THE NIGERIAN ARMY: STEPPING BACK INTO JANUARY 1966

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The current promotions and retirements in the Nigerian army portend danger to the continued unity of this country; it reminds one of the complete annihilation of the crop of officer corps of northern extraction in January of 1966.  Now, as then, Igbo officers led the putsch – the difference being while the officers of 1966 used guns, the officers of 2012 used their pens.  With the attempt to rewrite the history of the civil war by the likes of Chinua Achebe and other intellectuals of Igbo descent, the direction of the intellectual warfare is beginning to be clear to those whose vision was befuddled by the pseudo-intellectualism of the writers.  It all began with giving Odumegwu Ojukwu, the leader of the defeated Biafra a state burial as if he was not directly responsible for the deaths of nearly a million people during the civil war.  The brutal killing of General Mamman Shuwa, an authentic civil war hero, right in front of nearly a dozen soldiers who were supposed to be guarding him, followed this.

If the skewed nature of the promotions and retirements is indicative of where the army is headed to, then we are in serious trouble.  A recent news item in one of the dailies went further to say that the retirements are not over because others still in service, particularly those from the north and the south who are seniors to one Major General Minimah will be retired to make way for him to take over as Chief of Army staff when the current Army Chief of Staff, General Ihejirika steps down.  That the present chief is retained just so that he can truncate the careers of senior officers to make way for a Minimah.  Though covertly, the officer corps of northern ancestry has been systematically decimated in the services, the subtle implication of Major General Isa and Air Vice Marshall Kure in the bombings inside the Jaji Cantonment was the first salvo fired overtly.  The subsequent forceful retirement of General Isa, who was in line to take over from Ihejirika, confirmed what was generally suspected to be in the offing.

The politicisation of the Nigerian military has destroyed the very essence of the services – professionalism.  Promotions and retirements are now based on primordial sentiments like where you come from and which religion you professes not on merit, seniority or such other professional considerations.  Though this was shrewd in the past, particularly during the Obasanjo regime, it has become full blown now.  The audacity of its authors leaves one breathless.  With what is happening in the military, one has the feeling that Goodluck Jonathan is bent on making sure he is the last President of what we know as Nigeria.  The parallels between what is unfolding now and the wholesale massacre of northern military officers in January of 1966 are uncanny and scary.  The events of the night of January 15^th, 1966 is repeating itself right before our eyes but this time no blood is flowing, only careers destroyed, some in their prime.  Are we by any stretch of the imagination sure the country is going to survive the current assault on its values by a government that cares little about the sensitivity of certain things?  A government that its functionaries branded a whole section of the country as ‘terrorists’?

The claim by the Controller General of the Immigration Service that she refused to advertise vacancies in the service in order to avoid recruiting ‘terrorists’ into the organisation sums up the mind set of those who forced the retirement of certain people in the Nigerian army simply to make way for Minimah to become Chief of Army Staff.  Our military institution is taken back to the days of the West African Frontier Force (WAFF) by a government insensitive to the existing socio-political fault lines.  The retirements and/ or promotions of officers purely based on the perception that a section of the country can and could be made subservient to another bodes danger to the corporate existence of the country. My take on the current exercise of weeding out officers of northern and south western extraction is synonymous with the murders of Brig. S.A. Ademulegun, Major S.A. Adegoke, Lt. Col. J.Y. Pam, Brig. Zakari Maimalari and Col. Kur Mohammed and the rest.  Then as now, no single Igbo officer lost his life or commission.  While Maimalari and co. lost their lives, Isa and his mates lost their commissions while the rest are on the firing line to lose theirs. My fears are – will the country bear the consequences of this misadventure?

If any officer is due for retirement let him be retired but if they are not, the military authorities should allow them retire whenever they are due to unless they choose to voluntarily do so.  The wise thing to do for those who want Minimah to head the army is to make sure he remains in the army and bide his time.  Retire his seniors to make way for him will be a very dangerous precedent that may be imitated by others when their ‘time’ comes.  The way the military and the country are run today will surely make Godwin Orkar proud in his grave.

EXECUTIVE PLANE CRASHES & ROADBLOCKS

My heart goes out to Dame Amina Elizabeth Yakowa on her irreplaceable lost – a lost felt by all and sundry in Kaduna State in particular and the country in general.  But no one will feel this lost more than the Dame for she lost a husband, companion and possibly a father. I pray God will give you the fortitude to bear the loss and the forbearance to forge ahead.  Sir Patrick Yakowa’s death was a lost to all, but while the state lost a bridge-builder, the family lost a patriarch.  We can all take solace in knowing that he did his best and wasn’t found wanting wherever he served throughout his public service career.  Mrs Yakowa should be well assured that the encomiums pouring in after his tragic death are not the usual political crocodile tears which easily flow eyes that are touched with handkerchiefs soaked in Mentholatum.  The tears were genuine and the encomiums authentic.  May Sir Patrick Yakowa be with his Lord.

