In any civilian regime, which is what we’ve had since May 29, 1999, and certainly in a democracy, which our governments claim to be, the military, along with other security agencies, should be subordinate to the civilian authorities. The opposite, apparently, has increasingly become the case in our country; the military tail, it seems, has been the one wagging the civilian dog.
Appearances can, of course, be deceptive. For the Speaker of the House of Representatives, Honourable Aminu Tambuwal, it seems, this appearance of the military dog wagging the civilian tail is deceptive. Welcoming members of the House on June 25 to the opening of its last legislative year before the next elections in 2015, he deplored what he referred to as the abuse of the military by the federal authorities to cow their perceived enemies in and out of the ruling Peoples Democratic Party (PDP).
“When,” he said in his remarks, “the military becomes the preferred agency for clamping down on the media, for grounding aircraft and closure of airports and for forcibly restricting the freedoms of citizens, including elected officials…then there is a need for us to return to the drawing board of democratic governance.”
Tambuwal has every reason to worry about this apparent abuse of the military – and, by extension, the other security services – by the federal authorities. Only two Monday’s ago he was, himself, a victim of such abuse when soldiers at a venue in Kaduna of a seminar on the conflict between Fulani herdsmen and farmers throughout the country, wantonly humiliated him by insisting on searching his convoy, including his vehicle, for arms! As speaker, Tambuwal has hardly endeared himself to the Executive arm for his independent mindedness.
The speaker, as the country’s Number Four Citizen, may be the most prominent victim of this apparent use of the military by the authorities to harass and intimidate their enemies, real or perceived, but he is far from the only victim.
Before him, as he observed in his remarks referred to, airports have been shut, aircraft grounded and governors’ movements curtailed by soldiers, “on orders from oga at the top,” in blatant and crude show of power against opposition elements.
For sheer crudity in recent times, however, it’s difficult to tell among four episodes in the last two months and a fifth one last year, which would take the gold. The first was the recent crude attempt by the Federal Capital Territory Commissioner of Police, Joseph Mbu, to stop the “Bring back our Chibok girls” campaigners from their rallies in Abuja, citing the usual security concerns. In any decent society, his extra-judicial, if not downright illegal and unconstitutional ways at his previous command in Rivers State would have since earned him an ignominious sack, or at least a serious reprimand. Instead, he seems to enjoy the confidence of those in authority.
To his eternal credit, his boss, Inspector-General of Police (IGP) Mohammed Abubakar quickly and bravely countermanded him through a press statement on June 3, which said the police never “issued any order banning peaceful assembly/protests anywhere in Nigeria.” It’s a miracle the IGP has not been sacked – yet. And, not surprisingly in a nation where officials know no shame from exposure for wrongdoing, the man is yet to resign over his well-deserved open rebuke by his boss.
Early last month the soldiers exceeded themselves by taking on the press, making this the second candidate for the top prize for crude use of power. First on the night of June 5, they threw a cordon around the headquarters of Daily Trust in Jabi, Abuja. The following day they embarked on a nationwide seizure of newspapers, notably Trust itself, Leadership and The Nation, all three seen by the authorities as mouthpieces of enemies.
As usual, the excuse again was national security. In a statement which read like your typical politician’s meaningless waffle, the army spokesman, Major-General Chris Olukolade, justified the raid and seizure of newspapers on the grounds that there had been “intelligence indicating movement of materials with grave implications across the country, using the channels of newsprint-related consignments.”
In a more meaningful, but no more sensible, phraseology, Dr. Doyin Okupe, the President’s Senior Special Assistant on Public Affairs, said the security situation in the country demanded the soldiers did what they did. “If,” he told reporters in his office on June 7, “the collective security of a country is a risk, those charged with this responsibility have an onerous job of discharging it even if it is painful to some of us.”
The government, he said in an act of living in blatant self-dial, would never engage or encourage any act “that will constitute an assault on any media organisation or infringe on Freedom of the Press.”
