation’ concept argue that the manner in
which the mass media frame conflicts inherent in a social or political system often
breeds crisis (Morin, 1976; Raboy and Dagenais, 1992). Two classic cases cited in the
review of literature on this conceptualisation in chapter four were the Persian Gulf
crisis and the 1973 Chilean political crisis. In the later situation, Buckman (1996)
expresses the strong belief that the political crisis that led to the death of President
Salvadore Allende and the seizure of his government by the Pinochet military cabal in

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1973 was because of the reckless advocacy by certain influential newspapers such as El
Mercurio for military action.

How realistic is it to adopt such a conceptual framework in explaining the persistence

of political crisis and military intervention in politics in Nigeria? Can the same influence
of Chilean newspapers instigating military intervention in Chile or of the American
press promoting a military approach to the Persian Gulf crisis (Kellner, 1992) be
ascribed to the independent press in Nigeria regarding military intervention in politics?

Preceding arguments which hold that this situation does not seem to be the case in
Nigeria alluded to journalists’ recognition of the problems of military intervention.
They also pointed out the fact that the critical characterisation of the two failed
governments was an index of press freedom and more essentially, a reflection of social
reality. Relative to the theoretical argument on the mass media setting the agenda for
military intervention, as it were, there is further evidence to reinforce the stand that the
critical representation of the government in the press does not amount to an invitation
for military intervention.

In the first place there is sufficient reason to believe that coups can happen, media
criticisms or not. The finding, in the content analysis, that the Buhari government
which received less criticisms or negative characterisation than the Shagari government
was not only overthrown as well but even lasted shorter proves this point.

Furthermore, as a highly unpredictable occurrence, coups would certainly take more

than media prompting in the form of criticism of government activities to happen. The
body of literature on the political and philosophical bases of military intervention
reviewed in chapter two shows that coups result from a combination of complex
social, political, economic, and cultural factors. While the mass media as social
institutions may not be totally exonerated from raising attention on the issues
associated with military intervention, crediting them with the power to instigate or

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cause military intervention, especially in the Nigerian context, is an exercise in

reductionism.

9.2.2 Agenda Building and Source Control

Proponents of the agenda building approach to the analysis of social control (Hall et al,
1978; Gandy, 1982; Dearing and Rogers, 1996) insist that the mass media are no
more than information delivery channels, and that sources of news are highly influential
in defining and shaping social reality. Concepts such as ‘primary definers’ (Hall et al,
1978) and ‘news management’ (Ansolabehere, 1991) have been adduced to illustrate
not only the prime position of sources in news production, but also the tendency of
sources to take advantage of such a position. According to Gandy (1982:15), the
relationship between news organisations and sources is “an exchange of value” in
which the media reduce the cost of information by cultivating ‘willing sources’ while
such sources seize the chance to exercise power by controlling news content.

Relating these thoughts to the mediatisation of crisis, Raboy and Dagenais (1992)
argue that interest groups who realise that the control and manipulation of news in the
mass media guarantees power, will go to any length to exploit their position as sources
of media information to promote their selfish agenda. This would mean that the media
accused of promoting the crisis that erupted in Chile and the Persian Gulf, for example,
might have been promoting the agenda of interest groups serving as news sources.

The culture of inordinate pursuit of political office and political intolerance among
Nigerian politicians (Diamond, 1990), and more recently, the open agitation by
opposition groups for military action against opponents (Ihonvbere, 1996), as cited
earlier in this chapter, fortifies the conjecture that such power mongers not only exist
in Nigeria but also could scheme to promote their interests through the mass media if
given the chance. Nevertheless, this study does not have any results upon which it can
be argued that this is actually the case. If anything, the earlier observation about the
influence of institutional gatekeeping and organisational policy on news content

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narrows the possibility of news based on personal interests. To reiterate, the absence of
contents advocating for military intervention as was seen in the results of the content
analysis, and the respondents’ reasons for not actualising their intention to write
articles calling for coups were both suggestive of the influence of gatekeeping.

It can also be argued that a press that does not appear to be interested in promoting
crisis or military intervention as concluded previously, is not likely to serve as
instruments in the hands of politicians and other interest groups who thrive in an
atmosphere of crisis.

In conclusion, this study has brought to the fore the need to incorporate cultural and
historical peculiarities of developing nations in evaluating media roles and practices in
such societies. While this approach does not necessarily obviate the relevance of the
dominant theoretical approaches to news production, especially the ones adopted as
the background to this study, the results of this study have shown how media roles as
typified by the predominance of critical characterisation of government, can easily be
misunderstood as the mere flair for sensationalism or the commodification of crisis.

It is hoped that the findings of this study would have made a modest contribution to
knowledge in the field of political communication in Nigeria in general and the
dynamics of news production in particular.

360
 APPENDIX 1

Centre for Mass Communication Research

University of Leicester
104 Regent Road
Leicester
England
RESEARCH QUESTIONNAIRE

^ 64* 'pni&td.

As part of the requirements for the completion of a doctoral programme at the above-
named University, I am doing a survey on the predisposition of Nigerian journalists
towards military intervention in politics.

This is purely an academic exercise whose success depends on your willingness to

complete this questionnaire as accurately as you can. You are not required to give
your identity. The anonymity of your responses will surely be guaranteed.

I owe you a whole lot of gratitude for your co-operation in this study. Please, accept
whatever inconveniences it might have caused you (in terms of your busy schedules) to
complete this questionnaire as your personal contribution towards ensuring a brighter
future for journalism as a profession in Nigeria. Thanks very much.

