Revisiting that Orkar Coup

Last week, April 22, marked the 31 anniversary of the Gideon Orkar coup. For this week’s column, I am reproducing a piece I wrote on the 30th anniversary of that coup. Enjoy.

The Gideon Orkar Coup 30 years on

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Thirty years ago today, on April 22, 1990, Nigerians woke up to a very disturbing speech on the Federal Radio Corporation of Nigeria, FRCN, Lagos, by a man who introduced himself as Major Gideon Orkar who announced that he and his loyalists, had overthrown the government of Gen. Ibrahim Babangida.

The most radical point in his rambling speech was his decision to “temporarily” excise some states from the country as if they were a bunch of badly behaved children being told by an angry parent to stay out of the house until they learnt their manners.

While some Nigerians at the time found reasons to be excited by that speech, as they have been about other coups before, others deduced the reasoning and heard the voice of a radically naïve officer.

That speech alone was the switch to Orkar’s spotlight. The beginning, if you like, of his 15 minutes of fame. It was ironically also the speech that hanged him and the 68 or so other officers executed alongside him on account of their actions that day in Lagos in 1990.

At the time Orkar came on air, the coup plotters were still far from achieving their objective of overthrowing the government. Yes, they had secured the radio station from where they made the broadcast, held, for a short time, Dodan Barracks, the seat of the military government at the time, and some other locations, but they had not secured or neutralised Gen. Babangida or his Chief of Army Staff, then Lt. Gen. Sani Abacha. They had not in fact secured any loyalties or positions outside of Lagos.

In those hours of uncertainty, with Abacha, who had survived an assassination attempt that morning, trying to rally troops and assess who was loyal to Gen. Babangida or not, Orkar went on air and blew out the candle of his own revolution.

He announced that “a temporary decision to excise the following states namely, Sokoto, Borno, Katsina, Kano and Bauchi from the Federal Republic of Nigeria comes into effect immediately until (some) conditions are met.

It was, in all honesty, a speech that was Trumpish—before Donald Trump himself invented that genre of absurdity. It was chaotic, puerile and vindictive. It was also conflating where it described Gen. Babangida as a power-grabbing self-perpetuating tyrant while in the same breath accused a clique of hijacking Babangida’s government.

The conditions for the reabsorption of these temporarily excised states were also infantile. Unlike other coup plotters, like Maj. Chukwuma Nzeogwu for instance, who were careful to put the country and its unity front and centre in their speeches, Orkar, who lacked Nzeogwu’s charisma and popularity within the army, reduced his speech to projecting regional sentiments ahead of the country. There was a persistent reference to perceived injustices to the Middle Belt (where he was from) and the South and officers from those regions.

The greatest accomplishment of Orkar’s speech ironically was to unravel his unsteady grip on power and galvanise officers and military formations that were hitherto waiting to see which way to throw their loyalty. Orkar made the choice simple. “The Evil Genius” or the “Unhinged and Unknown”. The soldiers chose the devil they knew, to borrow a common adage.

Hours later, Col. Mohammed Dantsofo, holding the fort for Maj-Gen. Ike Nwachukwu (who was on leave at the time) as the GOC 1 Division in Kaduna, pledged loyalty to Gen. Babangida. As did  Col. Chris Alli, who was commanding the 3rd Infantry Brigade in Kano. Soon a rallying point for the resistance against the Orkar-led coup emerged and it was a formidable one, led by Gen. Abacha himself.

Other than Orkar’s speech, which Lt. Gen Abacha in his own broadcast later that day would describe as “an embarrassing radio broadcast,” other factors contributed to the failure of that coup.

There was the fact that the coup had to be launched in a hurry. The plotters, mostly mid-level officers, feared there had been a leak within their ranks and did not want to be rounded up, as the Mamman Vatsa-plotters had been four years before. They began an offensive that eventually delivered a premature baby.

There were tactical failures as well. Capt. N. H. Empere’s failure to secure the T-55 tanks at Dodan Barracks when he had the chance to do so was fatal. Those same tanks would be used by the Abacha-led troops to decimate the coupists. Also, the failure to neutralise Gen. Babangida and Abacha were also key factors in a day of many failures for Orkar’s men.

Lt. SOS Echendu, who led the assault on Dodan Barracks, would years later, admit that he watched Babangida, whom he admired, escape Dodan Barracks in a 504 vehicle while he was within his range.

“I was in my 20s, I was intellectually advanced. I wanted him captured alive and tried. I wanted the nation to see him and read his crimes during his trial so that our citizens would see where we were coming from…I wanted to set a different standard from what used to obtain: Kill him and the case would be closed, but capture him and set him on trial, then the Nigerian people would be able to hear his crimes,” Echendu said in a 2014 interview.

Babangida survived and is still alive today. As is Echendu, who escaped to the US after the failed coup. As did the alleged principal plotter, Major Saliba Mukoro. As did Col. Tony Nyiam, the most senior officer on the side of the coup plotters. He too would say years later that the coup did not fail because it wasn’t a coup in the first place.

“We did not see the action as a coup but as an uprising, to correct some anomalies,” he said.

Many others saw it as a failed attempt to dismember a country.

With the benefit of hindsight, Echendu and Nyiam and the other plotters who managed to escape that night have had time to reflect on their actions 30 years ago. Nyiam, for instance, believed that some of the issues they kicked against that night had been addressed and this made their sacrifices worth it. In different words, Echendu would say something similar.

But what did that attempt do for Nigeria?

Did it hasten Gen. Babangida’s relocation of the capital to Abuja? Many people think so. Did it secure Abacha’s place as Babangida’s right hand and heir apparent? Pretty much so. Did it force the army to close ranks? That is tough to say.

In the 28 years Abuja has been the seat of power, there has been only one other coup plot since then, depending on where one stands on the Diya ‘phantom or not phantom’ coup. And then there has been Abacha’s 1993 palace displacement of Shonekan.

What would Nigeria have been like today if that Orkar coup had succeeded?

The surviving plotters think it would have been a far better country, others think it would have been a disaster, a string of broken up territories that once formed a country.

Hardly any revolution in history had stayed the cause and most often become what they fought against, or worse. The coup might have followed the well-worn path of history or perhaps be one of the few exceptions.

The reality is that it is hard to tell. It has fallen into the realm of speculation alongside other what-ifs: such as what would the world have been like if the Nazis had won? Or if communism had triumphed over capitalism? Perhaps we would have known if Orkar had held off that speech for a few more hours.

What we do know for certain is that Nigeria as a country tottered dangerously on the precipice of disintegration on this day 30 years ago, as it had several times in its history before. And somehow, it is still trundling on the fringes like a stoned giant waiting for the next trip or slip.