By Ahmed Yahaya-Joe
How and why did the putsch of 22 April 1990, by those “who have superior culture,” fall flat on its face?
A lack of proper understanding of the level and extent how which Hausanization had (and still is) shaping the dynamics in the North and extending to the rest of Nigeria was the chief cause.
If not, Orkar would not have so wantonly, with reckless abandon, declared forthwith “the temporary decision to excise the following states, namely, Sokoto, Borno, Katsina, Kano, and Bauchi States.”
The ironclad Abacha and resolute Brigadier-General (later Lt. Gen) Ishaya Rizi Bamaiyi (CO 9TH Mechanized, now Lagbaja Cantonment, Ikeja) were both not ethnically Hausa, though respectively from Kano and Sokoto, the latter even being a Christian.
United in excision, the duo’s unflinching resolve to squash the coup attempt with such brutal efficiency and much clinical viciousness was not surprising, as they reportedly barked orders to loyal troops in Hausa.
How did the name Nigeria even come about in the very first place, talk less of summarily excising swaths of it?
The question is very pertinent mainly because what are the 19 states of the north and parts of the south today were formerly known as “Niger Territories” under the Royal Niger Company as the attached map clearly shows;
“The future Lady Lugard suggested the name Nigeria in a newspaper article published anonymously in The Times on 8 January 1897.
Yet, even before she wrote this article, the terms ‘Nigeria’ and ‘Nigerians’ had been used informally for decades to refer to the territories and people of the River Niger area.
Shaw did not use the term to refer to the entirety of the lands that are now Nigeria. Rather, she suggested using the name to describe only the territories administered by the Royal Niger Company which approximate in extent to modern-day northern Nigeria.” – Siollun
Many Nigerians, perhaps even the plotters of the 22 April 1990 coup attempt, are not aware that as far back as 1967, during the Western Region’s feigned neutrality in the build-up to the Nigerian Civil War;
“The North had already declared a one-mile wide military corridor from Offa in the North right down to Lagos. The area is half a mile on either side of the railway line to Apapa wharf.
By this declaration, any obstruction to the free movement of the Northern machinery during the war would be taken as enemy action and would be met with destructive forces, no matter the nature of such obstruction, be it in the form of any structure, machine, or human.
In other words, if it is necessary to demolish any existing buildings or structures to pave a smooth passage, the North was committed to doing such without further reference.
For the benefit of clarity, no responsible community or nation will remain without a well-articulated defence mechanism. The North will forever retain its military superiority over all its neighbours.” – Faruk
While by no means is the language, interest, and culture of the North universal under the banner of Hausanization, admittedly, there are some northerners who perceive themselves more northern than others religiously and even ethnically in various concentric circles of primordial identity.
Then there is the elite selective amnesia of Arewa as so eloquently enunciated by Sarki@Watspapping.
The North is no doubt bedevilled with diverse seismic differences and many fault lines but Prof. Shima K. Gyoh provides a leveller validating Abba in Part I concerning the North during the First Republic;
“When I assumed duties in Lagos as Director-General at the Federal Ministry of Health in 1984, the Minister, Professor Olikoye Ransome-Kuti, twice asked me when I came to the office wearing babban riga, “Today is not Friday, why are you dressed for the mosque?” I was a Christian from Benue State, and Ransome-Kuti was the very man who nominated me for the job!
I was to realize that many southerners knew more about far-away England than the next-door north of their country.” – Kperogi
On their levels the officers involved in the 1990 putsch were highly capable and very thoroughbred professionals albeit mostly non-combatant officers. They were nevertheless adroit and intellectually sound, characterized with foolhardy valour.
The mastermind Major Mukoro had already bagged a doctorate in Law with the high-falutin Lt. Colonel Nyiam possessing sterling post-graduate credentials in engineering.
As a collective, however, they were an apology due to impetuousness. Precipitate and impulsive their planning and manoeuvring were severely hampered by over-exaggerated and misplaced confidence that defined their strategic blunders and tactical silliness.
Hear their spokesman;
“We wish to emphasize that this is not just another coup but a well-conceived, planned, and executed revolution.”
Yet, the coupists proved bereft for woefully failing to cut off (or at least control to their advantage) NITEL’s telecommunications network.
But more importantly, who carries out a military coup without any well-positioned participant directly commanding a regular combatant unit with teeth and firepower?
