The Military, the West, and Nigerian Politics in the 1990s

There is a consensus among scholars, as well as within the innermost decision making circles of government, that the Nigerian State is under severe strains unparalleled in its post-independence history. There is indig nation over "how a country which was once regarded as the Great Black Hope has become the Big Black Shame."3 How, many have pondered, did a country hitherto glorified as having an assured and viable leadership po tential in Africa, squander the goodwill it enjoyed among its continental peers barely three decades after independence? This paper briefly traces the changing fortunes in Nigeria's domestic and external relations in the last two decades. We argue, that, more than anything else, the continued stay of the military in power?(and the protracted democratic deficit that that has evoked)?at a time when the global mood favors the enthronement of popularly elected governments, account for the bad publicity that Nigeria currently experiences. More specifically, we suggest that apart from the so cio-economic crises inherited from the Second Republic, the events since the abortive Presidential elections of June 1993?viz., its annulment; the subsequent incarceration of the acclaimed winner, Chief M. K. O. Abiola; the return to a full-blown military regime under General Sanni Abacha; the hanging on November 10, 1995, of Ken Saro-Wiwa and eight other minority and environmental activists; and the general clamp-down on pro democracy and human rights activists,?are the most important factors in Nigeria's credibility crisis.