Abstract
On 7 February 2011 Nigeria’s Supreme Court overturned former Rear Admiral Francis Agbiti’s conviction for negligence and disobedience. The five judges unanimously declared his sentence unsafe on the grounds that his original trial had not been fair. In summing up on the court’s behalf, Justice Olufunlola Adekeye paid particular attention to Agbiti’s opening argument that the members of the panel that tried him were either unqualified to do so, known to be prejudiced against him before the trial started, or acted inappropriately during its course. Two of its members, Major General Akpa and Air-Vice Marshal Odesola, were too junior to have sat upon it. Its president, Rear Admiral Ajayi, was known to have disliked Agbiti from old while its other senior member, Rear Admiral Oni, sponsored the publication of an article critical of Agbiti while the trial was still taking place.1
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Notes
Domestic opposition and international criticism of Shell and its Nigerian subsidiary, Shell Nigeria, have grown steadily, albeit unevenly, over the past 20 years. Much of the opprobrium levelled at the company has been stimulated and generated by one man — Ken Saro Wiwa. In 1992 he founded the Movement for the Survival of the Ogoni People to pressure Shell and the Federal Government into compensating the Ogoni people for the grinding poverty and wretched environmental conditions they were forced to endure. MOSOP launched a highly effective two-pronged strategy to press its case. At home, its activists took part in mass demonstrations and sabotaged pipes and equipment belonging to Shell and the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation. Overseas, Saro-Wiwa embarked on a relentless public relations campaign to highlight the plight of the Ogoni and other Niger Delta peoples. So successful was he that the Abacha regime had him arrested and executed on trumped up murder charges. Yet, even in death, Saro-Wiwa was still able to embarrass Shell as the company was heavily criticised for not doing more to save his life. Misty L. Bastin, ‘“Buried beneath Six Feet of Crude Oil”: State-Sponsored Death and the Absent Body of Ken Saro-Wiwa’, in Craig W. McLuckie and Aubrey McPhail (eds.), Ken Saro-Wiwa: Writer and Political Activist (Boulder, Colorado: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2000), p. 133.
Shell Petroleum Development Company, Shell Nigeria Annual Report 2005: People and the Environment (Nigeria: Shell Petroleum Development Company, August 2006), pp. 4–8.
Wole Soyinka, The Open Sore of a Continent: A Personal Narrative of the Nigerian Crisis (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1996), p. 33.
In a speech made shortly after his seizure of power, General Babangida justified his actions by arguing that ‘when in December 1983, the former military leadership, headed by Major General Muhammadu Buhari, assumed the reins of government, its accession was heralded in the history of this country. … Since January 1984, however, we have witnessed a systematic denigration of that hope. … The initial objectives were betrayed and fundamental changes do not appear on the horizon. Because the present state of uncertainty, suppression and stagnation resulted from the perpetration of a small group, the Nigerian Armed Forces could not as a part of that government be unfairly committed to take responsibility for failure. Our dedication to the cause of ensuring that our nation remains a united entity worthy of respect and capable of functioning as a viable and credible part of the international community dictated the need to arrest the situation.’ Cited in Ndaeyo Uko, Romancing the Gun: The Press as a Promoter of Military Rule (Trenton, New Jersey: Africa World Press, 2004), pp. 180–181.
The decree establishing the Federal Capital Territory of Abuja and the Federal Capital Development Authority, the body charged with developing the new capital, was passed on 4 February 1976. Francine Rodd, Jewell Kidd, Willie Cohen and Taniko Noda Around and About Abuja (Ibadan: Spectrum Books, 2005), p. 5. General Mohammed was killed nine days later in a failed coup d’état led by Lieutenant Colonel Buka Suka Dimka.
Nigeria’s first coup d’état was led by five army majors — Kaduna Nzeogwu, Emmanuel Ifeajuna, Donatus Okafor, Christian Anuforo and Adewale Ademoyega — and was only partially successful. While it did result in the collapse of the First Republic, largely because important political figures like the Prime Minister, Abubakar Tafewa Balewa, and Premier of the Western Region, Obafemi Awolowo, were executed, none of coup ever assumed power. That passed instead to Major-General Aguiyi-Ironsi, the most senior army officer not directly implicated in the coup who had not been executed by the conspirators. Eghosa E. Osaghae, Nigeria since Independence: Crippled Giant (London: Hurst, 1998), pp. 56–57.
Alex Perry, Falling off the Edge: Globalization, World Peace and Other Lies (London: Pan Books, 2010), p. 127.
J.N.C Hill, ‘Thoughts of Home: Civil-Military Relations and the Conduct of Nigeria’s Peacekeeping Forces’, The Journal of Military Ethics, Vol. 8, No. 4 (November 2009), p. 298.
Toyin Falola and Matthew M. Heaton, A History of Nigeria (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 2008), p. 158.
Robert B. Shepard, Nigeria, Africa, and the United States: From Kennedy to Reagan (Bloomington, Indiana University Press, 1991), p. 40.
Cited in Olayiwola Abegunrin, Nigerian Foreign Policy under Military Rule, 1966–1999 (Westport and London, Praeger, 2003), p. 52.
Thomas D. Musgrave, Self-Determination and National Minorities (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2000), p. 198.
Gérard Kreijen, State, Sovereignty, and International Governance (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2002), p. 351.
Cited in William D. Graf, The Nigerian State (London: James Currey, 1988), p. 164.
Toyin Falola and Matthew M. Heaton, A History of Nigeria (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), pp. 214–215 and Daniel Jordan Smith, A Culture of Corruption: Everyday Deception and Popular Discontent in Nigeria (Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2007), p. 113.
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Hill, J.N.C. (2012). Of the People but for the People? Nigeria and Its Armed Forces. In: Nigeria Since Independence. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137292049_6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137292049_6
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