Obasanjo delivering his address shortly after being sworn in as president
If you know the enemy and know yourself you need not fear the results of a hundred battles. – Sun Tzu
TO dabble into the intimate affairs of the Nigerian armed forces had always been regarded as a baptism of fire, a taboo or suicidal mission that became counter-productive. Successive governments in uniform and out of it had been satisfied with simply either befriending the soldier boys or leaving them to their own devices. To do otherwise was to invite their wrath, which was considered a very foolhardy thing to do, indeed.
As a result of such cowardly attitude towards the gun-toting services — an effete resignation which suggested that there was a ‘woman’ in the average Nigerian man had proved advantageous to the strong men that ran this country for almost two decades. It had given them limitless power which forced the rest of us bloody civilians to wonder at its raw application. As I argued in this column on 6 June 1998, the Nigerian society had become helplessly militarised as a result of the long stretch of military rule.
Now President Obasanjo has begun to arrest the trend. By retiring 93 military and police officers who held political offices between 1985 to date, the new civilian administration is proving serious about what Obasanjo’s media assistant, Dr. Doyin Okupe, called ensuring the “permanent subordination of the military to civil authority.” This, the government believes, will “discourage any future foray into the polity by men of the armed forces.”
Thursday’s announcement must have jolted Nigerians, not least those affected by it. Although several other top military officers had been retired earlier this week, it had not occurred to most that the government would go thus far. To sweep out all those who had been household names these past few years in one fell swoop was not only unprecedented but courageous. It was a popular action by a president who it had been feared would rather staunchly protect the army from probes because of the nature of the backing he got for his presidential campaign.
Even though Okupe had expressed the government’s coy “regret” over the mass retirements and said the decision was neither an indictment nor an aspersion cast on “the integrity of these officers,” most analysts would regard the decision otherwise. Of course, some of the retirees were fine officers who were patriotic and had the welfare of the citizenry at heart. But to skip others would have signalled to the ever doubtful populace a tendency for discrimination. Above all, no matter how good a military administrator had been in a political office, he had only ruled illegally because no one elected him to the post. Their dismissal was an open indictment on their past which the government reckoned could affect our future.
Besides, there is the question of the future of democracy in the country. From past experience, it had always been the officers left behind in service after a government had ceased that grew through the ranks until they began to feel “too big” to subordinate themselves to anybody. They became the same fellows that seized power overnight and benignly installed themselves as new rulers. There is a need for stopping such a mentality in a new dispensation where unelected leaderships have no room in our brave new world. A clean break from the past would guarantee our own future.
It is clear that Obasanjo has tried to walk the ubiquitous tight-rope of regional balancing in the current purge. By retiring 46 Southerners and 47 Northerners on Wednesday, he has avoided charges of bias and witch-hunting. But that is really not enough. The government has to go beyond a tricky balancing act and to some important specifics. To proceed, there should be more retirements. As the Nigerian parlance goes, these past rulers didn’t just act alone. They were supported by a battery of special assistants, task force commanders, acting administrators, directors, etc. In addition, many ministers that served the five governments since 1985 were a part and parcel of the illegal system which held the nation hostage. Government must list up this category and issue them with quit notices. Pointedly, many of such people have transformed into civilian politicians who are gunning for top positions in the new administration.
The next step would then be a purposive probe of all the officers on whom a vote of no confidence has been passed this week. There is no gainsaying the fact that almost each of them is sitting on millions of naira, majority of which was not legally acquired. A probe would establish how much was fraudulent in the pockets of these dismissed men. After all, even the military regime of Gen. Abubakar had probed that of its predecessor — up to a point — and seized some of the billions stolen from the public purse. To leave trillions of funds in the hands of men who feel chagrined would be asking for trouble in years to come. For in a pauperised democracy, a lot of mischief can always be done with fat chunks of money.
This brings us to the issue of security. One wonder how much glancing-over-the-shoulder the president and his government are doing right now as they take milestone measures like this. I know that Obasanjo has a security adviser who’s one of the best brains in the African intelligence community, a former general who, like the president and others in government, is versed in the military’s back-stabbing game. But even the best must be prepared to confront the ire of men that were deliberately skidded off their ambitious tracks in mid-career. Just in case.
It should interest all patriotic Nigerians to regard the struggle for the enthronement and sustenance of democratic rule in Nigeria as a ‘war’ between the forces of darkness and the forces of light. And war, said Georges Clemenceau, “is much too important a matter to be left to the generals.” Nigerians should join the battle now that civil rule has been enthroned and ensure its sustenance. Nigerians here include members of the armed forces who are unaffected by the retirements. They have to understand that in every civilised society, soldiers have a constitutional role — which is to defend the country from aggression rather than become its tormentors. I really take it that Nigeria is finally a civilised society. Or almost.
* Published in my column, Melting Pot, in the New Nigerian Weekly today
