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 Nigerian army…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 Sani Abacha, 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 http://www.nigerdeltacongress.com/particles/professionalism_in_the_military_.htm 7/18/2008 PROFESSIONALISM IN THE MILITARY KINGDOM Page 2 of 6 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 Nigeria, 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, [Yakubu Gowon] 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. http://www.nigerdeltacongress.com/particles/professionalism_in_the_military_.htm 7/18/2008 PROFESSIONALISM IN THE MILITARY KINGDOM Page 3 of 6 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].