The Nation Newspaper

Tag: Nigeria military

  • Re: ‘Nigeria needs new military doctrine’

    Re: ‘Nigeria needs new military doctrine’

    By Mike Kebonkwu

    In the opening paragraph of the piece, “Nigeria needs a new Military Doctrine” on the back page of The Nation Newspaper on Sunday, 2nd June 2024, the writer observed among other things, “… that there is a depressing disconnection between Nigerians and their military, a disconnection that has accentuated the crises of underdevelopment and stymied the effectiveness of the military in its numerous counterinsurgency wars in the Northeast, costly efforts to pacify the Northwest, and other internal peacekeeping duties”. 

     At the small right corner inset is the quotable quote: “Accordingly, it is absolutely imperative that the military retaliate against this dastardly act against troops.  The military would be fierce in its response.  We would bring overwhelming military pressure on the group to ensure their total defeat”.  The above statement was credited to the Director of Defence Media Operations (DMO), Major General Edward Buba in reaction to the killing of soldiers in Aba in Abia State by alleged IPOB militants.  The writer equally isolated three recent incidents to buttress his point and argument, such as the shutting down of Banex Plaza in Abuja over a dispute between a phone seller and a soldier; the Okuama killings in Delta State where 17 military personnel were killed in an ambush by militants, and the last being the killing of five soldiers by alleged IPOB militants in Aba, Abia State resulting in ongoing skirmishes to fish out the killers. 

    I find the conclusion depressing where Palladium likened the military to militants and insurgents.  He introduced some precepts like, ‘the people’s army’ and a ‘new doctrine’ as well as the disconnection between Nigerians and their military.  His treatment of these precepts was an oversimplification. I will talk about this presently.  To understand his point of view from the article, one expected the writer to have enunciated the existing doctrine of the military, pointing out its inadequacies to justify his position and demand for a new doctrine.  What therefore is the doctrine of the Nigerian military known to him? 

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    The military should protect Nigerian citizens as the guardian sentinel of our liberty, freedom and democracy and should not be seen to turn its weapons against the civil populace.  The people are not enemies of the state and the military cannot win a war against the people because it exists for the people.  In the same way, the military and its personnel deserve some measure of protection from hooligans who are mostly engaged and hired by some individuals to protect their business premises or pursue some political agenda.

    Palladium further used the Arise television interview with the former CDS, General Lucky Irabor on the Banex incident, and response of the Nigerian Army Spokesman, Major general Onyema Nwachukwu as baseline for his analysis.  The writer did not omit to refer to other encounters in the past between the military and the civil populace in Odi in Bayelsa State and Zaki Biam in Benue State after the killing of 19 soldiers.  In concluding, he stated among other things that “…For when they respond fiercely  and indiscriminately to provocations like militants and insurgents, talking about retaliation and vengeance instead of calmly and forcefully saying they would bring the attackers to justice, how can they prove they are different from those animals who unfeelingly leave destruction in their wake”.  This is a summary dismissal of the military as not being different from the militants and insurgents in any way.

    When the writer talks about the people’s army, he does not as much as state what a people’s army means.  Glossing over it therefore makes the analysis superficial. Is a people’s army about just civil/military relations; one is afraid there is a yawning gap in that article as it was full of bile, as if the writer had an axe to grind with the military, and given the way he concluded that  the military sees itself as superior to the polity. Furthermore, one was unable to see the disconnection between the military and the civil populace that the writer referred to.  His narrative was replete with unsubstantiated assumptions; for it cannot be said that the reason the military is not able to defeat or rein in insurgency or criminality in the country is as a result of any disconnection or occasional friction between the civil populace and the military.  The article failed to meet the threshold of good analysis when the writer talked about peacekeeping in internal security operations in aid of civil authority; that is a misleading concept. The Nigerian military could not have been involved in any peacekeeping operation within its own territory and geographical boundaries.

    It is true that there have been frictions and clashes between some gangsters and hooligans who launch attacks on the military and other uniformed personnel or law enforcement agents in their course of duty, but not the civil populace as that would be misleading; otherwise it would be using the media space to create disaffection between the military and civil populace which does not really exit. The festering insecurity in the northeast and elsewhere is real and the reason we are at a dead end is the vexed issue of ethnicity, religion and bad politics conveyed through media distortions.    Nigeria is the only country I know where people support crime and criminality because it is perpetrated by someone from our ethnic nationality or religious persuasion. The campaign against the military will only leave us at the mercy of criminal gangs and hooligans. 

    We do not expect the military or the army to turn its weapons against the civil populace or undermine the rule of law in its internal security operations; we expect the soldiers to be disciplined and law abiding. They are not superior to the polity but for the general good of the state.  