Take, for instance, how a University of Benin Law student, Lt. Henry Igboba, a non-combatant officer with absolutely no specialist infantry training, was detailed to lead the assault against the veteran and battle-tested Abacha in his Flagstaff House lair, predictably to no avail.
Such were a few of the operational faux pas that the redoubtable Army chief readily exploited to the maximum in rallying his principal staff officers and other field commanders across Lagos and beyond to effectively coordinate a series of pincer counter-offensive movements to dislodge the mutineers.
The successful bludgeoning and capture of others subsequently earned Abacha the sobriquet “Khalifa” implying him as successor to General Ibrahim Babangida openly in military and even civilian circles, especially in the hitherto excised states.
How Bashorun MKO Abiola could not carefully read and properly interpret the tea leaves back then concerning Abacha’s phenomenal trajectory afterwards in military politics remains mind-boggling even to date.
No less a sliver of territory on both banks of the River Niger from Idah to Asaba/Onitsha beyond to Akassa in present-day Bayelsa State in the attached map has the same kind historical impetus behind the presumptive one-mile corridor from Offa to Lagos decades ago.
Any Nigerian who, therefore, underestimates the open-hidden agenda of the North in securing an unfettered access to the Gulf of Guinea must be living on the moon!
Needless to say successful coup plotting and its efficient execution is not an academic exercise. Such a precarious endeavour is neither pedagogical nor a scholarly exposition. It is instead a blitzkrieg carried on a political chessboard.
No matter how genuine a cause and justified grudges are, Machiavelli admonishes;
“It must be considered that there is nothing more difficult to carry out, nor more doubtful of success, nor more dangerous to handle, than initiate a new order of things.”
Any enterprising coup plotter must therefore know how to not only carefully read but properly interpret the mood of the polity – the more diverse the society, the more complex the task.
The co-travellers of 1990 were very poor students of history.
And even of polemics as one of the reasons for their coup was the “installing an unwanted Sultan to cause division within the hitherto strong Sokoto Caliphate,” but at the same time claiming the coup was on behalf of “the marginalized, oppressed and enslaved peoples of the Middle Belt and South to free ourselves and children yet unborn from eternal slavery and colonialization by a clique of this country.”
Paradoxically, the coup megaphone Orkar – the only combatant officer with any measurable field craft involved, albeit with no troops under his command gave two conditions for the reabsorption of the excised states.
First, “To install the rightful heir to the Sultanate, Alhaji Maccido, who is the people’s choice?”
Secondly, that “a delegation led by the real and recognized Sultan to the Federal Government to vouch that the feudalistic and aristocratic quest for domination and operation will be a thing of the past and will never be practiced in any part of the Nigerian state.”
If so, why victimize the hapless citizens of the affected states that are not part of the nobility?
Much to the consternation of even those from the affected states that are vehemently anti-feudalist, Orkar thundered;
“All citizens of the five states already mentioned are temporarily suspended from all public and private offices in the Middle Belt and southern parts of this country until the conditions mentioned above are met. They are required to move back to their various states within one week.”
One week of mass movement criss-crossing Nigeria?
So much for those “who have superior culture”!
Was the briefly maverick Orkar (or even his speech writer) even aware in the 1979 presidential election, Alhaji Shehu Shagari got his nationwide highest percentage of votes of 76.38% in Benue State compared to 66.58% he got in his home state of Sokoto?
Former President Shagari had kick-started his national campaign at the Gboko hometown of his Gowon-cabinet counterpart, Chief JS Tarka of Middle Belt fame, yet 11 years or so later, the electoral haven of a Sokoto-born is torn apart with impunity by a politically naive Armoured Corps officer from the same area;
“A useful idiot is a pejorative description of a person, suggesting that the person thinks they are fighting for a cause without fully comprehending the consequences of their actions…” – Wikipedia
The golden age of ingathering, often mischaracterized as the era of “a monolithic north,” was once upon a time under Lt. Colonel, later General Yakubu Gowon, 1966-1975, the Dimka Coup attempt was a watershed moment.
While the revolving door of power, however, predominantly kept swinging within the North from national independence right up to 1999, it wasn’t without its challenges and even contradictions, including self-destructive selective amnesia as succinctly pointed out by Sarki@Waspapping.
The religious posturing to the level of a tyranny of the majority by certain legatees of the Sokoto Caliphate has been that region’s recurring Achilles heel.
