During the “What’s Trending” segment on Arise TV last Friday, the anchor, Ojy Okpe, posed a critical question to Dr. Reuben Abati about the propriety of deploying the military to support a recent operation by the National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Control (NAFDAC) at the Lagos Trade Fair market. The operation reportedly involved soldiers accompanying NAFDAC officials to seize goods and load them into trucks.
In response, Dr. Abati justified the deployment, citing constitutional provisions that allow the military to act “in aid of civil authorities.” While his reference to the Constitution is technically correct, his interpretation and application in this context are deeply flawed and dangerous for our democracy.
The real issue is not whether the Constitution allows the military to assist civil authorities – it does, but only in exceptional circumstances. The question is whether those circumstances existed at the Lagos Trade Fair, and whether the deployment was duly authorized in accordance with the Constitution.
Section 217(2)(c) of the 1999 Constitution provides that the Armed Forces may be deployed to “suppress insurrection and act in aid of civil authorities to restore order when called upon to do so by the President.” The key phrase here is “when called upon by the President.” The power to deploy the military is not open-ended, nor is it available to every government agency or official to invoke at will. It is a prerogative reserved exclusively for the President, and it must be exercised only when the situation clearly overwhelms the capacity of the Nigeria Police or other civil institutions.
So, was there an insurrection or breakdown of law and order at the Lagos Trade Fair that warranted military intervention? Were NAFDAC officials under any physical threat that the police could not handle? Who authorized the deployment of soldiers – the Director-General of NAFDAC, the Minister of Health, or the President himself? If the military was not deployed with presidential authorization, then that operation was unconstitutional, plain and simple.
We must be wary of the creeping normalization of military involvement in purely civil matters. When regulatory agencies like NAFDAC or the EFCC begin to summon the military for enforcement operations that are administrative in nature, we risk sliding back into a culture of militarism – one that Nigeria’s democratic experiment has been struggling for decades to outgrow.
The role of the military is to defend the territorial integrity of the nation and, in exceptional cases, to assist civil authorities when the situation becomes unmanageable. Routine deployment of the armed forces for market raids, product seizures, or revenue enforcement not only trivializes their constitutional role but also undermines civilian law enforcement institutions like the Nigeria Police.
This creeping militarization of civic life also has a chilling effect on the public. It revives the ghost of a better-forgotten past – an era when soldiers lorded over civilians with unchecked power, when fear replaced law, and when the uniform commanded obedience rather than accountability.
Dr. Abati, in his commentary, failed to interrogate these fundamental questions. By justifying the deployment without examining its legality or necessity, he inadvertently endorsed a practice that contradicts the spirit of constitutional democracy. It is not enough to say the military can be called upon; one must ask by whom, under what conditions, and for what purpose.
Nigeria’s democracy is fragile, and every misuse of the military in civil contexts chips away at its foundation. The line between military and civilian authority must remain clear and inviolable. The police and other civil agencies must be empowered, trained, and equipped to perform their statutory duties without leaning on the military crutch.
If every act of civil enforcement now requires armed soldiers, then we have failed to build the democratic institutions we claim to uphold.
In the end, this is not about NAFDAC or the Lagos Trade Fair. It is about the sanctity of constitutional governance and the need to keep the military within its proper bounds. Democracy cannot thrive in an environment where the military becomes a tool of administrative convenience. We must resist any slide – however subtle – back into militarism.
Okechukwu Nwanguma is Executive Director of the Rule of Law Accountability and Advocacy Centre
