Oil, Politics and Violence: Nigeria's Military Coup Culture 1966-1976 (Paperback)

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Editorial Reviews

Review

This is a political history of Nigeria covering 1966-1976. The focus is on the outsized role of the Nigerian military in Nigerian politics and the role of oil wealth and the exploitation of ethnic divisions in preserving that role. --©2009 Book News Inc. Portland, OR

Product Description

An insider traces the details of hope and ambition gone wrong in the Giant of Africa, Nigeria, Africa's most populous country. When it gained independence from Britain in 1960, hopes were high that, with mineral wealth and over 140 million people, the most educated workforce in Africa, Nigeria would become Africa s first superpower and a stabilizing democratic influence in the region.

However, these lofty hopes were soon dashed and the country lumbered from crisis to crisis, with the democratic government eventually being overthrown in a violent military coup in January 1966. From 1966 until 1999, the army held onto power almost uninterrupted under a succession of increasingly authoritarian military governments and army coups. Military coups and military rule (which began as an emergency aberration) became a seemingly permanent feature of Nigerian politics.

The author names names, and explores how British influence aggravated indigenous rivalries. He shows how various factions in the military were able to hold onto power and resist civil and international pressure for democratic governance by exploiting the country's oil wealth and ethnic divisions to its advantage.

Africa is featured in the headlines as developed countries and China clash over the need for the continent s resources. Yet there are few serious books to help us understand any aspect of the never-ending cascade of wars and conflicts. While other titles on Nigeria are mostly children's books or travel guides, the current work focuses specifically on the social tensions, the motivations and the methods of the series of coups that rent Nigeria.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 268 pages
• Publisher: Algora Publishing (March 15, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0875867081
• ISBN-13: 978-0875867083
• Product Dimensions: 8.8 x 6 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #625,418 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4.0 out of 5 stars Concise and Accurate, October 17, 2009

By	Igbanibo - See all my reviews

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It is very clear to anyone, who knows a thing or two about Nigerian History that this book is very well researched and written. Max writes the book, similar to the way a detective solves a case. All the facts are dissected from multiple angles and then various hypotheses are drawn out, until the most logical conclusion is arrived at. For a 268 page book, it is cornucopia of facts and tidbits of soldiers and politicians, who shaped the political landscape of Nigeria.

He also does an extremely good job of setting the atmosphere, the expectations and grievances of various groups and interest, and also getting into the minds of the numerous "principals". So, as a reader, you now have a very intimate understanding of who shaped and influenced the various coups, and counter-coups; and why.

The ingredients for the "Nigerian" problem is transparent and well laid out in the pages of the book. However, my only disappointment is that Max Siollun does not offer a solution. I guess he can't do it all, that is left for the readers to figure out from being familiar with the causes.

5.0 out of 5 stars Outstanding, Impartial, Objective and Incisive, August 3, 2009