Sincerely yours

B.N. Emenyeonu

Please answer the questions in this section by ticking (V) in the appropriate boxes. Feel
free to specify your responses on the dotted lines if none of the ready made options
matches your perception.

A. GENERAL IMPRESSIONS.

1. Which of these options best describes your impression of military intervention in

government?

a) Sometimes desirable ( ) b) A necessary evil ( )

c) Totally unjustifiable ( ) d) Undecided ( )

(more next page)

361
e) Others (please specify)

2. Is there any particular coup leading to the ousting of either a civilian or military
administration you adjudged justifiable?

a) Yes ( ) b) No ( ) (Go to question 5) c) Undecided ( )

3. If ‘Yes’, which of the following overthrown administrations do you have in

mind? (You can tick several boxes)

a) The Balewa Admin. (1966) ( ) b) The Ironsi Admin. (1966) ( )

c)Gowon’s Admin. (1975) ( ) d) The Shagari Admin (1983 ( )
e)TheBuhari Admin. (1985) ( ) f) The Shonekan Interim National Govt.(1993) ( )

4. Which of the following options represents a justification for an overthrow? (Tick

as many as you wish to )

a) Unbridled corruption ( ) b) Oppressive rule ( ) c) Inept leadership ( )
d) Neglect of the masses’ welfare ( ) e) Inability to contain ailing economy ( )

f)Complete break down of law and order due to political chaos ( )

g)Ethnic domination ( )

h) Others (please specify)..............................................................................................

5. Did you ever feel so frustrated that you felt like using any of the following media to

express the wish for military intervention in government?

a) Writing an article Yes ( ) No ( )

b) Issuing a press release or communique Yes ( ) No ( )

c)Granting an interview or press conference Yes ( ) No ( )

d)Organising a public rally or demonstration Yes ( ) No ( )

7. If you had the urge to express the wish for a military take over but did not
actually do so, what stopped you?

a) The lack of access to the media ( ) b) Editorial censorship ( )

(more next page)

362
c) Fear of reprisals from incumbent government ( )

d) Others (please specify).........................................

8. Do you think Nigerian politicians provoke the military to take over power?

a) Yes ( ) b) No ( ) c) Don’t know ( )

9. If Yes, how? (You can tick as many as possible)

a) Political intolerance and rivalry ( ) b) Corruption ( )

c) Undue ethnic rivalry ( ) d) The lack of political direction ( )

e) Others (please specify).................................................................................

10. If No, why?

Because : a) The political class is not that bad ( )
b) Regardless of the mistakes of the incumbent government, the military have no
business in political governance. ( )

c) The military are so power-hungry that they cash in on the slightest controversy to
take over government ( ) d) The military are merely motivated by the desire
to grab a big chunk of the “national cake” ( )

e) Others (please specify)..........................................................................................

11. If you ever wished for a coup for whatever reason, did you ever have cause to
change your mind after it had happened?

a) Yes ( ) b) No ( ) c) Don’t know ( )

363
12. If Yes, what made you change your mind?

a) You soon discovered the new administration was not better than (preferable to) the
one it overthrew ( ) b) The new administration did not seem to be capable of
delivering its promises ( )

c) The administration became dictatorial soon afterwards ( )

d) The economy got worse ( )

e) Others (please specify)..................................................................................................

13. Whether you have wished for a coup or not, do you find some justification in any
of the reasons given by any of the military juntas for taking over power?

a) Yes ( ) b) No ( ) c) Undecided ( )

14. If Yes, please specify...................................................................................................

15. What are the benefits of military intervention in politics? (You can tick as many as
possible).
a) restoration of law and order ( ) b) disbanding of unhealthy political rivalry ( )

c) Speedy execution of projects undeterred by political/parliamentary bureaucracy ( )

d) A feeling of national unity due to unitary nature of military administrations ( )
e) Checking the excesses of an overthrown administration ( )
f) None at all ( )
g) Others (please specify)...........................................................................................

16. If you identified any benefits above, would you say they are:

a) long-term ( ) b) short-term ( ) c) don’t know ( )

d) Other (please specify)..................................................................................................

364
17. What are the adverse effects of military intervention? (You can tick as many as
possible)
a) Political instability ( ) b) Economic downfall ( )
c) Ethnic divisions ( )
d) Violation of rights ( )
e) Reluctance or refusal to restore democratic government ( )
(more next page)
f) The lack of continuity in programmes and policies image ( )
g) Poor external image ( )
h) The lack of checks and balances leading to the looting of the national treasury ( )
i) Others (please specify)............................................................................................

18. What aspect of national development s u ffe r s m o st due to military intervention?

(please tick only one)

a) Education ( ) b) Political stability ( ) c) The economy ( )

d) Human rights/dignity ( ) e) External image/relations ( )

f) National unity ( )

g) Any other (please specify).................................................................................

19 What aspect b e n e fits m o st? (Tick only one, please)

a) National unity ( ) b) Political reforms ( ) c) Sports ( )

d) Economic recovery ( ) e) Education ( )

f) Any other (please specify)............................................................................

365
 B. ATTITUDINAL BELIEFS

Please indicate how much you agree or disagree with the following propositions (Tick
only one option in the appropriate column. Note: SA=Strongly Agree, A= Agree,
UND= Undecided, DA= Disagree, SDA= Strongly Disagree)

SA A UND DA SDA

20. Military interven­

tion should be outlawed .......................... ....................................................

