PROFESSIONALISM IN THE MILITARY KINGDOM Page 1 of 6

PROFESSIONALISM IN THE MILITARY KINGDOM: HOW THE NIGERIAN ARMED FORCES BECAME ‘AN ARMY OF ANYTHING GOES.’

by

Dr. Ibiyinka Solarin

The characterization of the Nigerian armed forces as ‘an army of anything goes’, was not by some mischievous commentator. It was the forlorn lamentation of Lieutenant- General Salihu Ibrahim, a former chief of army staff, during a regimental dinner held in his honor as he departed his position in 1993.

The general, reputed to be an apolitical professional, said’ I make no pretense of my disdain of the involvement of the military in the political affairs of this country. I hold the strong view that any military organization that intends to remain professional and relevant to its calling, has no business meddling in the political affairs of the country…..It is an open secret that some officers openly prefer political appointments to regimental appointments, no matter the relevance of such appointments to their career progress…this political interest group, even though small in number, constituted themselves into a very powerful pressure group…

The end result was the visible decline in professionalism , morale and discipline in the …We became an army where subordinate officers would not only be contemptuous of their superior officers but would exhibit total disregard to legitimate instructions by such superiors’ [Tell, Feb.2,1998] ‘We in the army have no reputation left’, Abdulkarim Adisa, formerly of the Nigerian army uttered in response to cross examination by a counsel to the panel on Human Rights and Reconciliation headed by Justice Chukwudifu Oputa. Adisa went on ‘My lord, I confirm that I am the one in that picture…[kneeling and begging Hamzat Al-Mustapha]…I had to beg to save myself… perhaps, if I did not beg, I would have died by now…in the army at that time….,anything goes…...a lieutenant can arrest a general’ [The Vanguard, Dec.14th, 2000].

Hamzat Al-Mustapha, a captain in the Nigerian army, who could not remember whether he passed his school certificate examination, who never took the qualifying examination to become a major, but nevertheless, is addressed as one, in describing the power and fear he had come to be identified with as chief security officer to , told the panel that, on beholding Abacha’s lifeless body, ‘ I sent signals to the hierarchy in the Armed Forces and summoned them to Abuja, at Aso Rock for an important urgent briefing…All the generals and most senior officers in the Nigerian Armed Forces came to Aso Rock in OBEDIENCE to MY SUMMONS… Some of the generals there and then asked me to pronounce myself the next head of state, and they would support MY government and be LOYAL to MY COMMAND… [emphasis mine] Infact, some very high ranking generals approached me, and told me to count on their loyalty and full support to my government’ [Nigerianworld, Nov.14,2000]

These three quotes above raise two fundamental questions. How did the Nigerian army that was cited for valor in the Congo in 1960, become the ‘army of anything goes’ thirty years later? How did our society arrive at such a sorry pass, that at the onset of the 21st

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century, a captain, a clearly debauched, demented psychopath, can entertain the illusion of pronouncing himself the head of state of the most populous aggregation of people of African descent in the world?

The trajectory of this state of affairs is not difficult to trace.

Our society entered the dark tunnel of military rule on January 15, 1966. The darkness of a military rule, its arbitrariness and caprice replaced legal democratic order, however imperfect it might have been. One immediate casualty though is discipline within its own rank; professional hierarchy, order, esprit de corps has now been replaced by treachery, betrayal, and opportunism. One can make the case that Johnson Thomas Umunakwe Aguiyi-Ironsi, as the General Officer Commanding [GOC], of the Nigerian Army BEFORE the coup, restored the professional command after the coup, he regained the initiative from Nzeogwu, Ifeajuna, Ademoyega et al [the Jan.15th boys]. However, Ironsi was swallowed up, by the resentment of the northern political establishment, in the murderous conflagration of the July 1966 coup accomplished by their boys in the army led by Murtala Mohammed and Yakubu Danjuma. And what was their grouse?

