Olakunle Olafioye
Last week’s outburst by a former Minister of Defense and ex- Chief of Army Staff, Lt Gen. Theophilus Danjuma, the abduction and eventual release of 104 Dapchi female students as well as killings by criminal elements suspected to be herdsmen are some of major security issues that have put the country on the edge in the recent weeks.
Col Gabriel Adetunji Ajayi, in this interview, dissects these issue as well as other major national issues.The former military officer who spoke from his hospital bed where he is currently recuperating from a major surgery to correct some conditions which arose from complications from the tortures he was subjected to during the phantom coup investigation of 1995 also speaks on the rationale behind the retention of one of the Dapchi girls by the insurgents.
A former Minister of Defense, Lt. Gen. Theophilus Danjuma caused an uproar last week when he accused the military of complicity in the massacre going on in some states allegedly by herdsmen. What do you make of this allegation and the call on the people to defend themselves?
By the pedigree of General Danjuma, he holds the reputation of a no-nonsense man. He was my Chief of Army Staff. I remember vividly in 1978, he visited us while we were on a course at the Nigerian Military School of Infantry. And he forthrightly told us that if he, as our Chief of Army Staff asked us to do anything unethical that we should disobey him. So he is a very forthright person. He is not a frivolous man; he would not speak without having concrete proof and evidence. I don’t like the way Nigerian military have been behaving for quite some time now and I am not happy about it. They react to certain things that need not to react to. If the military is owned by Nigeria and Nigerians are complaining about certain things, all they need to do is not to defend themselves but to look at those things and carry out amendments where necessary. One mistake I found with the military throughout my career is that all of us believe our loyalty is to the Commander-in-Chief and not to Nigeria whereas the Commander-in-Chief himself is supposed t o be loyal to Nigeria. The military must see itself as an agent of the Federal Republic of Nigeria and acts as such. They are not to defend themselves. The constitution is made for Nigeria; Nigeria is not made for the constitution. If you are saying you want to carry out your constitutional responsibility you must know that the nation is above the constitution. The nation can afford to throw away the constitution and make another one but the constitution cannot afford to do away with the nation. So if people of Danjuma’s pedigree are saying something as serious as that, it is not for the military to immediately reply and begin to debunk the claims. What they need to do is for them to look inwards and see what has gone wrong. If a former Chief of Army Staff could turn round to say his boys are partial, it is like a father telling his children that they are not doing the right thing, Danjuma is a father to the military. I don’t think he can be frivolous in his statement. All we need to do is to examine what he has said, see where we have gone wrong and make the necessary amendments. It is very unfortunate for the military to start saying that they are impartial when many senior federal government officials have said that the herdsmen are from Chad, Niger, which means they are violators of national integrity so the question of being neutral and handling them with kids ‘glove does not arise except something is hidden somewhere. But as far as I am concerned, I don’t like our institutions to react to criticism the way they do rather they should look into those criticisms.
The comment credited to the former military chief seems to confirm the doubt of many Nigerians as far as the fight against insecurity is concerned in Nigeria. As it is now do you think the military still has what it takes to defend the country and the people in the face of daunting security challenges?
One secret about the robustness of the Nigerian military is that it remains the only institution founded by the colonial masters on the basis of prayer. That morning of October 1863 when Lord Glover inaugurated 18 men that started the Nigerian military, he prayed and said, ‘today I am planting as the mustard seed and like the biblical mustard seed you shall grow and grow and offer protection to every nook and cranny of humanity.’ So the military has been carrying that prayer on its head since 1863. And the people should not doubt the ability of the military because the work of the military is well spelt out. It is to defend the territorial integrity of Nigeria. So whatever you see the military doing on internal security, it is not the primary responsibility of the military to be deployed to every part of Nigeria. They are to support the police whenever the need arises because the military is trained to defend the territorial integrity of the country. They are not primarily trained for internal security operation. So the primary responsibility of maintaining internal security rests on the shoulders of the Nigerian police, the DSS and other amorphous organisations. All these that the military are into are just additional responsibilities. And Nigerians must be very grateful to the military. The task of the military is to deal with the enemies of the nation. The modus operandi for the operation for internal security is different from the modus operandi of dealing with external enemies. They cannot just open fire anyhow, if they do they will be subjected to criticisms but if they do that while defending the country nobody will criticize you on the modus operandi you employ in flushing out invaders. But when you operate within the country whatever action you take will be subjected to criticism. That is why the military will always insist that they are impartial. The problem is this: as a Commander-in-Chief, as the Chief of Army Staff, whenever orders are given in matters relating to internal security operations, the body language of the giver of the order should be looked into because the reaction to it will be based on the body language of the person giving the other. Unlike when Nigeria is invaded by external forces, they don’t have to look at the body language of the Commander-in-Chief; they deal decisively with the invaders. But if Buhari says they should deploy a battalion to deal with a crisis situation in Daura for instance, they will look at the body language of the President. They will really want to know if he truly means what he says. So, there are restrictions for the military when carrying out internal security operations but these are not known to Nigerians because generally we are not security-conscious. We know very little about military operations; that is why many things perplex us; there are many things we always think should be done which we don’t know cannot be done the way we expect them. The military cannot act anyhow; their actions must be guided by some directives, which are always contained in operational orders when it has to do with internal security operations. By and large, people that are being dealt with are fellow Nigerians who will write the history when everybody is gone and what we do today becomes history tomorrow.
Few months ago, the Chief of Army Staff made a remark, warning the military against politicians who might want to use them for their own selfish reasons. Juxtaposing this with Danjuma’s statement, one may be tempted to believe that the military may have been compromised by unscrupulous elements. Do you see any correlation between these two developments?