21. The military should

rule jointly with civi­

lians. ........................... ..............................................

C. BIOG RAPHIC DATA

22. For how long have you worked as a journalist?

a) 1 - 5 years ( ) b) 6 - 10 years ( )

c) 11 - 15 years ( ) d) 16 - 20 years ( ) e) 20 years +

23 What is your position in your Organisation?.......................................................

24 Please indicate your State of Origin.....................................................................

25. What is your gender?

a) Male ( ) b) Female ( )

26. Which of these options indicates your age?

a) 20 - 29 ( ) b) 30 - 39 ( )

c) 40 - 49 ( ) d) 50 - 59 ( ) e) 60 + ( )

366
27. Which of the following is your highest educational qualification?

a) Ph.D. ( ) b) Masters Degree ( )

c) Bachelor’s Degree ( ) d) Diploma ( )

e)WASC/GCE ( ) f) Others (Specify).........................

T h a n k s e v e r s o m o c h fo r y o u r a s s is ta n c e .

367
 APPENDIX 2
CODING SCHEDIIT/E

C olu m n s

1. Item number 1-3

2. Publication 4

National Concord - 1

The Guardian - 2

The Punch - 3

3. Date of publication (date, month, year) 5-10

4. Page 11-12

5. Position (Placement) 13

Front page - 1

Back page - 2

Inside page - 3

Other - 4

6. Type of item 14-15

Lead story - 01

News - 02

Editorial - 03

Article/Analysis - 04

Letters - 05

Press statement/Speech - 06

View point/Column - 07

Interview - 08

Advertisement - 09

368
Cartoon - 10

O th er-11

Headline........

Sub-headline.

Lead (Intro)..

Editorial title...........................................

Main points (of each type of content)

7. Length of item (including headline and illus.) sq. cm 16-19

8. Cartoon size (sq. cm) 20-23

Cartoon caption...............................................................................................

Cartoon comm ent

Cartoon description

9. Author

Staff (writer, reporter, cartoonist, etc.) - 1

Wire service subscription - 2

Columnist - 3

Outside contributor - 4

369
Other - 5

10 News Source 25

President/govemor/minister/parliamentarian/judge -1

Other government officers -2

Party leader - 3

Opposition - 4

Elites/Pressure groups - 5

Unidentified - 6

Others - 7

10. Subjects referred to (Code: Y es=l, No=2) 26-35

President/Head of State

Senate/House of Representatives leader

Chief Justice of the Federation /Appeal Court Justice or High Court Judge

State Governor/Administrator

Minister/Adviser/Police Chief/S SS Chief/Chief of Army Staff

Commissioner/Permanent Secretary/Director-General

Party leader/Front-line Politician

Parliamentarian

Other key government Officials

Other

11. Other subjects (not necessarily persons) (Yes=l, No=2) 36-43

The Presidency/Ruling Council/Federal Government

The Judiciary/Tribunals

The Legislature

Presidential Committee/Commission

Ministry/Government Parastatals

Political Party

370
TheMilitaiy/Police/Customs/Immigrations/NDLEA/NSO
Other

12. Topic (Yes=l, No=2)

Agriculture/Food

Crime/Violence/Corruption

Economy/Commerce/T rade/Finance

Education/Science and Technology

Employment/Productivity/Industry

Environment/Housing/Rural and Urban Development

External Affairs/Image/Defence

Health/Social services

Politics/Elections/Change of Government/Appointments

Internal Affairs/Security

Law/Civil rights

Sports/Culture/Entertainment/National Heritage

Transport/Communication/Information

Other

13. Context them e.................................................................

14. Characterisation of Subjects

Positive (Yes=l, No=2)

Responsible, reasonable, realistic

Good leadership, exemplary

Dynamic, productive, hard working, self-reliant

371
Strong, united

Selfless, working in national interest

Progressive, peaceful

Upholding rule of law/human rights

Anti-corruption

Resourceful, experienced

Humane, sympathetic, pro-people

Other

Negative (Yes=l, No=2) 69-77

Dlegal, unconstitutional, unjust

Unpatriotic, against national interest, selfish, greedy

Corrupt, fraudulent, wasteful, ostentatious

Oppressive, brutal, repressive, fascist, dictatorial

Dishonest, deceitful, exploitative

Weak, incompetent, crisis-ridden, irresponsible, lacking direction

Inhuman, not interested in mass’s welfare

Immoral, undisciplined, notorious, deplorable

Other

15. Effects of military intervention

Positive (Code: Y es=l, No=2) 78-84

Political stability/national unity

Economic recovery

Rise in standard of living

Improved educational standards

Rural development

Infra-structural development

Other

372
Negative (Adverse) (Yes=l, No=2)

Political instability

Ethnic/tribal/religious domination

Economic depression

Inflation/high cost of living

General hardship

Declining educational standards

Denial of fundamental rights/insecurity

Poor health delivery

Other

16. Solutions to military coups (Yes = 1, No = 2)

Diarchy

Legislation to outlaw coups

Installation of lasting democracy

Mass political education

Other - 5

17. Advocacy for Military Coup (Yes=l, No=2)

 APPENDIX 3: COUP SPEECHES
3*1 The January 15,1966 Coup Speech by Major Chukwuma Kaduna Nzeogwu