Ostensibly, the loss of Maimalari, Pam et al [senior northern officers] in the Jan coup, dissatisfaction with the mere imprisonment of Nzeogwu et al, the ill-advised unification decree of May 1966, but in reality, contrary to the arrangement that the departed British colonial government left, the control of the federal government was no longer in their hands. And so when they struck through their boys in the army, their first choice was to secede from , until the economic strangulation attendant upon such a course of action was explained to them by their British mentors; whereupon they presented the rest of Nigeria with a fait accompli, the seizure of the federal government and the appointment of their most senior military officer, a thirty-two year old Lieutenant-Colonel, [] as head of state.

The genesis of a thirty-year old Al-Mustapha fantasizing in 1998 about being Nigeria’s head of state is directly traceable to July 1966. The politicization of discipline and hierarchy in the army redounds to the erosion of professional ethos and confidence in the organization. Ahead of Gowon in 1966, were far more senior officers;Brigadiers Ogundipe, Ekpo, Colonel Adebayo and Lt-Cols who were his seniors like Effiong, Ojukwu and Njoku. And worse for professionalism and discipline in the army, Gowon was now their Supreme Commander, and shortly thereafter, a thirty –two year old Major- General.

A professional army has now become a political army; seniority, professional hierarchy and order has now been completely turned upside down The Nigerian army was on its way to becoming an army of anything goes. To the average Nigerian citizen, the exigencies of the civil war,1967-70 covered this up; indeed up until July 1975, when his colleagues fed up with his dithering and prevarications withdrew their support and overthrew his government. The conversion and use of the Nigerian Armed Forces, as an instrument of personal rule that became quite brazen under Babangida and Abacha, was started by Yakubu Gowon, after the civil war.

The pre-war, diffident and insecure Lt-Colonel became a popular post-war General, with the Nigerian people enamored with his seeming humility. To his colleagues, he became distant and inaccessible; the ‘military’ government was now ‘His Excellency’s’ government. The cement armada at our ports, and the profligacy of his government might have sunk him in the popular eye; what the average citizenry did not know, was that Yakubu Gowon was in actuality seeking to foist a military dictatorship on Nigeria by sending secret missions to study the operations of the fascist military Latin American governments.

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However, it was the coup of July 1975, that brought to the fore the creeping hierarchical and professional melt-down of the Nigerian Armed Forces. It also brought, if not to popular consciousness, but at least to the awareness of discerning observers, an insidious objective reality, whose seed was planted very early in post-independent Nigeria, by the Northern Nigerian political establishment. This was the careful and deliberate cultivation, and promotion of the presence of elements of northern Nigeria in the army, through a representation by quota, based on their supposed numerical majority in the Nigerian population.

The ranks of Igbo officers having been decimated by the July 1966 coup, and replacements severely curtailed as a result of the civil war, the monopolization of the officers corps by the northerners was now a fact, the Yoruba and other nationalities representation was not enough to counterbalance the northerners.

Of the three principal architects of independent Nigeria [apart from the British originators], the Sardauna, Sir Ahmadu Bello, clearly appreciated and understood the political implication of the control of the army. In terms of learning and exposure, the Sardauna was no peer of both Dr.Nnamdi Azikwe and Chief Obafemi Awolowo; indeed, while the later two wrote treatises on models of government, Sir Ahmadu’s autobiography was ghost-written for him by a Briton. Nnamdi Azikwe had enough contact in the army to forewarn him [Emmanuel Ifejuana, one of the architects, was his nephew and intimated him] of the coup of Jan. 1966 and was thus conveniently away at sea on convalescence; Awolowo was incarcerated, having been jailed by the Balewa government for treasonable felony and conspiracy. Indeed, the government was sending late Sir Mobolaji Bank-Anthony to him in jail, to urge him to renounce politics, dissolve his political party and go into exile, consequent upon which he would regain his freedom. He refused. The Yoruba were to learn the political meaning and significance of their under-representation later in 1993

But let us first disaggregate the balance of forces [imbalance is more of the reality ] that brought about the July 1975 coup. The coup was hatched by Lt.Col. Shehu Yar’Ardua, Cols.Abdul Mohammed and Joseph N. Garba. Like in the previous successful one of July 1966, its hatching, execution and leadership is a northern Nigeria affair. Two senior officers knew definitively where and when of the coup; they were the man who would be king, their anointed head of state-to- be, [Murtala Mohammed] and the one that would be army chief [Yakubu Danjuma].

