COUP NARRATIVES AND CONSTITUTIONAL PRIORITIES: A CRITIQUE OF NIGERIA’S SECURITY DISCOURSE
The recent media dominance of Christopher Musa, Nigeria’s Minister of Defence and former Chief of Defence Staff (CDS), on alleged coup plots raises important questions about the priorities of Nigeria’s security leadership in a fragile democratic environment. While the condemnation of military coups and any attempt to subvert constitutional order is both necessary and commendable, the excessive public focus on coup narratives risks diverting attention from the more urgent and existential security challenges confronting Nigerian citizens on a daily basis, particularly terrorism, banditry, and mass abductions.
There is no dispute that coups constitute a grave threat to democracy. Section 1(2) of the 1999 Constitution (as amended) clearly prohibits any person or group from taking control of government except in accordance with constitutional provisions. Equally, Section 14(2)(a) vests sovereignty in the people, not in soldiers or political elites. Any military conspiracy against the constitutional order must therefore be condemned in the strongest terms. However, constitutionalism is not threatened only by soldiers in uniform; it is also undermined by political recklessness, abuse of executive power, electoral malpractice, and systemic failure to protect citizens’ lives and dignity. In this regard, the greater and more immediate “coup” against Nigerian democracy is not hypothetical military plotting, but the sustained collapse of state capacity to guarantee security and welfare as required under Section 14(2)(b) of the Constitution. When citizens are abducted in their places of worship, farms, schools, and highways, and remain in captivity for weeks or months, the state is already in breach of its most fundamental constitutional obligation. Terrorism and banditry are not merely security issues; they are constitutional crises.
A particularly troubling example is the abduction of about 177 Christian worshippers in Kaduna State in March 2024, who were kidnapped from three separate church locations, two Cherubim and Seraphim churches and one ECWA church in Kajuru Local Government Area. This incident was widely reported by national and international media and acknowledged by Kaduna State authorities. The victims, mostly women and children, were taken by armed bandits and subjected to inhumane conditions in forest camps. Their ordeal symbolises the daily reality of thousands of Nigerians living under terror, fear, and abandonment. What makes this case even more sensitive is that Kaduna State is the home state of the current Minister of Defence. One would reasonably expect that the trauma of his own people being held in terrorist dungeons would command the highest level of personal and institutional urgency. Yet, the dominant public engagement of the Minister has been centred on explaining coup scenarios, hypothetical massacres, and how he was allegedly marked for execution by coup plotters, rather than on transparent updates about rescue operations, intelligence breakthroughs, or coordinated military strategies to free abducted citizens.
The contradiction becomes more pronounced when viewed against institutional history. General Musa served as CDS when the alleged coup was supposedly being conceived. By his own narrative, he was a primary target of the plotters. If this account is accurate and credible, it raises a legitimate governance question: why was a CDS who was allegedly central to thwarting a dangerous coup retired shortly thereafter, only to be reappointed as Minister of Defence? While retirements and appointments fall within presidential prerogative, the optics of this sequence invite public scrutiny and demand clearer institutional explanations. More fundamentally, the current security communication strategy reflects a misplaced prioritisation. National security leadership should not be driven by media narratives or political symbolism, but by measurable outcomes, rescued citizens, dismantled terror networks, reclaimed territories, and restored public confidence. When abducted Nigerians remain in captivity while senior officials dominate television studios discussing hypothetical coups, the state risks appearing disconnected from the lived realities of its people.
In constitutional terms, the legitimacy of any government is not measured by how effectively it narrates threats, but by how effectively it neutralises them. The real test of democratic governance is not whether coups are prevented in theory, but whether citizens are protected in practice. A democracy where worshippers are abducted in hundreds and left to negotiate their freedom through ransom payments is already experiencing a functional breakdown of sovereignty.
In conclusion, while vigilance against coups is necessary in a region historically plagued by military interventions, Nigeria’s most pressing threat to democracy today is not an imagined return to barracks politics, but the persistent failure of the state to secure lives, uphold dignity, and enforce constitutional guarantees. The priority of the Minister of Defence and the entire security architecture should therefore shift decisively from media-driven coup narratives to operationally driven rescue missions, counter-terrorism strategies, and the restoration of public safety. Anything short of this represents not just a policy failure, but a constitutional betrayal of the sovereignty of the Nigerian people.
Solomon Dalung LLM, LLB, BL
Garkuwa Arewa, Dike Egwureogwu & Igbarman Otarok
Voice of Silent Majority
igbarman@gmail.com
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