In the name of the Supreme Council of the Revolution of the Nigerian Armed Forces, I
declare martial law over the Northern Provinces of Nigeria.
The Constitution is suspended and the regional government and elected assemblies are
hereby dissolved. All political, cultural, tribal and trade union activities, together with
all demonstrations and unauthorised gatherings, excluding religious worship, are
banned until further notice. The aim of the Revolutionary Council is to establish a
strong, united and prosperous nation, free from corruption and internal strife. Our
method of achieving this is strictly military but we have no doubt that every Nigerian
will give us maximum co-operation by assisting the regime and not disturbing the
peace during the slight changes that are taking place. I am to assure all foreigners
living and working in this part of Nigeria that their rights will continue to be respected.
All treaty obligations previously entered into with any foreign nation will be respected,
and we hope that such nations will respect our country’s territorial integrity and will
avoid taking sides with enemies of the revolution and enemies of the people.
My dear countrymen, you will hear and probably see a lot being done by certain bodies
charged by the Supreme Council with the duties of national integration, supreme
justice, general security and property recovery. As an interim measure all permanent
secretaries, corporation chairmen and senior heads of department are allowed to make
decisions until the new organs are functioning; so long as such decisions are not
contrary to the aims and wishes of the Supreme Military Council. No minister or
parliamentary secretary possesses administrative or other forms of control over any
ministry, even if they are not considered too dangerous to be arrested.
This is not a time for long speech-making and so let me acquaint you with the
proclamations in the Extraordinary Orders of the Day which the Supreme Council has
promulgated. These will be modified as the situation improves. You are hereby warned
that looting, arson, homosexuality, rape, embezzlement, bribery or corruption,
obstructing of the revolution, sabotage, subversion, false alarms and assistance to
foreign invaders, are all offences punishable by death sentence. Demonstrations and
unauthorised assembly, non-cooperation with revolutionary troops are punishable in a
grave manner p to death. Refusal or neglect to perform normal duties or any task that
may of necessity be ordered by local military commanders in support of the change,
will be punishable by a sentence imposed by the local military commander.
Spying, harmful or injurious publications and broadcasts of troop movements or
action, will be punished by any suitable sentence deemed fit by the local military
commander. Shouting of slogans, loitering and rowdy behaviour will be rectified by
any sentence of incarceration, or any more severe sentence deemed fit by the local
military commander. Doubtful loyalty will be penalised by imprisonment or any more
severe punishment. Illegal possession or carrying of firearms, smuggling or trying to
escape with documents, valuables including money or other assets vital to the running
of any establishment will be punished by the death sentence. Wavering or sitting on the
fence and failing to declare open loyalty instead of being part of the revolution will be
regarded as an act of hostility, punishable by any sentence deemed suitable by the local

374
military commander. Tearing down an order of the day or proclamation or other
notices will be penalised by death.
This is the end of the Extraordinary Order of the day which you will soon begin to see
displayed in public. My dear countrymen, no citizen should have anything to fear, so
long as that citizen is law-abiding and if that citizen has religiously obeyed the native
laws of the country and those set in every heart and conscience since October 1, 1960.
Our enemies are the political profiteers, the swindlers, the men in high and low places
that seek bribes and demand ten per cent; those that seek to keep the country divided
permanently so that they can remain in office as ministers or VIPs at least, the
tribalists, the nepotists, those that make the country look big for nothing before
international circles; those that have corrupted our society and put the Nigerian
political calendar back by their words and deeds. Like good soldiers we are not
promising anything miraculous or spectacular. But what we do promise every law-
abiding citizen is freedom from fear and all forms of oppression, freedom from general
inefficiency and freedom to live and strive in every field of human endeavour, both
nationally and internationally. We promise that you will no more be ashamed to say
that you are Nigerians.
I leave you with a message of good wishes and ask for your support at all times, so
that our land, watered by the Niger and Benue between the sandy wastes and gulf of
Guinea, washed in salt by the mighty Atlantic, shall not detract Nigerians from gaining
sway in any great aspect of international endeavour.
My dear countrymen, this is the end of the speech. I wish you good luck and I hope
you will cooperate to the fullest in this job which we have set for ourselves, of
establishing a prosperous nation and achieving solidarity. Thank you very much and
good-bye for now.