Like Yakubu Gowon in 1966, Murtala Mohammed was not the most senior officer in the armed forces in 1975, even after Gowon and his generals have been retired; but he was the most senior northern officer and therefore the choice of the kingmakers. Having been informed before hand, Murtala was conveniently away in London; his plane was the only one allowed into the Nigerian airspace when his subalterns secured their position, as he returned to claim the position that has been created for him.

The Nigerian army thus became a thoroughly political army, whose leadership, command and control is now firmly in the hands of northern Nigerian officers; professional ethos, standard, structured hierarchy were less important than political expediency. The coup originators now had to look for the obligatory subordinate from the south to give their enterprise a ‘federal’ outlook. They settled on Olusegun Obasanjo.

Obasanjo claims in his book [Not My Will] that he accepted to serve under Murtala Mohammed who was his junior in the interest of ‘stability’. All that sounds very noble, the truth of course is that if he did not like what was being offered to him, the only option open to him is to resign his commission in the Nigerian army, and the same goes

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for any other officer from the south. The seeming success of this coup brought major organizational distortion, severe diminution of professional integrity, established order and standard to the Nigerian armed forces as a corporate entity.

Professional merit in promotion and service integrity became highly diminished; the repercussions and attendant instability were not long in coming. The precedent was set that you become a full general of the Nigerian army not by professional merit, but by staging a coup or when you become the head of a new military junta; professional hierarchy, seniority and order are now irrelevant to service appointment.

A brigadier Murtala Mohammed became a full general overnight; Obasanjo and Danjuma became Lieutenant-Generals and Danjuma was appointed chief of army staff as well. Some felt deeply humiliated and for Ibrahim Bisalla, the promotion of Danjuma who had served under him, rankled. This is the ‘visible decline in professionalism, morale and discipline’ that General Ibrahim referred to above, the Nigerian armed forces had lost its professional moorings in the political tunnel into which it invited itself, yet it was going to get worse, as the army or those who have hijacked it for political purpose will turn it against the Nigerian people.

Within six months Murtala Mohammed was murdered in a counter-coup in which Bisalla was implicated and lost his life. Obasanjo was not the choice of the kingmakers to become head of state after Murtala Mohammed was murdered; Yakubu Danjuma was. It was Danjuma’s insistence of keeping his position as chief of army staff that led to the choice of Obasanjo.

At the very inception of the administration in July, Obasanjo acknowledged the reality of his position and told the coup leaders he was prepared to serve as a subordinate to Murtala Mohammed as long as’ that entailed real responsibilities and not sinecure job of allocating official quarters to public servants’ To assuage the Hausa-Fulani over the death of Murtala Mohammed, a thirty-two year old Lieutenant-Colonel, Shehu Yar’Ardua, was promoted overnight to brigadier and made chief of staff supreme headquarters.

All military governors, many of who were his superior officers and service chiefs, all of who were his superior officers, were to report to him. Yar’Ardua one of the originators of the coup of July 1975, saw himself more as the head of state. Many of these superior officers, to save themselves from the humiliation by-passed him and reported directly to Obasanjo. Yar’Ardua rose to become a major-general within three years and with with less than seventeen years in the army.

Obasanjo, a day before his departure on October 1, 1979, also became a full general; his romance with, and service to the coup makers had paid off, but this had more to do with political opportunism and expediency than professionalism in the army. Apart from being the chief of staff supreme headquarters, Yar’Ardua also had among his schedule of responsibilities, the management of the new Tin Can Island. And with a contract awarded to Julius Berger; he retired a very wealthy man, a thirty-six year-old major general in Nigeria’s political army.

