RE: Boko Haram: Memo to President Buhari on Service Chiefs

By Dr Abubakar Muhammad Sani

I read the open letter written by Mr. Yushau A. Shuaib titled: Boko Haram: Memo to President Buhari on Service Chiefs which was widely circulated on the internet. If the open letter was written by some other person who I didn’t know, I would not have given it any attention. I know the writer and the open letter mentioned the names of the President as well as the Chief of Army Staff. He was accurate in capturing the dates of birth and commission of all the Service Chiefs as well as the relevant sections of military law guiding the appointments and tenures of the Service Chiefs. I also understand the fact that he might have relatives, friends and associates in the military who wrongly thought that their elevation to higher ranks has been blocked because the current service Chiefs have stayed for more than four years. There is likely a hidden personal interest behind the open letter even though the writer tried hard and smartly to hide behind national security vis-a-vis the Boko Haram insurgency bedeviling some parts of Borno state.

Let me make it categorically clear that I respect the rights of the writer of this open letter to make known to the presidency his opinion because our extant laws consider the right to freedom of expression as sacrosanct.  Secondly, I do not have the liberty or wherewithal to direct my thoughts to the writer as a person.  Nevertheless, I totally disagree with the assertion he made in the open letter especially where he wrote that the Service Chiefs have underperformed simply because some people in the European Parliament and the United Nations Humanitarian Coordinator in Nigeria, Mr.  Edward Kallon and few others have raised concerns about the recent hit and run attacks made by the misguided miscreants who out of share ignorance called themselves Islamic jihadists. I am extremely saddened by the fact that the writer who ought to know better failed to acknowledge and appreciate the numerous successes the Military, especially the Army have achieved since the assumption of the current Service Chiefs; instead he went ahead to talk about, “the steady reversal in the fortunes of our troops in the hands of terrorist.”  I don’t need to reiterate the number of local government areas reclaimed under the control of Boko Haram insurgents in Adamawa, Borno and Yobe states. Until the emergence of these Service Chiefs, commerce and communal life in Maiduguri and Damaturu was in total comatose. The Maiduguri Monday Market became a dangerous place to go because of the regular detonations of explosive devices which usually set the inhabitants in confusion as a result of the frightening sounds from the IED explosions. There was no GSM network and the terrorists reigned and ruled over powerless civilians with a spectacular kind of tyranny. It was common as of then to hear of soldiers throwing their weapons and running away into Cameroon and Chad for safety because those in commands failed to provide the required leadership and equipment needed to engage the enemy of the state.

This went so bad until soldiers attacked an innocent officer (General Officer Commanding) at the 7 Div. I know of a serving General who was posted to Gwoza by those at the helm of leadership at that time so that he could get overpowered by the enemy and be killed. His offence was that, being from the South-South, he dealt with militants like Ateke Tom who was closely related to the former First Lady and the Army top hierarchy.

Troops welfare was neglected because nobody really cared about the northeast. I can say this without the fear of any contradiction that until the emergence of the present Service Chiefs, no Service Chief visited the northeast and stayed for more than five hours not to talk of sleeping in the region. They go there, restrict their movement to Maiduguri and Jere LGA. I must tell you, things got so bad that the former National Security Adviser, Sambo Dasuki advised President Jonathan Goodluck to hire mercenaries from South Africa and Ukraine to help Nigeria fight the war because the once courageous Nigerian Army could no longer confront the insurgents. This happened at a time the federal government budgeted huge sums of money to the defense sector.

This money was diverted and misused. Boko Haram held sway in Buniyadi,Bunigari,Gujba and its environs in Yobe state at that time. They slaughtered 56 innocent school boys at the Federal Government College, Buniyadi and then went ahead to kidnap nearly 300 school girls in a region where the education of the girl-child is very poor. There was a time the village and residence of the then Chief of Defense Staff was ransacked by the insurgents and nothing was done.