By	O. OKE - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This book has for once laid to rest the many inconsistencies and to a large degree partial and disjointed accounts presented over the years by so called "eye witness" accounts of the various events over the period from 1966 to 1976.
Devoid of any hints of propagandist material, Mr Siollun has given us an incisive and impartial account of the events of those years with copious cross references to authoritative and classified material which the author relied on through out the book. An added advantage is the fact that the "characters" current location and professional circumstances are dutifully and meticulously presented to the reader well into the present day. For instance, we were able to note that the erstwhile post failed 1976 coup Murtala successor General Obasanjo came back as a Civillian President much later on.
Mr Siollun has the unique advantage of being born in Nigeria but not natively belonging to any of the main tribes in Nigeria hence could not be seen or accused of being "Hausa centric", "igbo centric" or "Yoruba centric" in what has been an objective and well researched book.
The book itself is invariably a culmination of several decades of painstaking researched articles and materials written and published by the author over the years - already available in the public domain. What this book has done is to cleverly weave these together and provide the avid reader/follower of Nigerian History with a comprehensive harness of updated material hitherto unseen until now.
I was born around mid 1967 in the UK but returned with my parents to Nigeria late the same year when the Civil War was already in "full swing". We lived at GRA Ikeja (a few hundred meters to the Military Cantonment in Ikeja). Indeed at a point in time Babangida was our next door neighbour for several years when he was a junior "unknown" officer! I recall my parents (Who were federal civil servants based in Lagos) much later on recounting the dreadful events of that period. Though I did recall vividly the abortive Dimka coup of barely a decade later and the Udoji award and the attendant inflation that occured shortly afterwards. Indeed I recalled going to the Museum at Onikan in Lagos with my parents to view the bullet ridden Mercedes in which General Murtala met his untimely death. I was barely 13 years old then but ever since that visit, I made up my mind to hunt down as much information as possible with regards to the chequered history of our beloved nation.
Having thoroughly enjoyed the author's "first installment" of the 1966 to 1976 period, I cannot wait for the next installment covering the period December 1983 to October 1999. Indeed as fate would have it, My late Dad was the Territorial Manager at the Post and Telecoms(later renamed to NITEL) Ikeja Telephone Exchange which was walking distance from the Ikeja Military barracks. I do recall a very interesting encounter during the 1983 coup when soldiers came knocking on our door in the wee hours of the morning. As was customary in those days, the soldiers would generally take over the radio station and deactivate the local exchange at ikeja which my Dad headed at the time. On getting to the exchange on the fateful night, they ordered the technicians to switch off the power to deactive all local and international line in/out of the Exchange but the techician panicked and was not able to do so especially whilst under pressure from gun totting and fierce looking soldiers from the Ikeja cantonment. The technician was thereafter escorted under armed guard to our residence which was around half a mile down the road. My dad was politely roused from bed at around 2AM and taken to the exchange under armed guard whereupon he dutifully deactivated the relevant equipment; was told to go back home and "we were all sworn to secrecy". Of course we could not sleep a wink and welcomed the new year with martial music on the airwave.
Indeed unbeknown to us at the time, we were unwitting accessories to the commencement of almost two decades of military rule starting with the Buhari/Idiagbon regime and ending with the brutal dictatorial military regimes of Babangida/Abacha. With a number of real and phantom coups also thrown in somewhere in between for "good measures".
Once again Max, we doff out hats to you and really do appreciate your kind efforts at taking the time to provide Nigerians with a well written and incisive account of those years. A benchmark has been set and we fervently hope your next account will be equally as exhilarating.

5.0 out of 5 stars The best book on the period so far, May 19, 2009

By	ohsee (Toronto, ON) - See all my reviews

In the West, considerations of truth and objectivity in history are seen in some quarters as marks of a lack of sophistication. In Nigeria, however, they are matters of life and death. People there die as a result of history forgot, of lessons not learned. Many people die.

Such questions loom large in Nigeria's violent political history of the first two decades after independence. The most problematic have been, what really happened during the first two coups and the resultant civil war? It is here that Nigerians need to know the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, because such reliable knowledge has proved useful in the past. But most Nigerian histories of those turbulent times, are often clouded by the malodorous presence of ethnic chauvinism and hatred of the Other, and the need for self-aggrandizement. Many readers despaired of ever seeing an unbiased history from Nigerians themselves, and sought such objectivity from outsiders who often had little understanding of the subtleties of the Nigerian political milieu.

Thus Mr. Siollun's book about the first four coups (1966-1976) must be considered something of a miracle. Unlike prior writers on the topic from that country, the Nigerian-born historian successfully checked at the door the ethnic biases he surely must have, in order to combine the dispassionate objectivity of the outsider with the nuanced knowledge of the insider. The result is a truly insightful book that is highly accessible to the general reader. The book also has enough new information to serve as a starting point for future investigators who wish to tackle some of the issues in greater detail.

