WHY THE MILITARY MUST APOLOGIZE FOR DERAILING NIGERIA’S DESTINY

The Mayor’s Rant On Armed Forces Remembrance Day

Today, we are marking Armed Forces Remembrance Day, and Nigerians are clapping for the military as if this relationship has been a beautiful love affair—or even a story of progress. But who will clap for the destinies they interrupted?

Because the truth is this: Nigeria has a toxic relationship pattern with the military. Civilians mess up, soldiers watch our tears and jump in “to save the day”… only to make things worse. Then we cry for decades. That is our history. And no celebratory Armed Forces Day should be allowed to whitewash it.

Let me be clear before the professional patriots start clearing their throats: yes, Nigeria’s early civilian politicians contributed heavily to the chaos. Election fraud. Regional madness. Thuggery. Riots. The country was wobbling.

But the military did not come in as a surgeon and leave as a doctor.

They came in as “saviors” and left as landlords.

By 1966—barely six years after independence—the military entered the political arena like the “Savior Association of Nigeria.” And what did they save exactly? They saved Nigeria… into a deeper pit. Because once that first coup happened, it became like a national addiction. Coups began to reproduce themselves. One begat another. Then another. And the country slid into a civil war that consumed lives, futures, and generations.

That was not just a tragedy. It was a destiny detour.

Millions of Nigerians never got the chance to become anything—because adults in uniform were power-drunk and decided the nation was a toy that could be seized, suspended, and rearranged at will. Somewhere inside that era, we began the long march into the over-centralized, unitary mindset that has kept Nigeria structurally tense for decades.

And then, after years of entrenching themselves, they handed civilians a shaky democracy in 1979 like a cracked plate and said, “Manage it.”

Within four years—without even allowing politicians to learn the democratic craft through mistakes, compromise, and correction—the military stormed back and snatched power again like men who had tasted blood and found civilian rule too slow, too noisy, too accountable.

Now, here is where the moral argument collapses completely: the military always returns with the same press release in different uniforms.

“We are here to sanitize Nigeria.”

“We are here to end corruption.”

“We are here to restore discipline.”

“We are here to save the nation.”

Sanitize what? Which stain did they remove?

Between Buhari, Babangida, Abacha, and Abdulsalam, Nigeria spent years under rulers who claimed they were “fixing” the country. But in the end, they left Nigeria weaker, more traumatized, and more institutionally broken than when they arrived. They did not cure corruption. They professionalized it. They did not end impunity. They dressed it in ranks, influence, and retirement benefits.

They left behind a new billionaire class—men who suddenly became major power brokers, major asset owners, and “untouchables” in a nation where ordinary citizens were still negotiating with darkness, hunger, and fear.

And the most inconvenient truth is this: the military never truly left.

They simply changed uniform to agbada.

Even when power “returned” to civilians, the gatekeeping remained. The influence remained. The superiority complex remained. Nigeria became a place where too many retired officers still behave like civilian authority is optional—like the constitution is a suggestion, not a command. Like civilian leadership is temporary tenants, while the real owners live elsewhere.

In sane countries, the military is a professional institution. It answers to constitutional and civilian authorities—whether it likes them or not. That is the point of a republic. In Nigeria, too often, we behave like the constitution is a WhatsApp status: nice to read, not compulsory to obey.

So on a day like this, I’m not joining the choir of worship. I’m issuing a civic memo.

The job of the military is not to be Nigeria’s emergency boyfriend—showing up whenever democracy is misbehaving, slapping everybody, and then moving into the house as landlord.

Your job is defense.

Your job is to protect the territorial integrity of Nigeria and keep citizens safe from enemies—foreign and domestic. Right now, bandits are evolving into armies. Terror groups are mutating. Citizens are being slaughtered in villages like their lives are discounted goods. That is the battlefield—not Abuja politics, not “saving Nigeria,” not ruling Nigerians.

Democracy is messy, yes. Civilian leaders can be disappointing, yes. But it is not the military’s assignment to “fix” politics. Citizens must fix politics through civilian systems—elections, courts, reforms, activism, accountability, and civic pressure.

Because every time Nigeria runs back to the barracks for salvation, we come back with scars, not solutions—and we create a fresh class of powerful men who believe the country owes them permanent political relevance.

That is why I say the military must apologize.

Not as a symbolic performance. As a national reckoning. An admission that their interventions—no matter how “well-intentioned” they claimed—repeatedly derailed the country, destabilized our institutions, militarized our politics, and installed a culture where force can interrupt constitutional order.

And since rumors have a habit of floating around about “winni-winni” and people still fantasizing about another takeover, let today come with one clear memo:

In a civilized society, the gun answers to the constitution. Always.

Not when it’s convenient. Not when it feels patriotic. Always.

So e lo wa ibikan… joko si. Joor.

— The Mayor of Fadeyi