Militariat

It is noted that some military coups, especially in West Africa, have been carried out, not by senior officers, but by junior & noncommissioned officers, ie, the militariat, which occupies a class position in the army analogous to the working class in society.

Irregulars of the Revolutionary United Front (RUF) shared both the subaltern class location and lumpen culture of the militariat in Sierra Leone.

The militariat generally lack a "social consciousness" (Kandeh 2004, 3), aw well as the intellectual skills, organizational expertise, and military discipline necessary for governance.

The employers and the landlords were upheld in their exploitation of the masses by militariats, who, as masters of their politically and militarily separate territories, moreover, taxed the people outrageously and allowed their soldiers to live upon them and ravage them practically at will.

In Nigeria, this failure is expressed by the coming into position of dominance of the militariat, that is the alliance of top military officers and bureaucrats, local and foreign capital (private sector) and traditional rulers that has been dominant in Nigerian politics, especially from the mid-1980s.

We should emphasise that the militariat enlists both military and civilians members. It is important to point this out in order to avert the illusion that links militarism in Nigeria exclusively to the direct occupation of the state by the military. Surely, the project of the militariat does not necessarily need to be realized through military rule.