Militarised democracy and its security challenges in South East Nigeria, 1999-2023

Since the onset of the current democratic experimentation in Nigeria in 1999, the authorities have continued to deploy the military on routine internal security duties. This is evident in the various internal military operations (IMOs) and preponderance of military checkpoints, especially in the Southeast geopolitical zone of the country comprising Abia, Anambra, Ebonyi, Enugu, and Imo states. The practice has served as an enabler of undemocratic tendencies in the southeast, provoking insecurity. Meanwhile, extant explanations of the security conundrum in the southeast have revolved around securitisation analysis, frustration-aggression thesis, elite politics, and leadership failure. In the process, scant attention has been paid to the phenomenon of militarised democracy and its implications for insecurity in the zone. Using a documentary approach and anchoring analysis on the theoretical frame of authoritarianism, this study argues that the militarisation of the democratic space in the southeast, which is home to the Igbo ethnic group, springs from the overall nature and character of politics in Nigeria, which has tended to privilege militarising tendencies over democratic ethos such as negotiation, compromise, and accommodation. It further argues that this proclivity is due in part to vestiges of dictatorship inherited from colonialism, but is also partly a result of embedded ethic animosities arising from Nigeria’s immediate post-independence history. It concludes that until the political class purges itself of militaristic tendencies and imbibes cherished democratic values of tolerance and pluralism, insecurity in the southeast shall continue to fester as an inevitable consequence of the militarisation of the zone.