THIS is the final part of the series on Military Intervention in Governance: Nigeria and the Continent of Africa.
Professional associations like the Nigerian Bar Association (NBA) and the Nigerian Medical Association (NMA) were once seen as moral pillars; safeguarding professional standards and holding the government to account. But their voices too have grown faint. The NBA, which once challenged authoritarian decrees and judicial misconduct, is now often divided along political and ethnic lines. In many cases, it issues strong-worded communiqués but takes little or no concrete action. The rule of law is frequently trampled upon in the country, and yet there is rarely sustained legal resistance from the body entrusted with defending it.
The NMA, whose members operate on the frontlines of Nigeria’s healthcare crisis, faces a moral dilemma. While they speak up about poor conditions, many have also lost faith in the system. Some accept under-the-table payments, while others leave the country altogether, contributing to the ongoing brain drain. Like the police, many doctors are underpaid, overworked, and underprotected. But unlike in the past, there is little organized outrage.
Perhaps the most tragic decline is seen in Nigeria’s student unions. In the 1970s and 1980s, student bodies like the National Association of Nigerian Students (NANS) were fiery and fearless. They challenged military rule, protested poor governance, and served as the voice of the youth often paying the price with arrests, suspension, or worse. Student leaders now seek political endorsements, not social justice. Some have become tools for political campaigns, rewarded with cash or connections, the fear of rustication, expulsion, or state security clampdowns has silenced many.
The education system itself is in disrepair. With constant strikes, lack of facilities, and crumbling infrastructure, many students are too disillusioned to believe in change or even know the history of student activism in Nigeria. What once was the most dynamic youth platform in the country has now been hollowed out replaced with leaders who often parrot political slogans or remain neutral while campuses and communities suffer.
When police officers beg for money at checkpoints, judges take bribes, union leaders are bought, and student activists are silenced, what you are witnessing is not just corruption it is the slow death of civic resistance and institutional integrity. These bodies; the labour unions, professional associations, student movements were supposed to serve as counterweights to state failure. But today, many have become victims of the same system they were created to challenge. Reviving them requires more than internal reforms; it requires a national awakening. The fight to restore Nigeria cannot be left to the government alone. It must come from civil society, from professionals, from the students, from the unions from all of us. Until then, the silence of these once-powerful institutions will remain one of the greatest tragedies
Over the past several decades, Nigeria has been caught in a tragic cycle of political unrest, military interventions, and civil conflict; a long, painful journey marked by violence, betrayal, and unfulfilled promises. At various points in our national history, the military has intervened, claiming the moral authority to “rescue” the country from political chaos, corruption, and insecurity. But decades later, even after countless lives lost, civil wars, and transitions from one uniform to another, the core issues the military claimed it came to correct are still with us perhaps even worse.
From the first military coup in 1966, Nigeria has experienced repeated interventions by soldiers-turned-statesmen. In each case, the stated motive was to “cleanse the system”: end political rascality, stamp out corruption, restore order, and ensure national unity. But instead of bringing healing, each phase only deepened the wounds. Nigeria descended into a bloody civil war (1967–1970) that claimed over a million lives and left scars that are yet to heal.
In the years that followed, military replaced military, each promising change, but often delivering repression, human rights abuses, and deeper levels of corruption. The boot that was supposed to stamp out disorder became the boot that kicked down institutions and trampled public trust. While regimes changed, the blood never stopped flowing, and the streets of Nigeria became stained with the lives of citizens lost in riots, protests, ethnic clashes, and political suppression. Political rascality now wears agbada and speaks grammar, but it is still as destructive as ever. Corruption has evolved into a sophisticated art form, embedded not just in politics but in institutions, contracts, and even the judiciary. Insecurity has become a national epidemic: kidnappings, banditry, terrorism, herder-farmer conflicts, and street violence have made Nigerians feel less safe than ever before.
If the military came in with the promise of sanitizing the system, then what did it leave behind? A weakened police force, politicized civil service, disillusioned youth, and a country where power still rotates among the elite not based on competence, but on connections, ethnicity, or military-era legacy. It is important to remember that Nigeria was not always silent in the face of tyranny. Over the years, strong opposition figures emerged from every region, raising their voices even in the face of oppression.
J.S. Tarka, from the Middle Belt, gave voice to the aspirations of minority ethnic groups and challenged northern political dominance. Aminu Kano, a socialist and progressive thinker, fought against feudalism and elite exploitation in the North, advocating for the talakawa, the common people. Obafemi Awolowo, the sage of
the South-West, championed education, regional autonomy, and economic development, offering Nigeria one of its most visionary blueprints for governance.
These men represented an era where opposition politics meant principled struggle, not just political ambition. But even then, Nigeria was marred by politics of bitterness, intense rivalry, ethnic suspicion, and regionalism. Elections were often accompanied by violence; accusations flew like arrows. The 1964 general elections and the 1965 Western Region crisis showed just how deep the divisions ran and how unready we were to manage political diversity with maturity.
That “politics with bitterness” set the stage for the military to walk in, declaring itself the “neutral referee.” But the military, too, was not immune to the same divisions. Over time, it became a mirror of the same tribalism, favoritism, and self-interest it claimed to reject.
Now, decades later, we are still grappling with the very same demons: power struggles, stolen mandates, regional tensions, and a ruling class disconnected from the people. Opposition politics, once defined by visionaries, has become transactional — about access to power, not about service or ideology. The military, though now largely in the background, still casts a long shadow. Many of our so- called “civilian” politicians are military-era protégés or beneficiaries of the system they helped entrench.
Nigeria’s journey has been long and painful. We have sacrificed generations to conflict, poverty, misrule, and fear. The military has come and gone and returned again. Civil wars have burned through communities. Great voices have risen and fallen. But the core truth remains: until we address the root causes corruption, political dishonesty, inequality, and impunity: the cycle will continue.
The Nigeria we need is not one ruled by men in uniform or by selfish civilian elites. We need a nation led by vision, values, and a commitment to justice where opposition is not an enemy, but a necessary balance; where security is not a privilege, but a right; and where the bitter past can finally give way to a hopeful future of our time.