Mr Siollun, whose essays about the first two coups are familiar to those who visit Nigerian websites, has tackled the four coups sequentially, and shown how they are related in terms of personnel involved and lessons to be learned. For instance, some of the participants in the second coup--such as Babangida, Abacha, Yaradua, and Buhari--dominated Nigerian coup-making culture for thirty years. Mr. Siollun shows how failing to punish murderous putschists can and did come back to bite coup beneficiaries in the arse, since "unpunished coup plotters will re-offend. The coup plotters behind Nigeria's military regimes were repeat offenders--often with fatal consequences for themselves. They were men who lived life on the edge, snacked on danger and dined on death. For them, coup plotting was in the blood."

Mr. Siollun's summary of the pre-coup political situation is concise and lucid, and looks at the events in new ways. For instance, most people probably do not see the Nzeogwu coup as the second attempt at overthrowing the Balewa government by force. While many followers of Nigerian history may know that Awolowo--leader of the Action Group, one of the opposition parties in the First Republic--was jailed for treason in 1964, few are aware that it was not a trumped up charge, and that three decades later, Action Group General Secretary, S.G. Ikoku, confirmed that there was a genuine AG plot to topple the federal government.

Mr. Siollun is at his strongest where he skillfully cuts away the myths that have grown weed-like around the more controversial of those 1966 events. One of the more pernicious of these is the lie that the January 15 1966 coup was an effort at Igbo domination organized by the Igbos. Mr. Siollun demonstrates that there is a very strong case for seeing January 15 as an UPGA (United Progressive Grand Alliance) coup, or in other words, a second attempt by the South or southern political parties to wrest power from the North. By examining the national character of the Igbos, and the stereotypes that grew around their business activities, he carefully shows us the historical process via which the Igbos became the national scapegoat; we see how one section of the country practiced what he calls "transferred malice," where the Igbos were singled out for punishment during troubles in which they only played a bit part.

In this absorbing and fascinating work, there is a good deal of new and startling information: who knew that in private moments, the genial Ironsi, first military ruler, liked to refer jokingly to his fellow Igbos by the pejorative Northern term "Nyamiri?" We learn of the enormous family pressures on Northern officers and men after January 15 demanding vengeance for the Northern officers killed. The blood relationships between Northern People's Congress (NPC) politicians, and some of the July 1966 plotters are revealed--Inua Wada, defence minister in the Balewa government during the First Republic, was Murtala Muhammed's cousin, for example. We begin to understand the Machiavellian Ibrahim Babangida--military president from 1985 to 1993--better when we find out his closest friends were among the Dimka coup plotters of Feb 1976, a coup in which those very friends marked him for liquidation. We learn that Gen. Obasanjo wept when the poisonous chalice of leadership would not pass him by. Such brief character and biographical sketches of principal players inject life into the narrative, and make the historical protagonists more than just names on a paper.

The book of course has its flaws, some quite minor and perhaps fixable in later editions. The footnoting seems somewhat haphazard and sparse. To some, this may be considered a benefit, but it could be frustrating to the reader or researcher who wants to learn more by exploring sources. And one of the more vexatious things is that the footnoting, like Carlyle's History, "is silent where you most wish her to speak."

More egregious are the omissions and failures to explore some controversial areas. We do not know the extent of Lt. Col Adekunle Fajuyi's involvement in January 15 even though Mr. Siollun was involved a few years back in a debate about it with someone on the Internet who went by the moniker "Arthur Unegbe". Perhaps there is nothing to know or find out, but Mr. Siollun's complete silence--no discussion of rumours, or analysis of possibilities--is troubling. Also surely we could learn from a brief exploration of the contradictions in the public statements of Gowon's apologists and the actions of the man that suggest some foreknowledge of the July horrors? However, in light of the importance and intelligence of this work, it would be churlish to carp about these matters.

I admit to being skeptical before reading this work, expecting the typical tendentious and ethnically jaundiced approach that colours most Nigerian commentaries on the coups of 1966. What Mr. Siollun has given us rather is a deft, measured, and just examination of those tragic events, all done in very accessible prose. All Nigerians owe him a debt of gratitude. I wish I could find a way to get a copy into the hands of every educated Nigerian.