Tragic as the chopper crash that snuff the late governor’s life, we may as well interrogate ourselves on the methods taken by the various states and the federal government as a means of safeguarding the lives and properties of the high and mighty.  Today most cities in the north looks like conquered territories because of the high concentration of gun totting military personnel wherever one turns.  Our society have been militarised, and if I can borrow Jerry Rawlings cliché, “violence have been democratised”, with a human life costing less than the cost of the bullet used to kill him.  The soldiers deployed to our cities and highways have turned out to be worse than the Boko Haram fighters it is meant to protect the people from.  The number of souls lost to the bullets of the soldiers may be higher than the number of those killed by the sect members.  Much as the people have been calling on the authorities for the withdrawal of the soldiers, the authorities have turned deaf ears because they believe the people are their enemies and must therefore be shielded from by force of arms.  All this may be a direct consequence of how our leaders emerged through fraudulent means.

Apart from the daily lost of lives caused by the military, the humiliation our people suffer from the hands of these uncouth goons both in the cities and the highways are terrible, to say the least.  I had the misfortune of travelling to Yola by road from Kaduna and the way commuters in public vehicles are humiliated and intimidated made me hate being a Nigerian.  The military men manning the roadblocks behaves no different from occupation forces we see on our television sets in Afghanistan, Iraq and Palestine.  Passengers are asked to come down from their vehicles and open their luggage for a public display of their most personal items.  At some roadblocks, passengers are ordered to face away from the vehicle while searches are conducted.  I saw a woman forced to mow grasses for daring to look at a soldier while he was searching their bus.  The ‘rule’ is that all passengers are to turn their backs to their luggage while it being searched.  Can’t be worse for Palestinians crossing into Israel.  We ended up making a trip of eight hours in ten. 

For those in the towns, the experiences are far worse for those using motorcycles.  You are forced to dismount at the pain of being flogged by the soldiers at the roadblocks. The harassments and humiliations apart, the stupendous amount of money that goes into maintaining these roadblocks are mind-boggling.  The monies should have made a lot of difference in the lives of our long-suffering compatriots.  With all the ubiquity of the roadblocks, the bombers – what they are purportedly created to stop – are continuing to have a field day.  With the twin bombings in the heart of the military’s elitist Cantonment – Jaji – the uselessness of these roadblocks have been exposed.  They are just useless money guzzlers and a tool for the humiliation of the poor who find it difficult to navigate the various fierce looking, gun-totting soldiers, to go looking what to eat.

My point in this piece is for us to use Yakowa’s death to rethink our security strategies.  Our government houses have been turned into fortresses and most government institutions and structures are looking like mini military cantonments all in an effort to protect our governors, lawmakers and other public functionaries.  But the architect of this draconian security policy – the late Owoye Azazi – died in a chopper crash.  He was “attacked” by death where you can’t erect a roadblock.  I do not claim to know much about the man Azazi but I know him from reputation as the man indicted for the crime of unprecedented movement of military hardware to Niger Delta militants when he was the General Officer Commanding (GOC) 1 Mechanised Division, Kaduna.  He went on to head the Army and retire as Chief of Defence Staff.  He reinvented himself during the Goodluck Jonathan’s administration as the National Security Adviser (NSA) with enormous powers and influence.  He is no more but his legacies of roadblocks live with us.  The continued attacks by faceless terror groups who, for all we know, are hiding behind the mask of Boko Haram to perpetrate mayhem in the north, is a testament to the failure of these death traps.  They are there simply to degrade and intimidate poor daily road users who cannot afford sirens. 

Kaduna state has lost a rare gem.  A man who overcame his prejudices to lead an ethnically and religiously fragmented state.   It was universally agreed that Yakowa was a good man and tried his best for Kaduna and its people.  I hope he is in the bosom of his Lord.  As to Azazi, I am sure he was also eulogised by those he did his best to impress while alive; those he assisted in life even at the expense of others.  Though I may disagree with him and his worldview, he did his level best to make sure his people are visible in all spheres of our polity.  Despite his concerted efforts to have the northern part of Nigeria labelled a ‘terrorists territory’ and despite failing to do so, the man served the country in his own ways.

But the death of these two and the pilots and other passengers in the helicopter crash should ideally wake us up from the folly of thinking that we can mount roadblocks to ward off death. Injustice begets injustice and disenchantment that leads to frustrations, which in turn leads to the destructive spree we are witnessing.  Living behind sandbags, high fences, attack dogs and fierce looking security operatives hasn’t solved the problem but actually exacerbated it.   Governor Danbaba Danfulani of Taraba State is still in the hospital in Germany (I pray for his full recovery).  No ‘terrorists’ attacked the plane he was piloting;  Governor Idris Wada, a pilot, ironically was involved in fatal road accident, which claimed the life of his ADC. 

The best way to immortalise these gentlemen who lost their lives needlessly, is to find a lasting solution to the incessant insecurity in the country; to ensure that every Nigerian sleeps with both eyes and not this ad-hoc arrangement through which the authorities create more enemies than friends.