    It is also true to observe that the language and responses from the military may not have been elegant and civil, using a word like retaliation. The military needs to overhaul and fine-tune their language when relating with members of the public and avoid command regimental language while the same message can be passed differently. The Nigerian military should not stand as a spectre of fear to the society.  At the same time, hooligans and gangsters should not be allowed to weaken the state by attacking the coercive force of the state and putting the rest of us in apprehension, as we already are with Boko Haram, IPOB, herdsmen, bandits and kidnappers that now negotiate with government on even terms.  While we blame the hawk, we should also blame the chicken that exposes its chicks.

    The Nigerian military remains in my perception a people’s army (Nigerian Army), and any disconnection with the Nigerian people is a figment of the imagination of the observer, regardless of our misgivings about some isolated incidents. The military uniform is similar to our national flag and symbol of our collective safety and security. When criminals attack our military, one should expect a strong response without media hype.

    • Mike Kebonkwu Esq – mikekebonkwu@yahoo.com

  • Recent developments and their global context

    Recent developments and their global context

    All over the world and in nations whether civilized or civilizing, there is a crisis of rising expectations which has impacted negatively on the public perception of governments and the whole idea of governance itself. In the heaving and surging tide of cynicism and skepticism, people question the inherent capacity of governments to better the lot of the people they are supposed to govern.

    Citizens also express doubt about the conceptual possibilities of maximum satisfaction based on the timely delivery of all deliverables on which modern governance itself is anchored. In some extreme instances, it has led to some fringe groups demanding for the total eradication of government or the abolition of the tax regime with the war-cry: No Tax is the best Tax. At best, this is the well-paved boulevard to anarchy and chaos.

    Yet, there is a sense in which this profound disappointment and dissatisfaction with modern governance is rooted in an equally profound paradox: The paradox of progress. The rise in public consciousness and the liberalization of education which can be linked to the advent of Liberal Democracy and the age of Enlightenment have led to a growing skepticism and a healthy cynicism about human ability to rule over other humans in a way that would have been unthinkable in earlier epochs of absolute monarchs.

    Nevertheless, given the spate of political distemper and economic underperformance particularly in postcolonial societies where the natural process of political evolution was suborned by colonial intervention, the question now being asked in different quarters is whether liberal democracy and the whole concept of modern governance have taken on more than they can ever deliver or whether they are in fact suitable for societies with different pre-colonial trajectories. 

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    Whatever one can make of these agitations, the blunt truth is that not many people believe in government or invest much hope on them to do the needful anymore. Not even the great democracies of the west that have shaped the narrative of human progress and emancipation are spared the turbulence of doubt and despair.

    Take as an example, the case of Great Britain, our former colonial masters. After a string of competent but hardly inspiring leaders, the nation is poised to give the Conservative Party a resounding shellacking in the coming general elections. Led by the frugally efficient, coldly effectual but insubstantial Rishi Sunak, the party has struggled through three prime ministers in a matter of months and now appears to be at the end of its tether with a resurgent Labour Party snagging at its heels. The British public always appears to wait for an electable, socially pukka Labour Party leader before giving the conservatives a massive slap down.

    In the United States of America, the situation is even more precarious. The two main parties appear to have exhausted their political and historical possibilities. But the nation as a whole seems unwilling to embrace the third option. That would be a bridge too far for its conservative, radically modified and manipulated palate. So come November, the manic, maniacally divisive and hysterically manipulative Donald Trump may prevail, opening the door to an apocalyptic nightmare.

    In other major western democracies of Western Europe rightwing phalanxes of ethnic irredentism are mounting a siege on centralist and left of center ruling coalitions. There is a surge of the old, unyielding ultra-right in France which is quite alarming in its scope and baneful intensity. Russia under Vladimir Putin has become a bastion of reactionary hyper-Slavic nationalism bent on putting other civilizations to sword. Before our very eyes, Israel has become the greatest threat to world peace and territorial equilibrium in the Middle East. 

    If gold can rust, one can imagine the condition of iron. It is perhaps in post-colonial Africa that the distrust of politics and politicians has taken an extreme dimension. Popular contempt for politics finds outlets in military coups, the ousting of hegemonic cartels, civil unrests, violent protests, labour lock-outs, ethnic insurrections, religious upheavals targeting the state, economic warfare against the nation and generalized insecurity.

    This conundrum of progress without happiness or satisfaction has led religious scholars and developmental scientists to wonder aloud whether the whole idea of total government or governance which satisfies all human yearnings and aspirations is not an evolutionary overreach for the human species given the stage and state humans have reached at a particular period.

    In a multi-ethnic country like Nigeria, seething with tension and the bitter polarization of the political elite along regional and cultural lines, the circumstances are particularly dire with an implosion often not very far away. This is even more so in the aftermath of a contentious presidential election and the inability of the ruling group to secure an elite consensus for its programmes and in the face of a countervailing elite faction that is unrelenting in its bitter opposition to every step taken by the government.

    Such is the disharmonious and fraught atmosphere that no measure taken by government enjoys universal applause. In the event, some of the solutions canvassed by various stakeholders for overcoming the impasse reflect the urgency of the situation. While some urge a return to the more representative and less costly parliamentary system, others canvass for the retention of the presidential system under a reconfigured and radically restructured country in which no overbearing Caudillo prevails at the center.