That is not to say that elsewhere in Nigeria there hasn’t been similar jousting, as the veteran diplomat Garba puts it in his memoirs;
“As the late Dr. Nabo Graham-Douglas, onetime Attorney-General of the Eastern Region, and later of the federation as a whole, had pointed out in his well-written pamphlet, Ojukwu’s Rebellion and World Opinion, the Catholic Church intended to constitute the defunct Eastern Region into a Catholic State.
“The impression created in Rome by the regular visits to the Holy See by senior Catholic priests, and particularly by the fiery Irish Bishop Whelan of Owerri, was that Eastern Nigeria was entirely Ibo and Catholic.”
In conclusion, including the North despite Hausanization;
“No region in Nigeria is monolithic – not the East, not the West, and not the Mid-West, as it were in the First Republic.” – Ardo
Concluded.
Sources
1. Ahmadu Bello Sardauna of Sokoto: Values and Leadership in Nigeria (1986) by Prof. John Paden
2. Vatsa Conspiracy (Part II) Some Biosketches by Dr. Nowa Omoigui
3. Exploitation and Instability in Nigeria: The Orkar Coup in Perspective (2004) by Dr. Sowaribi Tolofari
4. Guardian newspaper edition of April 15, 2000
5. The Orkar Coup of April 22, 1990 by Dr. Nowa Omoigui
6. Nigerian Vanguard newspaper edition of April 16, 2000
7. p. 109-110 What Britain Did To Nigeria: A Short History of Conquest and Rule (2021) by Max Siollun
8. Hausa in the 20th Century: An Overview (2004) by John Edward Phillips
9. Some Notes on the Hausa People and their Language (1934) by Prof. D Westermann
10. p.2 The Hausa Factor in West African History (1968) by Dr. Mahdi Adamu
11. The Hausa Identity: An Identity in Crisis by Dr. Hamza K. Yusuf
12. Why Hausa is a Fascinating Language posted on Notes From Atlanta, August 31 2019 by Prof. Farooq Kperogi
13. p. 52-53 The Misrepresentation of Nigeria: The Facts and the Figures (2000) by Dr. Yusufu Bala Usman and Prof. Alkasum Abba
14. Reuben Abati in GUARDIAN newspaper edition of May 26, 2006
15. Becoming Hausa: Ethnic Identity Change and Its Implications for the Study of Ethnic Pluralism and Stratification (1975) by Frank A. Salamone
16. Fulanization of the North by the South posted on Notes From Atlanta, June 5 2021 by Prof. Farooq Kperogi
17. AJN Tremeane in Notes on the Origin of Hausa (1911)
18. Religion, Politics and Power in Northern Nigeria (1993) by Rev. Fr. Matthew Hassan Kukah Ph.D
19. Frank Salamone: Gods and Goods in Africa: Persistence and Change in the Fulani Jihad in 19th Century Hausaland (Ph.D Thesis 1976)
20. p. 8-9 Ignorance, Political Irrelevance and the Debate about Restructuring Nigeria (2021) by Prof. Alkasum Abba
21. Beyond the Present by Akin Osuntokun in ThisDay newspaper edition of 18th April 2025
22. p. 84-85 Power, Politics & Death (2011) by Olusegun Adeniyi
23. p.11 A History of the Niger Delta (1972) by Prof. Ebiegberi Joe Alagoa
24. p.55 The Misrepresentation of Nigeria: The Facts and the Figures (2000) by Dr. Yusufu Bala Usman and Prof. Alkasum Abba
25. The Orkar Coup of April 22, 1990 by Dr. Nowa Omoigui
26. p.151 What Britain Did To Nigeria: A Short History of Conquest and Rule (2021) by Max Siollun
27. p.161-163 The Victors and the Vanquished of the Nigerian Civil War 1967-1970: Triumph of Truth and Valour over Greed and Ambition (2011) by Usman Faruk CON
28. p. 70, 77-78 The Misrepresentation of Nigeria: The Facts and the Figures (2000) by Dr. Yusufu Bala Usman and Prof. Alkasum Abba
29. p.293 The Time Has Come: Reminiscences and Reflections of a Nigerian Pioneer Diplomat (1989) by Ambassador John Mamman Garba
30. Northern Nigeria: The True Pivot of Nigerian Politics – A Rejoinder to Taiwo Olanegan by Umar Ardo, Ph.D posted on April 22, 2025
