At a dinner he hosted for top media executives at the Lagoon Restaurant, Lagos last month to review the activities of his ministry, the minister of Defence, Lt. General T. Y Danjuma, predictably, sounded a bit immodest while giving the status report.

Sandwiched on the high-table by top players at the Defence ministry, he disclosed that retraining programmes for members of the armed forces had reached an advanced stage as part of measures designed to ensure the return of professionalism, naming United States as one of the countries assisting the Federal government in this respect. Resettlement centres were being rehabilitated massively to ensure that servicemen indeed approach retirement with hope and not despair.

The American government was said to have retrained some battalions of soldiers already, though on one condition. To benefit, a soldier must not have any case of human rights abuse pending against him. Then, a question was asked if the Nigerian authorities did not consider such a conditionally demeaning.

Managing to stifle a laughter under the shadowless glare of chandelier lights that night, Danjuam replied thus: 'Beggar has no choice.

Danjuma's witty response is indeed epigrammatic of the situation of the armed forces in the last one year. Gone are the days when Defence takes the lion's share of the budget. In fact, the defence authorities hardly allow any opportunity to pass nowadays without begging that their vote be increased in order that they meet their obligations. As Danjuma restated that night, more cash was needed to translate his vision of a born-again military to reality.

Even in the realm of symbolism, it will also hardly be out of place to liken the lots of the nation's armed forces in the last one year to those of a beggar. As to be expected, they are suffering the post- transition trauma. When power was handed civilian on May 29, 1999, it was generally agreed that the military needed a serious re-orientation to reconcile it with the realities of civil authority, especially in view of the fact that it had exercised power in the last fifteen years with the attendant loss of professionalism.

Seriously speaking, many would agree that certain significant gains have been achieved in of terms purging the armed forces of many of those who had held political offices in the past.

From experience, such category of servicemen often pose the greatest threat to the survival of democracy. But what has remained the enduring challenge is changing the psychology of the soldier. Judging by his conduct in the few instances he has been invited to civil matters in the last one year nothing suggests yet that the soldier still does not see himself as an enemy of the average Nigerian. The psychology of the soldier is that of conqueror syndrome. Only a fortnight ago, soldiers deployed to Okigwe, Imo state, ostensibly to flush out the leader of Movement for the Actualisation of the Sovereign State of Biafra (MASSOB), Chief Ralph Nwazurike, and his supporters had to literally turn the town upside down when they could not find their primary targets.

Symptoms of this same conqueror syndrome also manifested earlier this year in Choba, Rivers State. A quarrel had started between an expatriate firm, Wilbros Ltd., and the host community, Choba. To defend itself, the company reportedly secured the service of some soldiers who would however go beyond their primary brief of securing Wilbros territory to make love to the local women at gun-point and, in most cases, in the open. A national daily actually arrested national attention with the publication of photographs taken secretly while the men in green uniform were doing their thing. The army authorities, however, denied ever sending soldiers to Choba. But not many bought that story.

But where so much odium has been brought the military as an institution is the Oputa panel which has been looking into cases of alleged human rights abuses in the past. Though the terms of reference of the commission is supposed to cover both civilian and military eras, the show has more or less been restricted to the latter period. If the military still had any atom of credibility following disclosure of how Abacha glamorised kleptocracy for the five years he reigned, that has further been eroded with the 'confessions and the trading of accusations by generals at the commission's public hearing. From General Abdulsalami Abubukar who, we have been reminded, was convicted for embezzling soldiers wage in Lokoja in 1971 and who has also been accused of having a hand in the murder of MKO Abiola in 1998. To Major Hamzat Al-Mustapha, the singing canary who delights in pointing accusing finger at others forgetting that the rest of his fingers point back at him. To General Oladipo Diya who, according to a video clip, wept bucket before Abacha after being picked up over the alleged 1997 coup plot. To General Ishaya Bamaiyi, the supposed head of the army, who descended so low as to carry micro recorder under his 'Agbada' to record careless talk of an unsuspecting customer. To General Abdulkarim Adisa who provided free entertainment to spectators at the Oputa panel with his own unique brand of English. As one retired army officer put it after watching a session of the Oputa panel last week, 'The army has destroyed itself'.

The decision of Mustapha to re-open the 1971 case was no doubt informed by his bitterness that Abubakar sanctioned his detention in 1998. But the implied opportunism does not in any away remove from the weight of what was said. Invariably, the impression this gives about the army is that of an institution which condones dishonesty despite all solemn pronunciations to the contrary. The weight of that punch is perhaps better appreciated considering that the same Abubakar, in spite of that act of perfidy, still rose to become a general and head of state. And what Nigerians are being told is that even that soldier they thought was a sincere man having kept his promise to hand over power on May 29, 1999 was a petty thief who stole few years back.

All the accounts suggesting the omnipotence of Mustapha while Abacha lived only further lend credence to the general belief that the army had indeed turned an institution where 'anything goesî, to borrow the words of General Salihu Ibrahim, himself one-time Chief of Army Staff. A wide gulf separates the rank of Major and General. But here was Mustapha, an ordinary Major who did not see anything wrong in the fact that he had under his direct command as Chief Security Officer to Abacha a Colonel. Before him, generals cringed to see Abacha, they cried like babies on being accused of plotting coup.

Most pathetic of all perhaps is the case of Diya, the former second citizen, who came to the panel seeking redress over the 97 coup plot. The former CGS has continued to insist that it was all a set up. Perhaps his greatest undoing is the video recording of his encounter with Abacha which was shown early this week at the panel. There, Diya was shown in Fresh suit, shedding tears and groveling before an imperial Abacha who, showing little mercies, would offer him tissue papers to wipe that shame away. The message this tells is that our generals are indeed not worth the rank they answer. Diya continues to deny he really cried, describing all as 'film trickî. Which only worsens the matter. Could the supremos of the army during this age have also gone ahead to fake the image of an officer weeping simply to give the impression that he wasn't man enough?

More funny is the case of Bamaiyi who, after all said and done, has not denied that on a number of occasions he actually went to the residence of Diya with a tape-recorder concealed in his 'Agbada' for 'recording sessionsî just the way Lynda Tripp did to Monica Lewisky on several occasions on her orgies with Bill Clinton. Imagine the spectacle of a general excusing himself in the middle of a hearty conservation to 'ease myself' in the loo as a cover-up to change the side of micro cassette that had rolled to an end. Funny, really. Nothing could be more belittling for a man who was supposed to be the head of the army. Diya himself came close to capturing the tragic import of this when he said that he felt ashamed to learn that an office once occupied by the likes of T.Y Danjuma could be so desecrated with the infamy of treacherous choreography.

Even more ludicrous is the case of Adisa. Footages of secret video recording of his encounter with Mustapha had just been shown at the panel on Wednesday. Then Adisa was asked to deny that he was the one in the picture kneeling before Mustapha. Initially, he sought an escape by saying that one, the couch he was perching nervously on was rather low such that it did not make any difference if you were kneeling down or not. Later, he said there was nothing special in kneeling down. That, as a muslim, he kneels down many times while praying. Later, he would say that if indeed he knelt down or did any other thing that was self- degrading he did it to 'save my life at that time.' Such candour. He ended by mumbling a phrase that sounded like "those who fight to die live to fight another day" (whatever that means).

Head or tail, it was the military that was being ridiculed.