375
3.2 Lfc-General Yakubu Gowon’s Speech after the lu lv 15.1966 Coup.
I welcome this opportunity of addressing myself to you as new Head of the National
Military Government and Supreme Commander of the Armed Forces of the Nigerian
Republic. You are all aware of the circumstances of the country in the past wee-end
which brought me into this office. I had the responsibility thrust upon me, and I had to
accept it in the national interest. It is a responsibility whose gravity and sheer weight
form the motive behind my desire to meet you gentlemen of the press, radio and
television with a view to making an urgent appeal for your co-operation.
In my maiden statement last Monday, I hastened to assure the people of Nigeria that
plans would be laid on for an early return to civilian government. I wish to repeat this
undertaking once again. I wish to add that, meanwhile, no major constitutional or
other changes will be effected without the fullest consultation with the people. To this
end, I propose to appoint an Advisory Committee dealing with the main issues of
national interest, the aim is to fill part of the vacuum created by the ban on all political
organisations. This committee will be composed of independent and respectable
Nigerian citizens drawn from various sections of the community. It is my intention to
seek their advice from time to time on matters affecting the national interests and
welfare of our people.
The national military Government under my headship will be a continuing effort. As I
indicated in my maiden broadcast of last Monday, it is my intention to continue the
policy laid down in the statement by the former Supreme Commander on January 16th,
1966. We shall also honour all international obligations entered into by the previous
government, we shall maintain good diplomatic relations with all countries, all
foreigners in Nigeria are assured of their personal safety and should have no fear of
being molested, we shall continue with vigour the policy of providing a climate
conducive and attractive to foreign investors. They are assured of the protection and
goodwill of my government. In view of the foregoing, it is the stand of my government
that foreign interference in any form will be regarded as an act of aggression.
All public officers at the national level and in the various Groups of Provinces will
continue in their office carrying out the normal functions of government. Public
corporations and other statutory bodies as well as local government councils will
continue to function under their appropriate ministries, all existing laws, regulations,
orders and official instructions remain in force, unless and until either modified or
abrogated by the National Military Government.
Arising from the events of the past week, the whole atmosphere is heavily charged
with false and tendentious rumours. Thus the circumstances of the republic at present
call for a maximum and judicious use of all the media publicity with a view to
enlightening the people and clearing the suspicions and anxieties generated by these
rumours. The public outside Nigeria must also be enlightened about the true posture of
things. They must not be allowed to form grossly exaggerated notions about this
country.
It is for these reasons that I wish to make a special appeal to the press and radio, local
and foreign, for their co-operation with the national Military Government. We have no
intention of curtailing in any way the freedom which the Nigerian press has enjoyed up
to this time. But we appeal to them to exercise much freedom with a deep sense of
national duty, loyalty and responsibility.

376
Further, we appeal for the sympathy and understanding of the foreign press. Let them
be honest and constructive in their reporting and interpretation of the Nigerian scene.
We know our circumstances too well and do not ask for a rosy and unrealistic picture
of Nigeria, let them take and present us for what we are - a newly independent African
state struggling against great odds of history, geography, ethnography and the evil
effects of imperialism, to build a nation in less than one-fiftieth of the time it took
European States to build theirs. Thank you, one and all.

377
 33 Brigadier Murtala M ohammed’s .Tulv 29-1975 Cmm S p ^ h
Fellow Nigerians, events of the past few years have indicated that despite our great
human and material resources, the government has not been able to fulfil the legitimate
expectations of our people.
Nigeria has been left to drift, this situation if not arrested would inevitably have
resulted in chaos and even bloodshed.
In the endeavour to build a strong, united and virile nation, Nigerians have shed much
blood; the thought of further bloodshed, for whatever reasons, must, I am sure, be
revulsive to out people
The Armed forces, having examined the situation, came to the conclusion that certain
changes were inevitable.
After the civil war, the affairs of State, hitherto a collective responsibility, became
characterised by lack of consultation, indecision, indiscipline and even neglect.
This trend was clearly incompatible with the philosophy and image of a corrective
regime.
Unknown to the general public, the feeling of disillusion was also evident among
members of the armed forces whose administration was neglected, but who, out of
sheer loyalty to the nation, and, in the hope that there would be a change, continued to
suffer in silence.
Things got to a stage where the head of the administration became virtually
inaccessible even to official advisers; and when advice was tendered, it was often
ignored.
Responsible opinion, including advice by eminent Nigerians, traditional rulers,
intellectuals etc., was similarly discarded. The leadership, either by design or default,
had become too insensitive to the true feelings and yearnings of the people, the nation
was thus being plunged inexorably into chaos
Foreign nationals living in Nigeria will be protected. Foreign investments will also be
protected, the government will honour all obligations entered into by the previous
governments of the federation.
We will also give continued active support to the Organisation of African Unity, the
United Nations and the Commonwealth.
fellow countrymen, the task ahead of us calls for sacrifice and self-discipline at all
levels of our society
This government will not tolerate indiscipline, this government will not condone abuse
of office.
I appeal to you all to co-operate with the government in our endeavour to give this
nation a new lease of life. This change in government has been accomplished without
shedding any blood; and we intend to keep it so.
Long live the Federal Republic of Nigeria! Good night.

378
3.4 Lt-Col. Bukar Dimka’s February 13.1976 Abortive C oup Speech
Good morning fellow Nigerian. The Lt.-Col. B.S Dimka, Nigerian Army Physical
Training Corps. I bring you good tidings. Murtala Mohammed hypocrisy has been
detected. His government is now overthrow by the Young Revolutionaries.
All the 19 Military Governors have no powers over the States they now governed. The
States affairs will be run by the Military Brigade Commanders until further notice.
All Commissioners are sacked, except for the Armed Forces and Police Commissioners
who will be redeployed.
All senior Military officers should remain calm in their respective post. No divisional
commander will issue orders to his formations until further notice.
Any attempt to foil this change from any quarter will be met with death.
Any act of looting or rape will be death
Everyone should be calmed.
Please stay by your radios for further announcement.
All borders, airports and seaports are closed until further notice.
Curfew is imposed as from 6.00 a.m. to 6.00 p.m.
Thank you.
We are together.

