A moral evaluation of past military coups and present corruption in Nigeria

Abstract

It is altruism that military dictatorship and leadership are synonymous with corruption. It is also obvious that participation of military in national leadership through coups is a practice that is not alien to the biblical era, the world, Africa and Nigeria in particular. Nigeria as a nation like other African countries has had its share of this ugly phenomenon in the past and presently harvesting the fruits thereof. The worst legacy left behind by the military leaderships in Nigeria was corruption. The military ruled Nigeria through coups persistently and its ranks and files have by all indications proved that they too, were not immune against the problem of corruption. Using the instance of coups in the Bible and other underlying moral principles, the paper examines the phenomena of coups and corruption in Nigeria and appraised same from a moral paradigm. The secondary sources of collecting data through scholarly literature on the subject are adopted to attain the objective of the research. The paper also highlights the positive and negative impacts of coups on the Nigerian nation. It argues that corruption is a by-product of past persistent coups in the Nigerian state, and advocates for a constitutional means such as democratic elections to effect a change of power to align with current global democratic trends and avoid corrupt practices. The paper recommends that the current practice of recycling politicians and public office holders who are the same military leaders in the past should be discouraged so that corruption can be minimized in the country.