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Social Transformation and Military Leadership: The Nigerian Army and Fourth Generation Wars

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Governance and the Crisis of Rule in Contemporary Africa

Part of the book series: African Histories and Modernities ((AHAM))

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Abstract

Whereas military intervention in African politics has continued to receive scholarly attention (see Kieh and Agbese 2004; Souaré 2014; Powell 2014), the internal leadership processes of the armed forces, especially as they transform to meet domestic and external commitments under democratic control, has practically become an analytic black hole. This chapter seeks to fill this lacuna by using the Nigerian Army (NA) as a case study of the ecology of leadership in which there may be wide gaps between legal governance and the leader’s ability to hold things together while an institution is undergoing transformation. The chapter adopts a context-specific approach that uses specific leadership events as a framework to understand the conditions under which leadership is produced, and the extent to which those conditions have shaped the kind of leaders and leadership paths which have emerged under the democratic dispensation.

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  1. Okechukwu C. Iheduru
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Ebenezer Obadare Wale Adebanwi

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© 2016 Okechukwu C. Iheduru

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Iheduru, O.C. (2016). Social Transformation and Military Leadership: The Nigerian Army and Fourth Generation Wars. In: Obadare, E., Adebanwi, W. (eds) Governance and the Crisis of Rule in Contemporary Africa. African Histories and Modernities. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-137-56686-7_11

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