379
 3S The December 31,1983 Coup Speech bv Brigadier Sani Abach*
Mow countrymen and women, I, Brigadier Sani Abacha of the Nigerian Army
address you this morning on behalf of the Nigerian Armed Forces.
You are all living witnesses to the grave economic predicament and uncertainty which
an inept and corrupt leadership has imposed on our beloved nation for the past four
years.
I am referring to the harsh intolerable condition under which we are now living. Our
economy has been hopelessly mismanaged. We have become a debtor and beggar
nation.
There is inadequacy of food at reasonable prices for our people who are fed up with
endless announcements of importation of foodstuffs.
Health services are in shambles as our hospitals are reduced to mere consulting clinics,
without drugs, water and equipment.
Our educational system is deteriorating at alarming rates. Unemployment figures,
including the graduates, have reached embarrassing and unacceptable proportion.
In some states, workers are being owed salary arrears of 8 to 12 months. In others
there are threats of salary cuts. Yet our leaders revel in squandermania and corruption,
and indiscipline continues to proliferate public appointments in complete disregard of
our stark economic realities.
After due consultation over these deplorable conditions, I and my colleagues in the
Armed Forces have, in the discharge of our national role as the promoters and
protectors of our national interest decided to effect a change in the leadership of the
government of the Federal Republic of Nigeria to form a Federal Military Government.
This task has just been completed.
the Federal Military Government hereby decrees the suspension of the provisions of
the Constitution of the federal Republic of Nigeria, 1979, relating to all elective and
appointed offices, representatives and institutions including the Office of the President,
Governors, Federal and State Executive Council, Special Advisers, Special Assistants,
National Assembly and Houses of Assembly, including the formation of political
parties.
Accordingly, Alhaji Shehu Usman Shagari ceases forthwith to be the President and
Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Nigeria.
All incumbents of the above named offices shall, if they have not already done so,
vacate their official residences, and surrender all government property in their
possession and report to the nearest police station in their constituencies within 7 days.
The clerk of the National Assembly, the President of the Senate and Speaker of the
House of Representatives, shall within 2 weeks render account of all property in their
possession.
All political parties are banned.
The bank accounts of FEDECO and all the political parties are frozen with immediate
effect.

380
All foreigners living throughout the country are assured of their safety and will be
adequately protected.
Henceforth, workers not on essential duties are advised to keep off the streets. All
categories of workers on essential duties will however report to their places of work
immediately.
With effect from today, a dusk to dawn curfew will be imposed from 7 p.m. to 6 a. m.
each day until further notice.
All flights have been suspended forthwith and all airports, seaports and border ports
closed.
External communications have been cut. The Customs and Excise, Immigration and
the Police will maintain vigilance and ensure watertight security at the borders. Their
Area Administrators or Commanders will have themselves to blame, if any of the
wanted people escapes.
Fellow countrymen and women, the change in government has been a bloodless and
painstaking operation and we do not want anyone to lose his/her life. People are
warned in their own interest to be law-abiding and to give the Federal Military
Government maximum co-operation.
Anyone caught in disturbing public order will be summarily dealt with. For avoidance
of doubt, you are warned that we shall not hesitate to declare martial law in any area
or state of the Federation in which disturbance occur.
Fellow countrymen and women, comrades-at-arms, I would like to assure you that the
Armed Forces of Nigeria is ready to lay down its life for our dear nation, but not for
the present irresponsible leadership of the past civilian administration.
You are to await further announcement. Good morning.

381
3.6 The April 22,1990 Abortive Coup Speech bv Major Gideon Orka
Fellow Nigerian citizens, on behalf of the patriotic and well-meaning peoples of the
Middle-Belt and the southern parts of this country, I, Major Gideon Orka wish to
happily inform you of the successful ousting of the dictatorial, corrupt, drug baronish,
evil men, sadistic, deceitful, homosexually-centred, prodigalistic, unpatriotic
administration of General Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida. We have equally commenced
their trials for unabated corruption, mismanagement of national economy, the murders
of Dele Giwa, Major-General Mamman Vatsa, with other officers as there was no
attempted coup but mere intentions that were yet to materialise and other human rights
violations.
The National Guard already in its formative stage is disbanded with immediate effect.
Decrees Number 2 and 47 are hereby abrogated. We wish to emphasise that this is not
just another coup but a well conceived, planned and executed revolution for the
marginalised, oppressed and enslaved peoples of the Middle Belt and the south with a
view to freeing ourselves and children yet unborn from eternal slavery and colonisation
by a clique of this country.
Our history is replete with numerous and uncontrollable instances of callous and
insensitive dominatory, repressive intrigues by those who think it is their birth right to
dominate till eternity the political and economic privileges of this great country to the
exclusion of the people of the Middle Belt and the south.
They have almost succeeded in subjugating the Middle Belt and making them voiceless
and now extending same to the south.
It is our unflinching belief that this quest for domination, oppression and
marginalisation is against the wish of God and therefore must be resisted with all
vehemence.
Anything that has a beginning must have an end. It will also suffice here to state that all
Nigerians without skeletons in their cupboards need not be afraid of this change.
However, those with skeletons in their cupboards have all reasons to fear, because the
time of reckoning has come.
For the avoidance of doubt, we wish to state three primaiy reasons why we have
decided to oust the satanic Babangida administration. The reasons are as follows:
(a) To stop Babangida’s desire to cunningly install himself as Nigeria’s life president at
all costs and by so doing, retard the progress of this country for life. In order to be able
to achieve this undesirable goals of his, he has evidently started destroying those
groups and sections he perceived as being able to question his desires.
Examples of groups already neutralised, pitched against one another or completely
destroyed are:
(1) The Sokoto caliphate by installing an unwanted Sultan to cause division within the
hitherto strong Sokoto caliphate.
(2) The destruction of the peoples of Plateau State, especially the Lantang people, as a
balancing force in the body politics of this country.

