Institutional Building and Defence Transformation in Nigeria: An Appraisal of the role of the Military

Abstract

The military as an institution has transcended many phases of human civilization. Although this institution may vary in terms of its organisation and level of sophistication, there is no disputing the fact that the military had long been acknowledged as the foundation of most, if not all societies. This is evident in the quantum of scholarly narratives and historical accounts of invasions and conquest of the weaker and vulnerable communities by the stronger and militarily superior ones. Traditionally, the role of the military globally has been defending the territorial integrity of the state. Cold War struggles between the Eastern and Western bloc. During the Cold War, global polity had witnessed unprecedented cases of praetorianism; when military intervention became contagious like bush fire across Africa, Asia and Latin America sweeping all the newly installed democratic governments. The two ideological blocs have been fingered as culpable in the menace of military intervention providing ideological platform, training, resource and logistics for their puppet military officers. First, to overthrow the existing democratic institutions and later to perpetuate themselves in power. The exit of USSR from the global power theatre in October 1989 marked the official end of cold war and the ascendancy of new world order, the unipolar arrangement under the American hegemony making military rule an aberration. As alternative, they imposed liberal democracy and capitalism as the only acceptable political and economic order. It is in the light of the above that this Paper examined the role of institutional building in defence transformation and democratic governance in Nigeria. The paper relied on Esman’s Model of Institution Building as basis for analysis. The methodology for this paper was scholarly narratives based on library documentation. The paper concludes by advocating for a paradigm shift from the misconstrued view of the military being an aberration to one in which it is taken as an instrument of defence transformation of the country through the absorption of the principles of Institution Building Model.