Last week, the federal government finally announced its readiness to constitute military judicial panels to try some 16 coup plotters who late last year allegedly planned to overthrow the government. Their civilian accomplices, still unnumbered and identities undisclosed, will also be arraigned sometime later. The plot, military investigators revealed, involved an almost total decapitation of the country’s leadership in a manner that gave indications that Nigerian soldiers have forgotten how to plan coups. While the law will almost certainly be applied to its fullest in the trial, the plot itself presents a few lessons to the government, the military, and the people.
The first lesson applies to the military. The last time a successful coup was planned and executed in Nigeria was actually in August 1985 by Gen. Ibrahim Babangida. The April 1990 Maj. Gideon Orkar coup failed disastrously, and the November 1993 so-called coup against the Ernest Shonekan-led interim government was not really a coup in any sense of the word, and was inspired by the courts which had declared the administration illegal. A Lagos High Court headed by Justice Dolapo Akinsanya had in November 1993 declared the Interim National Government headed by Chief Shonekan as ‘illegal and void’. Seven days later, Gen. Sani Abacha forced the illegal administrator’s resignation. And so, forty years after their last successful coup, ambitious military adventurers may have completely forgotten the dynamics of coup-making.
The Nigerian military has also never successfully executed a coup inspired by one region against another. The January 1966 coup led by mainly Igbo officers failed despite eliminating many political actors and overthrowing the Northern-led federal administration, while the retaliatory July 1966 coup merely restored power into the hands of northerners. In addition, the coup against Gen. Yakubu Gowon was led by his own kinsmen, while the one against Shehu Shagari was also led by his kinsmen, and the one against Muhammadu Buhari was again led by his kinsmen. How the 16 coup plotters of 2025 misread the dynamics of coup-making in Nigeria by leading a group of northern officers to attempt to overthrow a southern president may in fact corroborate the findings by military investigators that the 2025 coup mastermind failed promotion examinations. In other words the plotters were not bright and could not smartly interpret Nigeria’s historical and political circumstances. Had they succeeded in decapitating the administration, it is unlikely they would have been able to manage the aftermaths, regardless of how many thousands poured into the streets to welcome them.
A third lesson offers itself so clearly to the plotters that it is difficult to explain how they missed it. Quite apart from the internal logic of Nigerian coups aligning with ethnic consanguinity, the only two successful coups ever executed in the country came at a time when the population had not exploded to the level it is today, at over 200 million. How on earth did the plotters hope to manage such an explosive mix of people, and with how many troops, and at a time when the country is besieged on all sides by insurgents, bandits and self-determination forces? And, worse, how would they hope to accommodate intensely fragmented and fratricidal forces all over the country when democracy itself was struggling to gain and retain control?
Contemporary West African coup affairs should have lent some lessons to the Nigerian plotters. Among the West African countries where successful or failed coups have taken place, none of them is considerably larger than Lagos State in population. Burkina Faso’s population is about 23.5m; Niger Republic, 27m; Mali, 24.5m; Guinea, 15m; and Benin Republic, 14.5m.
It was not just incompetence that propelled the Nigerian plotters; their sanity should also be examined. Yes, they may be fit to stand trial, but it may in fact be necessary to find out how their minds worked or failed to work. That other coup plotters succeeded in some parts of West Africa does not mean that they would succeed in Nigeria regardless of its huge population and combustible ethnic mix. Did they forget that the January 1966 coup also attracted initial welcome in many parts of the North, only to collapse later when ethnic suspicion and rivalry issues kicked in? The bigger lesson for the military and adventurous soldiers is to do self-introspection on how easily susceptible they are to misreading the noise and incitement on social media or even the instigation by politicians grieving over lost elections. There were indications that those who investigated last year’s coup plot found out that the plotters misread signals from the populace. The plotters believed that the fiery rhetoric on social and mainstream media as well as the street protests against economic hardship easily amounted to wholesale disaffection with the government. It is true that as the new administration’s economic reforms began, hunger and other forms of sufferings also exploded; but many sensible analysts, economists and politicians understood that in order to make an omelette, egg had to be broken. However, beguiled public commentators ignorant of the scope of the economic troubles bequeathed the new administration in 2023 simply absolved the previous administration of blame, heaped all the troubles on the new government, and began whooping for coup or revolution, whichever came first.
The people and the government also have lessons to learn from the coup plot tragedy. It is bewildering that politicians, the media, and diverse commentators hitched on the agitation bandwagon to attempt to rewrite the country’s electoral laws after the elections by denouncing the provision of simple majority and 25 percent of two-thirds of the states, and also discrediting both the vote count in general as well as the eventual winner. They then campaigned openly and shamelessly for coup or revolution. Meanwhile, apart from being aware that some soldiers were probably listening, they also instigated children to man barricades, waved foreign flags of repressive and brutal foreign governments, and even readied themselves to tolerate and endure the collapse of democracy. It was, therefore, not surprising that eventually a group of soldiers hearkened to their cries and tried incompetently to unseat the administration. What of the people who spoke daggers on the social and traditional media? What absolution can they plead? In contrast, imagine if the First Republic had not been terminated by a coup. Imagine if the Second Republic had also not been terminated. More than four times after every coup the country had had to reboot, and each time, it had always encountered the same problems it tried to wish away or abridge.
It is too early to determine how the military tribunal would judge the plotters, or whether the true motives of the plotters would be exposed during trial. They may not give the tribunal or the public a window into their fears, whether if they had achieved partial success or even full success they could hold the country together. The country may also never know whether their private grievances or lust for power prompted their ill-fated adventure, or whether they harboured any noble motives for the country’s greatness and had a great and tested programme of social, economic and political salvation. What will be known or passed on to the public will probably be the extent of each plotter’s involvement and a confirmation of how they hoped to execute their plans. They will also probably reveal their financiers and indicate how they wished to constitute their government. As for the aftermaths of the coup, had they carried it out, they were probably too naïve to dwell on it or care.
It is also unlikely that the coup plotters would have nursed the ambition to overthrow the government if they didn’t think they would be lionised. The factor of incitement should be emphasised in the trial to serve as a lesson to those who think it is chic to indulge in all manner of ranting and fiery rhetoric on social media in the name of free speech. Unrestrained speech, it is now clear, sometimes produces terrible consequences. Calling for a revolution or a coup is equivalent to calling for the overthrow of the constitution. The agitators cannot, therefore, turn round to plead the protection of a constitution they wish to destroy. By not calling to account those who agitate in the media for the overthrow of the constitution, the government enables the subversive campaign to continue relentlessly, while some misled soldiers begin to harbour foolish thoughts as to the practicability of seizing power by force, regardless of the terrible consequences for stability and national unity. Already, some political leaders have begun wetting the ground to germinate chaos by suggesting that the 2027 elections would be free only if the opposition won.
