I read MD Aminu’s praise of the late Head of State, General Murtala Muhammed’s “bold and confrontational” character, and it brought to mind the defiance that defined the soldier and his contemporaries. Murtala was fearless, no doubt, but as I reflect on that era, I have come to see it as one shaped as much by youthful idealism as by conviction. Many of the key actors of that period were men our age, and even younger, who rose too quickly through the ranks. The impulsiveness of youth often coloured their judgment. They took bold, sometimes reckless, decisions without fully weighing the consequences.
They were products of the Marxist ideologies that swept through their generation, and this became the entry point for the saviour complex many of them developed after seizing power. They wanted to do things differently, yet failed to factor in the structural and geopolitical realities of their time. I once celebrated the “Africa Has Come of Age” declaration as the hallmark of Africa’s awakening. It was noble, yes, but premature. Murtala’s administration may have marked the golden age of Nigeria’s foreign policy, but to what end? We were still heavily dependent on foreign-led industry, technology, and commerce, with our economic base tied to external expertise and imports.
The same idealism applied to other young revolutionaries of that era, like Thomas Sankara. As noble as his intentions were, it was his tragic death that sealed his place in Africa’s pantheon of heroes. He couldn’t have sustained Burkina Faso in isolation from the global powers, and this isn’t to glorify dependency or neo-colonial attachment. It is simply the reality of power dynamics. If ever in doubt, look at what became of Robert Mugabe, his ideals consumed by the same forces he sought to resist.
By contrast, Singapore’s Lee Kuan Yew approached leadership as an apprentice of the West. He studied their systems, borrowed what worked, and transformed Singapore from a struggling third-world nation into a first-world powerhouse. In his own words, Singapore rejected conventional wisdom when it did not accord with rational analysis or lived experience. In the 1960s and 70s, when it was fashionable to be anti-West and anti-multinational corporations, he defied such ideological trends. He recognised that multinational corporations possessed the technology, expertise, and markets his country lacked, and chose to learn from them. That pragmatic humility accelerated Singapore’s growth.
Unlike the African revolutionaries trapped in ideological echo chambers, Lee Kuan Yew and his contemporaries accepted that the West had centuries of industrial head start. They focused on learning, adapting, and competing through efficiency, not emotion. You don’t catch up with those who began centuries ahead by declaring you’ve come of age; you do so by learning from them, adopting what they got right, and avoiding their mistakes. Unfortunately, our own leaders who tried to borrow those models failed to account for one decisive factor: you can’t replicate success in an environment wired for greed and corruption.
Murtala’s assassination was also a tragic symbol of that disconnection from reality. We had not yet come to a time when a Head of State could drive his Mercedes around Lagos without security detail, just as we were not economically prepared to confront the Western powers in the defiant tone he adopted. His was an era of passion untempered by prudence, and history has left us to measure the cost of that idealism.