Military Rule an Abberation, Not Solution, Says King Dakolo

Olusegun Samuel in Yenagoa

The Chairman of the Bayelsa State Council of Traditional Rulers and the Ibenanaowei of Ekpetiama Kingdom, King Bubaraye Dakolo, has described military rule as an abbberation and should not be an option despite the teething challenges bedeviling the nation.

He said though there are lapses in leadership since the inception of democratic rule in 1999, a military rule can not be an option to drive the country into global economic and political prosperity.

King Dakolo, an environmental and human rights activist, who spoke during a pre-launch media briefing of his new books titled “Once a Soilder and African Voice” frowned at Nigerians clamouring for the return of military rule as a way out of the problems confronting the country.

King Dakolo, a retired military officer, acknowledged that the present day democratic rule have not been able to meet the expectations of  Nigerians, but argued that Nigeria would be better off as presently constituted than if allowed to go back into military rule.

The monarch who was once a soldier, chemist and an educator, described military rule as an aberration that is not supposed to allowed to govern any country in the 21st Century, adding that even though the current civil rule so far has not gotten to where it is expected to be, civil rule is designed to deal with the people better and directly.

He said “clearly speaking the civil rule is meant to deal with the people better and directly, and the military is not suppose to be in governance in any way. Nigeria has had it in the past, even though the civil rule so far has not gotten there, it doesn’t mean that an aberration should be what should stand.

“So military rule is an aberration. We are suppose to have civil rule but what we must know is that the Nigeria state is like most of the African states that were colonized by the Europeans and they misruled us for several decades and stole almost everything we had from human beings to minerals and agricultural produce.

“As a matter of fact, they made us to farm what we never needed and made us to abandon what we needed. These are complex issues that takes an intelligent mind to understand. When we got independence and started the civil rule, the west paid attention to our governance and instigated the military coup that truncated civilian rule.

“They were not actually public interest coup, they were western interest coup. And nigeria has gotten about a dozen of such coups and that is why till today our law enforcement has not been people centered. In Europe if you are stranded somewhere the police will take you home, if you need a thing, the police will help you out.

“The police is seen as an enemy of the state unfortunately if I ask all of you here none of you can say for sure that you trust the Nigeria police because when the West was leaving, they left for us an anti-people law enforcement. What the law enforcement was to Europe at the time was not what it was to Africa.

“The metropolitan police which was serving Europe, when they brought some of them to Africa, they made it the government police and the government was a colonial government. So they were trained to be against the people in support of the government. So when they were leaving, they left some Europeans behind to teach our police how not to be the people police.

“So if you put all of these together, what am suggesting here is that no person should see military rule as a better alternative to governing Nigeria. That shouldn’t be a discuss because what all of us should do is to ensure that we rule ourselves well, and as we play politics we should get the best.”

On the book launch which takes place on Tuesday, he said that the Bayelsa state governor, Senator Douye Diri and prominent Nigerians are among dignatries expected to honour the event and over four hundred dignitaries that will honour the event.

On what motivated him to write the books, the Monarch said that there had been lots of unfair treatment and injustices meted out to the Niger Delta region saying that such injustices needs to be articulated and documented.