382
(3) The buying of the press by generous monetary favours and the usage of the State
Security Service as a tool of terror.
(4) The intent to cow the students by the promulgation of the draconian decree
Number 47.
(5) The cowing of the university teaching and non-teaching staff by an intended
massive purge, using the 150 million dollar loan as the necessitating factor.
(6) Deliberately withholding funds to the armed forces to make them ineffective and
also crowning his diabolical scheme through the intended retrenchment of more than
half of the members of the armed forces.
Other pointers that give credence to his desire to become a life president against the
wishes of the people are:
(1) His appointment of himself as minister of defence, his putting under his direct
control the SSS, his deliberate manipulation of the transition programme, his
introduction of inconceivable, unrealistic and impossible political options, his recent
fraternisation with other African leaders that have installed themselves as life
presidents and his dogged determination to create a secret force called the national
guard, independent of the armed forces and the police which will be answerable to
himself alone, both operationally and administratively.
It is our strong view that this kind of dictatorial desire of Babangida is unacceptable to
Nigerians of the 1990s and, therefore, must be resisted by all.
Another major reason for the change is the need to stop intrigues, domination and
internal colonisation of the Nigerian State by the so-called chosen few. This, in our
view, has been and is still responsible for 90 per cent of the problems of Nigerians.
This indeed has been the major clog in our wheel of progress. This clique has an
unabated penchant for domination and unrivalled fostering of mediocrity and outright
detest for accountability, all put together have been our undoing as a nation.
This will ever remain our threat if not checked immediately. It is strongly believed that
without the intrigues perpetrated by this clique and misrule, Nigeria will have in all
ways achieved development virtues comparable to those in Korea, Taiwan, Brazil,
India and even Japan.
Evidence, therefore, this cancerous dominance has as a factor constituted a major and
unpardonable clog in the wheel of progress of the Nigerian state. (Sic) It is suffice to
mention a few distasteful intrigues engineered by this group of Nigerians in recent past.
These are:
(1) The shabby and dishonourable treatment meted on the longest serving Nigerian
general in the person of General Domkat Bali, who in actual fact had given credibility
to the Babangida administration.
(2) the wholesale hijacking of Babangida’s administration by the all powerful clique.
(3) The disgraceful and inexplicable removal of Commodore Ebitu Ukiwe, Professor
Tam David-West, Mr Aret Adams and so on from office.
(4) The now-pervasive and on-going retrenchment of Middle Belt and Southerners
from public offices and their instant replacement by the favoured class and their
stooges.

383
(5) The deliberate disruption of the divisional culture and retarding its place to suit the
favoured class to the detriment of other educational minded parts of this country.
(6) The deliberate impoverishment of the peoples from the Middle Belt and the South,
making them working ghosts and feeding on the formulae of 0-1-0 or 0-0-0 while the
aristocratic class and their stooges are living in absolute affluence on a daily basis
without working for it.
(7) Other countless examples of the exploitative, oppressive, dirty games of intrigue of
its class, were people and stooges that can best be described by the fact that even
though they contribute very little economically to the well being of Nigeria, they have
over the years served and presided over the supposedly national wealth derived in the
main from the Middle Belt and the Southern part of this country, while the people from
these parts of the country have been completely deprived from benefiting from the
resources given to them by God.
(8) The third reason for the change is the need to lay a strong egalitarian foundation
for the real democratic take off of the Nigerian state or states as the circumstances may
dictate.
In the light of all the above and in recognition of the negativeness of the
aforementioned aristocratic factor, the overall progress of the Nigerian state, a
temporary decision to excise the following states namely, Sokoto, Bomo, Katsina,
Kano and Bauchi states from the Federal republic of Nigeria comes into effect
immediately until the following conditions are met.
The conditions to be met to necessitate the reabsorption of the aforementioned states
are as following
(a) To install the rightful heir to the Sultanate, Alhaji Maccido who is the people’s
choice.
(b) To send a delegation led by the real and recognised Sultan Alhaji Maccido to the
federal government to vouch that the feudalistic and aristocratic quest for domination
and oppression will be a thing of the past and will never be practised in any part of the
Nigerian state.
By the same token, all citizens of the five states already mentioned are temporarily
suspended from all public and private offices in Middle Belt and southern parts of this
country until the mentioned conditions above are met.
They are also required to move back to their various states within one week from
today. They will however be allowed to return and join the Federal Republic of Nigeria
when the stipulated conditions are met.
In the same vein, all citizens of the Middle Belt and the south are required to come
back to their various states pending when the so-called all-in-all Nigerians meet the
conditions that will ensure a united Nigeria. A word is enough for the wise.
This exercise will not be complete without purging corrupt public officials and
recovering their ill-gotten wealth since the days of the oil boom till date. Even in this
hard times, when Nigerians are dying from hunger, trekking many miles to work for
lack of transportation, other few Nigerians with complete impunity are living in
unbelievable affluence both inside and outside the country.

384
We are extremely determined to recover all ill-gotten wealth back to the public
treasury for the use of the masses of our people. You are all advised to remain calm as
there is no cause for alarm. We are fully in control of the situation as directed by God.
All airports, seaports and borders are closed forthwith.
The former Armed Forces Ruling Council is now disbanded and replaced with National
Ruling Council to be chaired by the head of state with other members being a civilian
vice-head of state, service chiefs, inspector-general of police, one representative each
from NLC, NUJ, NBA and NANS.
A curfew is hereby imposed from 8 p.m. to 6 a.m. until further notice. All members of
the armed forces and the police forces are hereby confined to their respective barracks.
All unlawful and criminal acts by those attempting to cause chaos will be ruthlessly
crushed. Be warned as we are prepared at all costs to defend the new order.
All radio stations are hereby advised to hook on permanently to the national network
programme until further notice. Long live all true patriots of this great country of ours.
May God and Allah through His bountiful mercies bless us all.