Things got so bad until all the elites of Borno and Yobe relocated to Abuja and those who were poor found safety in the various over congested IDP camps in Maiduguri and Jere (Borno) and Malkohi (Adamawa). Then came President Buhari in 2015 and as God ordained it, the country saw the elevation of the then Commander of the Multi-National Joint Task Force, Major General T.Y Buratai as the 20th Chief of Army Staff of the Nigerian Army. He was elevated to the prestigious rank of Lieutenant General and given his charge by his Commander in Chief: “relocate to the northeast and deal with Boko Haram insurgents”. General Buratai obeyed and went straight to Damaturu where he spent the Sallah holiday with troops and perfected his plans to reclaim all the parts of the northeast that were under the influence and /or control of Boko Haram insurgents. He identified a crop of dedicated officers and commanders like Generals Lamidi Adeosun, Leo Irabor, Okon Etim, Abubakar Tarfa, UI Mohammed, S. Adebayo, SU Usman and a host of others who helped him in implementing his strategy of reclaiming the northeast and defeating the insurgents. Within months, the Army in collaboration with the Airforce and Navy reclaimed Bama, Dikwa, Ngamboru,Michika, Madagali and eventually took control of Camp Zairo at the Sambisa. Abubakar Shekau was rattled with fear and the Army was about to capture him but some of his informants helped him to escape into hiding. The whole world at that time sang the praises of the Nigerian Army but especially that of General Buratai, the Chief of Army Staff. The Brazilian Army took special interest in the leadership and generalship of General Buratai and they invited him over to Brazil to receive the highest Medal of Honor ever given to a foreign national by the Brazilian Army.

Also, the people of Damasak,Munguno, Bama and Konduga relocated back o  their homes and peace was restored to the northeast. Adamawa became so peaceful that some people even forgot that there was anything called Boko Haram as night life characterized by partying returned. The military, especially the Army, achieved all these with meagre budget simply because the Army leadership was transparent and made sure that resources were judiciously utilized. The troops were revitalized and reinvigorated because the sight of General Buratai visiting them in the trenches, eating, drinking and even fighting the enemy together with them boosted their morale. Suddenly, the situation in Libya became so deteriorated that different warlords took control of the large arsenal of weapons stockpiled by the late Gaddafi and began to fight each other for the control of Libya. These warlords found a ready market in the promoters of the Boko Haram insurgency to sell their weapons to get money to pay their soldiers. The insurgents who were wounded and nursing their wounds got reinvigorated with the inflow of these new weapons.  They used resources given to them in exchange for the release of the GGSS Chibok school girls and also resources from some foreign government who want to see Nigeria in pieces.

When ISIS heard about what was going on, they stepped in and decided to support the insurgents with logistics and money but they made it clear that they are going to work with Abumusab al Barnawi and not Shekau. This led to the formation of another faction amongst the hitherto united terrorists. It is rather unfortunate that both the Police and the DSS suddenly became rather weak in intelligence gathering and sharing. Gradually they became so redundant that the insurgents began to see them as less hostile and harmless.  They were spared from attacks. The insurgents concentrated their attacks on the Army. They want to reclaim the lost territories and if possible establish a Caliphate with Maiduguri as their headquarters but the Army refused to allow that to happen. It is easy for the insurgents to attack people in parts of Borno because of the following reasons:

1.   Some locales collaborate with them as informants

2.   Some bad politicians and businessmen support them with logistics and supplies

3.  The insurgents don’t have any rules of engagement so they can attack any place regardless of whether children and women are there or not

4.  Some foreign government are supporting them. It is alleged that

Turkey as well as France is sympathetic to them

5. The Army doesn’t have a functional aviation unit to attack them with superior fire-power from the air

6.  The area of operation in the northeast is very large and there are no enough boots to cover everywhere, and lastly,

7.      Failure of the Police and the DSS to apprehend any top ranking financier or sponsor of the group

Despite the above challenges, the military is still on top of the situation. According to world acclaimed scholar on terrorism, Philip H. Gordon who is a Senior Fellow of U.S. Foreign Policy at the Brookings Institution, “Victory in the war on terror will not mean the end of terrorism, the end of tyranny, or the end of evil, utopian goals that have all been articulated at one time or another. Terrorism, after all (to say nothing of tyranny and evil), has been around for a long time and will never go away entirely. From the Zealots in the first century and to the Red Brigades, the Palestinian Liberation Organization, the Irish Republican Army, the Tamil Tigers, and others in more recent times. Terrorism has been a tactic used by the weak in an effort to produce political change. Like violent crime, deadly disease, and other scourges. It can be reduced and contained. But it cannot be totally eliminated.”