    Yet for some nothing less than the dissolution of the country and its reworking into a loose association of independent states will do. A recent entrant into the coliseum is the former Head of State, General Olusegun Obasanjo, who has turned round to condemn the whole idea of Liberal Democracy as being inappropriate for non-western countries emerging from traditional societies. As usual, Obasanjo, compulsively conspiratorial as ever, may be stalking a different horse.

    This cacophony of discordant voices reflects the very lack of elite unanimity which is critical in pushing the country in the direction of comprehensive political and economic reform. Not only that, it is an eye-opener to how a politically fissured and fractured nation can host enemy nationals, armed dissidents, spiritual saboteurs and economic felons among factions of the political class and all within the same violated and embattled nation space. Permanently working at cross-purpose, the nation itself is permanently on the boil.

    In this toxic environment where there are no core national values or an overarching vision of the nation, anything goes. In the absence of any restraining factor, there is a desecration of the sacred ethos of politics and a devaluation of its ethics.

    To fill the vacuum is what this writer once described as “the politics of anti-politics”, a regnant tragedy in which everything that does little credit to whatever is noble and uplifting about politics is in full public view. This is what is unfolding in Kogi and the Rivers State where all known rules of political engagements are spurned only to be replaced by a bizarre personalization of power.

    When this writer first mooted the idea of the politics of anti-politics at the eighty fifth anniversary lecture of the Yoruba Tennis Club in September, 2001, twenty four years ago, it was to caution the nation against the authoritarian distemper and the lack of higher political sagacity that was beginning to threaten the foundation of post-military transition in Nigeria. Obasanjo, the man the soldiers had chosen to replace themselves, was beginning to show signs that he was still ill at ease with the democratic culture of give and take.

    Even that early in the day, he had done his best to snuff life out of the opposition parties. The APP was mortally wounded and the AD was on life support machine. Afenifere was on its way to the political hospice. Having captured Gani Adams, Obasanjo promptly put him on trial for treason with the enthusiasm and ferocity of purpose he had not shown while handling those who declared Sharia space in a secular nation-state. Of course, the Yoruba people were having none of that and they made sure they besieged the court until the trial was adjourned sine die.

    Yet a decade after this when the selfsame Gani Adams, now ennobled and empowered beyond his wildest imagination, attempted to corral the Yoruba people into supporting the Jonathan project, he was treated with the contempt and utter disdain reserved for bounders and cads as he marched up and down the streets of Lagos with his well-armed thugs.

    A decade after this and a few weeks back, the Yoruba people treated with the same disdain a group of political adventurers who attempted to take over a radio station in Ibadan in a very quixotic and harebrained bid for secession. So far no notable Yoruba lobby or influential group has come to their aid.

    Despite being at the intellectual vanguard of the clamour for the restructuring of the country, the Yoruba people are very subtle and sophisticated in their political offensives and can be very discerning and discriminating in the choices they make. To outsiders, this may appear as frustrating as it is disconcerting and concerning.

    The post-colonial arcade remains a site of congregating ethnic neuroses in with each group try to outflank the other. In the endless war of manoeuvring and positioning , Yoruba may momentarily appear confused and disoriented , but that is precisely because they are instinctively feeling their way forward in a  jungle of dissociated sensibility where nothing is what it seems. It is the consensus that matters to them even when they get it tragically wrong. It will help them to beat a retreat.

    Three months after the writer broached the concept of the politics of anti-politics in 2021, Bola Ige was brutally hacked down in the privacy of his bedroom. Almost a quarter of a century after, his killers have never been apprehended. Since then, more than two dozen speakers, deputy governors and governors have been removed from office either through judicial ruse or legislative chicanery.

    This is the background to the contemporary turbulence in Nigerian politics and why there is an overcast of uncertainty. The initial errors of judgment of the new administration arising from enthusiasm and relish for novelty coupled with the inherited political dysfunction, the institutional disorder and the accumulated errancy of the political class have turned politics into an ignoble profession and cast a deep cloud over the survivability of the Fourth Republic.

    As there can be no going backward, we have to keep pushing forward. Yet, it will be unwise to ever imagine that we can spin our way out of the deep political mess and fundamental developmental malaise afflicting the country, or to think that a mere resort to patriotic platitudes will do as the nation lurches from one difficulty to another. As we must have learnt from the sharp reversal of the fortunes of the national currency, even maintaining the old fiscal equilibrium is going to be quite a herculean task.

    The fierce battle to defend the integrity of the naira which seems to have taken on a more strategic reticence has shown a nation at the mercy of economic miscreants, political saboteurs and an enemy clerisy bent on upending the state and the nation as we know it. If the current administration allows them to weaken its resolve, or if it decides to “play” with them as a result of pressures, then we are on the threshold of significant developments.

    As the nation celebrates the twenty fifth anniversary of military departure and the onset of civil rule there is ground for cautious celebration and some sober reflections.