The Chief of Army Staff was right in giving warning to officers. He was only advising them not to allow political sentiments by the politicians to influence them. When you read some things on pages of newspapers you will think Nigeria is at war and as soldiers when you listen to those things you get disturbed because you don’t know what can happen. All the crises we have been having in Nigeria have political undertones. They are not really crises from the economy, and even when we have religious crises, they always come with political undertones. So the Chief of Army Staff was right. We have military regimes in Nigeria and like I always say, it is only the Nigerian Army as an institution that has actually not carried out coup in the country, it has always been done by a tiny minority of Nigerian military officer corps acting with some heartless Nigerian civilian collaborators. There has never been an institutional decision to carry out coup in Nigeria. It has always been done by a tiny minority group and when it is time to change them, another tiny minority would stage a counter-coup to effect the change. So the Chief of Staff was very right in warning his colleagues not to be incited by what was going or what they read on pages of newspapers.
What General Danjuma has said is just to re-echo what the constitution says that we have to defend ourselves. But like I said earlier, there might be certain things, which Danjuma by his vantage position could have known that must have made him to accuse the force which he once headed of being partial. Some of these senior officers still have their boys in the military who might be briefing them from time to time on what is going on in the military. It is part of the national misnomers that we have in the country. We are not speaking with one voice. That is why we are calling for restructuring, rebuilding, re-modeling. The leaders are not speaking with the same voice. General Danjuma and leaders of his category are not seeing Nigeria in the same way. We should be disturbed by the fact that our leaders are speaking at variance, which is detrimental to our national existence. Our leaders must speak with one voice. So if General Danjuma could accuse the military of being partial, it calls for serious concern because he is a father figure to the Nigerian military.
Danjuma’s outburst calls for serious concern – Col Ajayi (Retd)
The Dapchi abduction is another major issue Nigerians are expressing divergent views on. The opposition has accused the APC-led government of stage-managing the abduction and eventual release of the over 100 school girls. In your on view, how logical is the claim that the incident was stage-managed?
There is logic behind everything that happens in Nigeria. You know your father, you know the father of whom you are and you know what your father can do. People know what the country can do so they are right in ascribing anything. But as far as I am concerned we know that in counter-insurgency operation there are a lot of things that happen behind the scene. There are no rules of engagement; everything is absurd. So any absurdity can happen. You don’t rule out anything at all and you don’t rule anything has been sacrosanct. It is possible for the government to stage-manage it. It is possible for government not to stage-manage it. After all didn’t the government attempt kidnap Umaru Diko in London, but did the government admit that? No, anything could happen. But you cannot expect Mr. President to sit with the Chief of Army Staff and plan such a thing. It may not be planned by the government but the government might know about it and close it eyes so long as it serves a particular motive. But no serious government will sit down and plan such a thing but it could be done. CIA carried so many sinister underground operations that government of America did not know about it. if it backfires that is when the government will have problem. no responsible government will sit down and plan what happened in Dapchi and I personally, don’t believe it was planned. But it could be done on their behalf and the might be aware of it but turned blind eyes. But I won’t believe the government actually had a hand in it. After all Col Oliver North confessed that he was the one that organized Iran contract rebels’ arms deal. But such a magnitude operation couldn’t have been carried out without the knowledge of authority in America but the President said he didn’t know anything about it.
As a retired military officer with vast knowledge in anti-insurgency war, how do you react to the reason adduced for the non-release of the last Dapchi girl?
Like I always say insurgency is an unusual operation and you know that Boko Haram insurgency is tied to religious ideology. That is why it has been very difficult to actually put an end to their revolt. They may have done that so as to score a point. By keeping some that belongs to a different religion, and because they said they are propagating Islamic faith, their intention might be to instigate other religious community against Islam. So instead of facing Boko Haram now, Christians and Muslims will be facing themselves. So they have been able to divert attention to Christian-Muslim issue. So, one of the aims of insurgency is to cause confusion. Insurgency that is tied to religious ideology will take so long to be defeated. You can only degrade them and eventually they will fizzle out. You cannot destroy an idea with appoint of the sword, you can only de-radicalise them. So, don’t see the retention of the Christian girl as anything other than as a strategy to score some points, which they have almost succeeded in scoring now. If we don’t know how to manage it they will score that goal and it will be disastrous for us. Can you imagine that the Sultan of Sokoto has not said anything about the girl. So the government should be very careful not to play into their hand
You have always expressed confidence in the ability of the Nigerian military to deal decisively with any security threat but recent events in the country seems to prove otherwise. Why are we still experiencing this magnitude of security threats in Nigeria?
I was there for 30 years and I know the ability of the Nigerian military very well. Giving the right leadership and necessary logistic supports Nigeria could do as much as we can expect from other military in the world. The Nigerian military has that pedigree from the time it was established till today. Without the Nigerian military there could have been no West African Volunteer Force and the Nigeria military was the centre of the British military expedition outside European theatres of war during the First World War and the Second World War. So the Nigerian Army still lives up to expectation. So I am confident in my mind that given the necessary support it will perform as one of the best in the world. Although I never expected the Dapchi abduction but I know that it is very difficult for the military to protect all the schools. I hold the government of that state responsible for this lapse not the military. They ought not to concentrate female students in school outside the state capital. It is easier for the military to defend the state capital than for the military to saddle with responsibility of defending every village, every hamlet. You cannot deploy military to every part of that state. So the governors of those states themselves hold greater responsibility than the President in the security of their states. After the Chibok experience, girls schools should have been moved to the capital where the schools could be well protected. So everything still boils down to our lack of security consciousness.