Total victory over insurgency can only come after successful dialogue and negotiation which can lead to perpetual peace. Removal of the present Service Chiefs will not in any way improve the situation in the northeast or I should say, Borno state because the northeast is stable; except Borno state. The President is wise enough to know that the Service Chiefs especially the Chief of Army Staff has a perfect understanding of the terrain and it is doubtful if anyone can do better than what he has done so far. He has led from the fore-front at the risk of his life and has made judicious use of the little resources given to the Nigerian Army to prosecute the war. I say little because when we take into cognizance what the United States spend in Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan, we will realize that what we give our military here is very paltry. And yet the kind of results we see here far outweighs that of the American military or NATO. In fact, it was reported that the UN forces that were recently sent to Mali to quell the fighting that is going on between the Fulbe and the Dogon received a sum of $1 billion but the condition of Mali is in a sorry state. Here in Nigeria, our military is prosecuting one of the most dangerous wars in the world without any external help and yet some of us fail to appreciate this. Now, to the issue of whether the President should sack the Service Chiefs or not. I don’t think it is my duty to advice the President to retain all or any of the Service Chiefs since I am not his National Security Advisor and he didn’t consult with me before he appointed them. In fact, the President knows the reason he thinks retaining the Service Chiefs is in the best interest of  Nigeria because he is privy to sensitive information that we don’t have.

Furthermore, it is his prerogative to retain them, give them more time or sack them. This is his own discretion. Even the National Security Adviser and the Minister of Defense can only advice but at the end, the President will use his discretion to do what he thinks is right. At the moment, President Buhari believes that retaining the Service Chiefs is the best thing to do for the country. As for those who are saying that retaining the present Service Chiefs will deny other officers elevation and promotion in the military, I say this is a lie because about 300 officers got promoted in the military late last year.

Any officer who is diligent and hardworking will surely get his or her promotion whenever it is due. The fact that President Buhari has retained the Service Chiefs for additional two years is not something new and no part of the Armed Forces of Nigeria Harmonized Terms and Conditions of Service (HTACOS) or the Constitution of the Federal of Nigeria was violated. Numerous officers who distinguished themselves in their careers have stayed for far longer periods than Nigerian Army Chiefs. For example, John William Vessey, Jr. (born June 29, 1922) served the US military for 46 years. He served as the tenth Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff from June 18, 1982 to September 30, 1985. When he retired at the age of 63, Vessey was the longest serving active duty member in the United States Army. Another General known as Winfield Scot served the US for 53 years. He served under 14 US Presidents, from Jefferson to Lincoln. He fought in every major American conflict including the War of 1812, the Black Hawk War, the Mexican–American War, the Second Seminole War, and the American Civil War. He retired from active duty in 1861 as the first commander of Union forces during the Civil War. Then there is Admiral Hyman G. Rickover who served for 63 years. He served in a flag rank for nearly 30 years (1953 to 1982), ending his career as a four-star admiral. His total of 63 years of active duty service made Rickover the longest-serving naval officer and the longest serving member of the U.S armed forces in history.

What I understand is that the fundamental nature of war which according to Clausewitz and others includes fear, uncertainty and pandemonium, has not changed but our war on insurgency is evolving because of new technology and the international dimension it has.Compelling and pressurizing the President to change his Service Chiefs is not the best way out for us as a country if we consider the fact these Service Chiefs have done excellently well. This country was in disarray when they took over in 2015 but they have been able to provide leadership to their troops to protect the territorial integrity of Nigeria. I should like to say that opinion leaders and especially journalists should be careful with their words and think deeply about whatever they want to write before they write. Instead of using our various platforms to write about things we don’t really understand, we should rally the locales to take collective ownership of this fight against insurgency by collaborating with the military instead of collaborating with the insurgents. We should hold our political and community leaders accountable. We should find ways to strengthen the Civilian Joint Task Force which at the moment is suffering from corruption and nepotism.

As for the Service Chiefs, all I can say is that Nigerians are praying for you all to succeed. When it is time for you to go, the President will relieve you of your duties. Until then, keep on doing the good work. Long live the Federal Republic of Nigeria.