From the look of things, what may have led to the attack on the press was the Daily Trust’s exclusive lead story of June 4, which exposed how the army shared some choice army land in Abuja among several of its top serving and retired top brass, their families and companies.
Thirdly, last Saturday the soldiers barred 278 pilgrims for Umrah, the lesser Hajj, from boarding a chartered flight at the Maiduguri airport to Saudi Arabia. And in a separate incident on the same day, they also stopped Senator Mohammed Ali Ndume from taking a flight out of the airport.
Both were for no apparent reason than a crude show of force. Not even the explanation of the charter company that it had proper prior authorisation, nor even the intervention of the Borno State Governor, Ibrahim Kashim Shettima, would make the soldiers budge from their instructions that the planes take off empty because they were, they said, acting on orders from above based on – no prize for guessing right – security reasons.
The fourth episode this year was the arrest, late last month, of 486 Northerners in Abia State, reportedly on their way to Rivers State, by soldiers over suspicion that they were Boko Haram insurgents. The men, and a few women among them, were said to have been travelling in a convoy of over 30 buses.
A convoy of even a dozen vehicles would be a scary sight even in peaceful times, let alone over 30 vehicles travelling at night in these perilous times. But we only have the army’s word that they were travelling in a convoy that long. This is an army whose leadership has, unfortunately, built itself a record of ethnic and religious profiling.
Anyone who thinks it is unreasonable to be sceptical of this story should remember that hundreds of thousands of Nigerians travel in mini convoys daily across the North/South divide and it is not that difficult to detain enough of them at a spot over a short period to make it look like they are travelling in longer convoys. In any case, how does it make any sense that a group intent on invading a region would be so foolish to travel in a way that was bound to attract attention?
At any rate, not a weapon was found in any of the vehicles and over 400 of the detainees have had to be released after nearly two weeks in detention following outcries from authorities in their states of origin.
The last, but by no means the least, candidate in recent times for the top prize in the abuse of military power by the authorities was last September’s killings of civilians living in an uncompleted building in Apo, Abuja, by soldiers on the pretext that they were members of Boko Haram. A report last month by government’s own National Human Rights Commission, chaired by Prof. Chidi Odinkalu, following its public hearings on the case, has concluded that the eight civilians killed and the 11 injured were victims of extra-judicial murder and should be compensated.
This appears to have overruled the earlier decision of the Senate investigation, which had absolved the army of extra-judicial killings even though the rather mealy-mouthed report of its joint National Security and Intelligence/Judicial, Human Rights and Legal Committee, upon which the Senate’s decision was based, described the dead and the injured as “victims of an hastily executed operation necessary to save Abuja from terrible attacks.” The joint committee was co-chaired by Senators Muhammadu Magoro and Umaru Dahiru.
The army had claimed that it had only gone to the uncompleted building where the killings occurred to search and arrest a suspected Boko Haram kingpin who knew where in Apo cemetery arms to be used to attack some landmark places in Abuja had been buried. Unfortunately, it said, its troops were suddenly fired upon from the building and they had to return fire. Subsequent investigations belied this claim.
Here it is instructive that the joint Senate committee did not table its report before the Senate weeks after it had completed its assignment. Speculations then were rife that it had failed to do so because of intense pressure from the presidency and the leadership of the Senate to absolve the army of any blame in order not to demoralise the troops.
It is also instructive that the uncompleted building in question said to be the property of Mrs. Aduni Oluwole, the younger sister of former President Olusegun Obasanjo, was never destroyed, in keeping with the security agencies’ tradition of the wanton destruction of properties occupied by suspected terrorists, even when the owners have no idea who the occupants are or what they do.
Nigerians should be worried, like the Speaker, Aminu Tambuwal, is, that the federal authorities seem too keen to use the military – and, by extension, other security forces – to harass and intimidate perceived enemies.
We should all remember that it was such abuse about 50 years ago by politicians of the First Republic, which sucked the military into politics and a few years later made the tail stronger than the torso, with all the attendant dire consequences that we are still trying to overcome.
