Salute to bravery

By Lawal Ogienagbon

He was in a world of his own. All alone. Without company, comrades and friends, his survival depended on himself and himself alone and of course, the grace of God. That is the life of a soldier. Such a moment comes when he has to solely devise ways of survival in the face of enemy attack. When he is surrounded and all alone, without any other person in the world, he works and walks, where possible, his way out of trouble.

Where it is impossible to walk out of trouble, he comes home in a body bag or worse of all, his body may never be found for full military honours and burial. That is the hardest part of it all – the non-recovery of the body of a fallen soldier. A soldier who died fighting on his feet; doing all he could to protect the territorial integrity of his country and its people. How do you explain to his widow, where he was married; his children, if he had any and his parents, if they are still alive that the body could not be found?

The nation was saved that agony last weekend. Inside the thick forest straddling Zamfara, Katsina and Kaduna states, a fighter pilot lurked in fear as the enemy closed in on him. It was a close shave with death for Flight Lieutenant Abayomi Dairo, the lone pilot of the illfated Alpha Jet which crashed in Zamfara State on Sunday. The gallant soldier was on an interdiction mission in a zone now notorious for banditry, killings and kidnapping. He had successfully straffed the bandits’ hideouts and it was time to return to base.

In the course of the trip, the enemy took down his jet. He did not lose his nerves. He parachuted to safety as the plane hurtled into the deep recesses of the thick foliage never to be seen again. The bandits somehow knew that the pilot had ejected from the jet and a manhunt began for him. They could not lose the plane and lose the man, they thought. They must get something for their efforts. They gave the pilot a hot chase. Remember, this is their territory, which they know like the back of their hands. They believed that there was no way the soldier would outrun them on their own land.

They forgot that a soldier is trained to adapt to any situation. A soldier is not a soldier for nothing. He is a soldier because of his ability to weather every storm. A soldier is at home whether on land, at sea, in the air or in the mangrove. In the surreal world of soldiery, it takes brain and brawn to survive when a fighter pilot is cornered. On July 18, Dairo was cornered, but his instincts saved him. He survived to fight another day. It must have been a frightening and terrible experience for the young officer. This was not a war movie, many of which he must have watched in training. Nor was it a simulation, many of which again he must have participated in, at the military academy to prepare him for a day like July 18.

That fateful day, he came face to face with the hard reality of being a soldier. His nation is not at war, but it is waging a war to  contain insurgency and banditry in the Northeast and Northwest. Unfortunately, the problem is spreading to the Northcentral, with Niger State, being the most troubled in that axis. As I type this article on Tuesday evening, scores of pupils of an Arabic school, popularly called Ile ‘Kewu in the Southwest, are still in captivity almost one month after being abducted. Dairo might have embarked on his air interdiction mission as part of efforts to rescue these kids and other abductees. He nearly ended up being abducted too.

Dairo escaped to tell his story. It was not an easy escape. He escaped from those vermins with the bare skin of his teeth. His escape is the stuff of which war films are made. A soldier whose plane had been gunned down and surrounded by the enemy baying for his blood. Lonely and armed with only his phone, he bagan his long trek to safety. The darkness and his instincts came handy in this true test of his military training. There could not have been a better war situation test than the one unfolding before him in real time. What he learnt in simulation would no doubt have helped him on how to claw his way out of that dire situation.

As he darted here and there amid enemy fire, his breathing became fast and laborious. But he persevered as he knew the consequences of being caught. Gingerly, he trod through the bush, avoiding to step on dry trees that could give him away. Fate smiled on Dairo as he found his way to an army formation, where he was “fully rescued”. His escape brings joy to the nation, which has yet to get over the death of its army chief, Lt Gen Ibrahim Attahiru, and 10 others in an air force jet crash on May 21. Before then, two other military jets had crashed, killing some officers too. Dairo’s was the fourth jet crash in three years.

His was not a crash as such. It was shot down by bandits. This tells us as a nation that we are underrating these bandits and insurgents at the risk of our soldiers’ lives. These hoodlums are well armed. For them to bring down a fighter jet means that they have a rich arsenal to draw from to meet any exigency. It is important that the government draws a lesson from the July 18 incident. The lesson?  That the insurgency and banditry war is far from over.

A lot still has to be done for the sake of our soldiers. A “technically degraded” group, from my own layman’s view, should not have the capacity to down a fighter jet. These insurgents and bandits are still technically strong. From what happened on July 18, it will be foolhardy to think otherwise. This Dairo was lucky, another may not be that fortunate. May God continue to protect our troops.