Pix: Chief of Defence Staff, General Musa
It is going to take a herculean effort for the Nigerian military to transform into the people’s army. The Nigerian government, since military rule began, has had no idea what people’s army means, and the army itself has demonstrated no appetite for change. Hundreds of events and incidents illustrate this deficit. But three recent incidents should exemplify the depressing disconnection between Nigerians and their military, a disconnection that has accentuated the crisis 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.
The first incident relates to the shutting down of Banex Plaza in Abuja for one week over a dispute between a phone seller and a soldier. A trader allegedly sold a defective phone to a soldier, and refused to make good. Soon, the disagreement escalated into a fight and a free-for-all, leading incredibly to the deployment of five teams of soldiers to barricade the shopping plaza for a week. The details of the disagreement, and who provoked whom, have neither been investigated nor reported, nor is it clear who was to blame, nor whether the phone was actually defective or not. Until the disputants are interviewed, the whole truth may not be known. But how on earth such a dispute escalated so quickly until it became an official matter said to be capable of threatening national security is hard to fathom. The reasons may, however, are not be as far-fetched as imagined.
Disputes between buyers and sellers are commonplace. Sometimes they get out of hand, but often they don’t, especially if relevant regulatory or law enforcement institutions function properly. Admittedly Nigeria is a developing country and both regulatory and law enforcement institutions are inadequate or too weak to mediate conflicts. Army spokesman Onyema Nwachukwu, a major-general, spoke of the sacrosanctness of military uniforms, the aggression of the ‘hoodlums’ who attacked ‘unarmed soldiers’, the presence of unidentified miscreants who ‘use the Banex neighbourhood’ to threaten security, and the capacity of such incidents to ‘orchestrate threats to national security’. Alarmingly, commenting on the incident days later, former Chief of Defence Staff (CDS) Lucky Irabor regarded the statement by the spokesman as mild. For him, shutting down the plaza and occupying it were the right things to do.
In Gen. Irabor’s view, no person in uniform should be attacked because he represents the state. He said: “This applies to any uniformed person for as long as he is an agent of the state. An attack on him is an attack on the state, so any Nigerian of goodwill must condemn such an act. For me, I join to support the closure of Banex Plaza for as long as it takes to have anyone responsible for that dastardly act brought to justice. This is because if we fail to do so, we will be calling for anarchy. The only men who are sacrificing their lives to ensure our collective good are members of the armed forces, the police, and other security agencies.” With such a mindset, it makes it harder for disputes not to be blown out of proportion. That sense of institutional exceptionalism has seemed to corrode thea propriety of responses to provocations and the moderation that should flow from the commonality of human beings and experience. Soldiers sacrifice their lives; but so do doctors, nurses, and others. Ukraine could today not make the distinction that Gen. Irabor has made. When a country’s existence is threatened, everyone becomes a soldier. Indeed, it is in such sacrifices, which the former CDS made reference to, that the best of soldiery and highest regard for the sanctity of life are located. Drawing the kind of distinction the general has done is unhelpful and inciting. If at the level of commanding a country’s entire armed forces a military general could promote a controversial appreciation of military doctrine, then it is time to ask for more fundamental changes and reforms. Perhaps, it is time they went back to military histories and get inspired afresh.
The second incident, sadly, flows from the Okuama, Delta State, incident in which 17 military personnel lost their lives in an ambush by militants on March 14 over a land dispute between Bomadi and Okuama communities. The reprisal was swift and fierce, indeed as the military warned. Okuama is a small community of a few hundred people, but it was soon levelled, a fact that came to light after the military ended their occupation. A third incident is the May 30 killing of five soldiers by militants in Aba, Abia State. The identities of the attackers are disputed, but military officers suspect the Indigenous People of Biafra/Eastern Security Network who organised that day’s lockdown to commemorate the sacrifice of their civil war heroes. Responding to the killings, the military in a statement spoke about the ‘imperative’ to ‘retaliate’ and why it would be ‘fierce in its response’. The military also spoke about the people being the lifeline of terrorists, but also acknowledged that the military could not hope to win the war against terrorism without the people. What would they, therefore, do about the seemingly conflicted role of the people?
Whether the military likes it or not, the sacking of Odi community in Bayelsa State in 1999, after the killing of 12 policemen and some soldiers, did not prevent the Zaki Biam, Benue State, killing of 19 soldiers and the reprisal killings of hundreds of Tivs. And both the killings and the sacking of the two communities did not prevent the Okuama and Aba killings, not to say the humiliation of soldiers at an Abuja shopping mall. This is why the military must now begin to consider a different approach to responding to provocations.
As long as the police are structured and funded poorly to rise up to the threat posed by criminals, and as long as soldiers are inappropriately deployed to carry out police duties, the interactions between soldiers and the public would inevitably weaken, if not corrupt, the military. And for as long as Nigeria’s military personnel have a poor understanding of an equally poorly designed military doctrine, they would see themselves and their uniforms provocatively above censure or attack. If their brightest and best embrace a controversial understanding of military doctrine, it is impossible for them not to embark on angry reprisals against audacious criminals who attack soldiers, and in the process killing the innocent in retaliation, or even wiping out entire communities. The Banex Plaza provocation should have been left to the police, and the Okuama incident left to the Department of State Service (DSS) and the police; but anger and the need to retaliate the effrontery of civilians got the better of the military. Letting the police handle the Banex affair does not take anything, not even a jot, from the military. But it seems their military doctrine does not admit to such a lasting and effective approach to civilian provocations.
Unfortunately for the military, the enormous firepower at their disposal is wholly unsuited to the kind of interactions and domestic assignments they are saddled with. This mismatch is worsened by the fact that the people actually yearn to love their military; for the ordinary soldier is first a civilian, a brother, a sister, a father, a mother, and a relation whose death or incapacitation would be a tragedy. Prince Harry’s visit last month and the televised events that exposed Nigerian soldiers permanently maimed while on duty brought it agonisingly home to Nigerians the huge and incredible sacrifices Nigerian soldiers make to keep the country safe and united. It is a disservice to their collective sacrifice that their comrades-in-arms descend to the ignominious role of approving self-help and tyrannising civilians on the grounds of the uniforms they wear. Being wounded in action is one thing; sometimes some of them return home in body bags, their eyes permanently closed in sleep while their relations continue to mourn. Surviving soldiers should stop desecrating the memory of their fallen comrades, and senior officers charged with formulating and teaching tradition and doctrine in the military should stop depriving the civil populace from relating with, and loving and honouring soldiers forever poised to give their all, including their limbs and lives, for the country.
The best place to begin this new approach is for the military to eschew violent, supremacist language from their statements during provocations. They have no control over provocations; but they can determine how they respond to attacks, either in ways that honour their uniforms and training or in ways that dishonor their arms. The choice is theirs to make. However, it is time to stop seeing themselves as soldier’s superior to the polity. After all, they are not soldiers of fortune. 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?