Despite their obvious masculinity, postcolonial military regimes in Africa do not exclude and ignore women. This article argues that the authoritarian military regimes of Generals Babangida and Abacha in Nigeria improvised a banal game of gender politics which became a key mechanism through which the tentacles of militarism were extended, legitimized, and consolidated at a time when internationally, military rule had become an unacceptable form of government. The highly publicized programme for rural women enabled the regime of Babangida to gain international credibility. The Abacha regime did not seek or win international support, but sought to upstage the gender politics of its predecessors locally by mounting more broadly populist programmes which promised benefits to ‘the family’ and further reinscribed women within highly limited reproductive roles. Partly because they failed to contest and confront the highly conservative gender discourses of the military, neither the prodemocracy movement nor the proliferating women’s organizations were able to prevent the military from appropriating the terrain of ‘women development’ for their own ends. Bibliogr., notes, sum. in English and French.