385
3.7 The August 27.1985 Coup Speech by Maior-General Ibrahim Babangida
Since January 1984, we have witnessed a systematic denigration of hope. It was stated
then that mismanagement of the economy, lack of public accountability, insensitivity of
the political leadership and a general deterioration in the standard of living- which had
subjected the common man to intolerable suffering- were the reasons for intervention.
Nigerians have since then been under a regime that continued with those trends. Events
today indicate that most of the reasons which justified the military take-over of
government from civilians still persist.
regrettably, it turned out that Major-General Muhammadu Buhari was too rigid and
uncompromising in his attitudes to issues of national significance. Efforts to make him
understand that a diverse polity like Nigeria required recognition and appreciation of
differences in both cultural and individual perceptions, only served to aggravate these
attitudes. Major-General Tunde Idiagbon was similarly inclined in that respect. As
Chief of Staff, Supreme Headquarters, he failed to exhibit the appropriate disposition
demanded by his position. He arrogated to himself absolute knowledge of problems
and solutions and acted in accordance with what was convenient to him, using the
machinery of government as his tool.
The situation was made worse by a number of other government functionaries and
organisations, chief among which is the Nigerian Security Organisation (NSO). In fact,
this body will be overhauled and re-organised. And so it came to be that the same
government which received a tumultuous welcome now became alienated from the
people. To prevent a complete erosion of our given MANDATE, therefore, we had to
act so that hope may be rebuilt.
We do not pretend to have all the answers to the questions which our present problems
have put before our nation. We have come with the strongest determination to create
an atmosphere in which positive efforts shall be given the necessary support for lasting
solutions. The responsibility of the media to disseminate information shall be exercised
without undue hindrance. In that process, those responsible are expected to be
forthright and to have the nation’s interest as the primary condition.

386
 APPENDIX 4: CROSS-TABULAR RESULTS FROM THE SURVEY

Table 7.17 Cross-tabulation of Respondents’ Ethnic Origin, Educational

Qualification and their Views on W hether Politicians Provoke Coups

Region Yes No Don’t know No response

East 49 (40%) 28 (48%) 5 1

West 39 (32%) 21 (36%) 6 2

North 10 (8%) 1 6 1

Minority 23 (19%) 8 (13%) 0 0

Total 121 100 58 100 17 4

Ed. Qual.

Ph.D. 1 0 0 0

Masters 36 (30%) 18 (31%) 3 1

Bachelors 52 (43%) 24(41% ) 9 0

Diploma 28 (23%) 13 (22%) 3 1

School cert. 4 3 2 2

Total 121 58 17 4

387
Table 7.18 Respondent’s Views on Criminalising Coups

Xperience Str. Agree Agree Undec Disagree Str.Disag No Resp

1-5 years 36 (30%) 7 8 7 2 2

6-10 33 (28%) 7 8 6 1 1

11-15 25 (21%) 8 5 1 2 3

16-20 18(15%) 3 2 3 0 0

21 + 6 2 2 1 1 0

Total 118 27 25 18 6 6

Rank

Man. Ed. 2 1 1 0 0 0

Editor 21 (18%) 8 9 4 0 3

Snr Rep 57 (48%) 14(51%) 8 6 3 2

Reporter 38 (32%) 4 7 8 3 1

Age

20-29 18 (15%) 5 3 3 1 2

30-39 66 (60%) 14 (55%) 14 (56%) 11 (61%) 5 4

40-49 31 (26%) 7 8 3 0 0

50 -59 3 1 0 1 0 0

Educ.

Ph.D. 0 1 0 0 0 0

Masters 40 (34%) 7 3 6 1 1

Bachelors 47 (40%) 13 (48%) 14 (56%) 7 1 3

Diploma 26 (22%) 5 7 3 2 2

Sch. Cert. 5 1 1 2 2 0

388
Table 7.19 Respondents’ Views on Diarchy

Xperience Str. Agr Agree Undec Disagr Str. Disagr No Resp

1-5 years 0 7 9 12(40%) 28 (26%) 6
6-10 0 5 5 11 (37%) 33 (30%) 2
11-15 0 0 5 9 25 (23%) 5
16-20 1 2 3 4 16(15%) 0
21 + 1 0 1 3 7 0
Total 1 19 24 30 109 13
Rank
Man. Ed. 0 0 1 0 3 0
Editor 0 2 6 9 24 (22%) 4
Snr. Rep 1 5 10(41%) 19 (63%) 49 (50%) 6
Reporter 1 7 6 11 (37%) 33 (30%) 3
Age 1 1 6 10 (33%) 12(11%) 2
20-29 0 9 13(54%) 19 (63%) 65 (60%) 8
30-39 0 3 4 8 31 (28%) 3
40-49 1 1 0 2 1 0
50-59
Educ.
Ph.D. 0 0 0 1 0 0
Masters 0 5 2 8 41 2
Bachelors 1 6 11 19 41 7
Diploma 0 2 10 10 20 3
Sch. Cert. 1 1 1 1 7 1

389
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