Until he met his demise in the inferno of the intrigues of Sani Abacha’s murderous ambition, Yar’Ardua was a major player in the presidential politics of Nigeria. And yet this was the same man that his chief of army staff described as a ‘first class schemer and manipulator but absolutely empty…’ with ‘zero’ administrative capability. [Newswatch,Nov.2,1992].

During the tenures of Babangida and Abacha, the organizational and professional decay

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in the Nigerian armed forces had become critical. Successful coup-making, for the originators and collaborators, was the surest guarantee to professional service promotion and advancement, merit no longer mattered. It was also self-evidently a very lucrative enterprise, route to primitive accumulation and scandalous enrichment.

The head of the junta becomes an overnight full general, acolytes and accomplices are rewarded with strategic positions with access to scandalous opportunity for self- enrichment. Loyalty to them was equated with loyalty to Nigeria, and the second fiddle mentality of the southern officers had become quite pronounced, as they realized that their service prospects depended on their personal relationships with individual northern officers or groups.

During the regime of , Northern Nigerian officers were holding simulation games as to would become a head of state, and of course the southerners were weighing their own chances of being military governors, and whatever subordinate roles available. If a cretin like Abacha, could become not just a general of the Nigerian army, but also the head of state, every prospective coup-maker in the army knew that his path to fame and fortune was a matter of time. The Nigerian armed forces, became an instrument in the hands of Abacha to foist a regime of coercion, intimidation, state- sponsored terrorism and assassinations on our society. Senior officers were wearing Abacha badges as a sign of loyalty; a loyalty not out of fidelity to Nigeria but out of their own fear and insecurity from what the Nigerian armed forces had become.

To drive home the degree of venality that had eaten deep into the Nigerian armed forces, all members of Abacha’s ruling military council had an allocation of 25,000 barrels of crude oil each, for lifting, obviously as the price for their complicity. These officers were feeding off of the misery of Nigerian people, while our society grinds slowly to abject penury.

That is the organizational milieu captured by General Salihu Ibrahim above. It is the environment that produced the Dogonyaros, Usenis, Diyas, Bamaiyis, Gwarzos, Sabos, Marks, Ukpos, Shaganyas, Onyearugbulems, Omenkas, Fasanyas and the assorted soldiers of fortune that found themselves at the top echelon of the Nigerian armed forces. During the height of the intrigues that led to the annulment of the presidential election in 1993, there were three concentric rings of anti-democratic forces in the Nigerian army, that threatened Ibrahim Babangida with dire consequences should he fail to annul the election. Each of the three groups was led by Sani Abacha, Joshua Dogonyaro and David Mark. Each group was working for itself.

The Abacha group merely out-manuvered the other two and eased them out of the army. Had either of the other two gained ascendancy, they would have had no difficulty in identifying any supine officer from the south, as a willing accomplice a la Diya to Abacha.

The challenge of our time, is to return the armed forces to its professional role of defending the territorial integrity of our nation and the security of her citizens under a liberal democratic system, based unerringly on the rule of law. For one, every Nigerian citizen must accept as an article of faith, the repudiation of any form of government except one whose legitimacy is derived from our consent in a free and fair election. Thus, a Nigerian service man or woman who joins our armed forces to seek a professional fulfillment, will, by dint of hard work find satisfaction and earn the gratitude of the Nigerian people; the one that goes in seeking fame and material aggrandizement, will meet infamy and worse, with no statue of limitation.

There are undoubtedly many among the present crop of service men and women who

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are a credit to their profession, but there are also hold-overs from the better-forgotten era of ‘anything goes’. As an institution, like many in our society, the Nigerian armed forces is in transition; it is the responsibility of us all as stakeholders to assist in that process, and most importantly, let it be made abundantly clear, that we are resolved, ‘Never Again!’

Dr Ibiyinka Solarin is the Head of the Department of Political Science, Texas College, Tyler, Texas

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