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 15th, 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.
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