Presidency, service chiefs and Libya

Barometer – By Adekunle Ade-Adeleye

Presidential spokesman, Garba Shehu, has become adept at defending anything and any position concerning the presidency.

Responding to the calls to sack the service chiefs due to the intractability of the Boko Haram insurgency, Mallam Shehu argued thus: “Our Armed Forces are doing an enormously good job; they are not resting on their laurels but the challenges have mounted because of factors extraneous to the zone, and Nigerians should have an appreciation and be sympathetic and see that all of the things about the collapse of Libya are not a fairy tale. Europeans, for their competing interests in Libya, were dropping weapons into villages in Libya. A lot of these elements have found their way into ungoverned spaces in the Sahel. Could it be better with the sacking of the service chiefs? My sense is that the President as the commander-in-chief is not a novice in the first instance.”

Put plainly and in terms Mallam Shehu can best understand, he is not telling the truth.

The service chiefs are not doing “enormously good jobs”, and if Libya is tangentially involved in the problem in the Nigerian Northeast, that involvement is only a partial, and indeed small, part of the explanation for the bloody stalemate.

The plainer truth is that both the government and the service chiefs have sat on their laurels for a distressingly long time. They need a vigorous push in their butts. Lying is, however, not part of that push.