Obasanjo: Commander in-chief of Aso Rock?

By 

Dele Shobowale

When President Obasanjo made this pronouncement during the burial ceremony for the 19 soldiers killed in Benue State allegedly by Tiv youths, the Commander-in-Chief almost sent me to the hospital; I almost choked on the Gulder, (for me its Gulder or Guinness, to keep my sanity in Nigeria), in my mouth at the time. Obasanjo has acquired a reputation as a funny fellow who could have made a distinguished career as a comedian of high rank if the army had not got him first.

But praising the Nigerian army for self restraint when tempers were still high was deadly comedy revealing how far removed the C-in-C was from the forces he is presumed to command. So, with certainty, I told a colleague after recovering from fits of coughing that the President would soon eat his words. The Nigerian army the rest of us have known since Obasanjo’s friend Major Chukwuma Nzeogwu led the first coup can be accused of many things (usually evil) but restraint is not one of them. I knew that Tivs would soon pay dearly for the 19 lives the army lost. The army, predictably struck back as soon as the bodies of their fallen colleagues were lowered into the grave, giving the C-in-C a slap in the face and went in to slaughter 200 or more in reprisals. They even gave former Chief of Army Staff a taste of their deadly medicine.

The reasons why the massacre occurred despite the C-in-C’s thinly veiled plea to soldiers in the statement above are not hard to discover: The Nigerian army which General Obasanjo and his Chief of Army Staff, Lt. Gen. Theophilus Danjuma (rtd) left behind in 1979, which by itself was a lawless bunch from the topmost to the last recruit had, gradually disintegrated to the point where a former Chief of Army Staff, Lt. Gen. Salisu in departing, described it as an "army where nothing goes". The horror show at the Oputa Panel has revealed the lower depths to which the Nigerian Army had descended under IBB, Abacha and Abubakar.

Thus, the army Obasanjo re-inherited in 1999 was nothing but the same bunch of undisciplined "gangsters" (apologies to Lt. Gen. Alani Akinrinade (rtd) his successors had groomed to terrorise civilians and to commit genocide, if necessary, in order to ensure their hold on power.

Granted that the Nigerian Army had not always been cohesive and honourable according to a book written by Maj. Gen. James Oluleye (rtd), now being serialized by Nigerian Tribune. In fact it would appear that military discipline departed from the Nigeria armed forces the minute the last British soldier departed and Colonel Ironsi was made the Chief of Army Staff instead of Colonel Ademulegun. The coup that toppled Ironsi was perhaps the first demonstration of how degenerate the army had become in a few years.

The detachment of soldiers led by Maj.Theophilus Danjuma, the current Minister of Defence, already had Ironsi (then Commander in Chief) cornered with his host Colonel Adekunle Fajuyi; they could have asked the man to surrender and put them in detention the way Babangida did with Buhari; they could even have sent them on exile. Instead, General Ironsi and Colonel Fajuyi were thoroughly beaten to the point of death by junior officers before Danjuma reportedly shot Ironsi. Army discipline has not improved since that fateful day. Quite the contrary, it has gone from bad to worse. Today there is no discipline. An officer and a gentleman is an oxymoron in Nigeria, there is no gentleman soldier. That was why, Obasanjo’s grave side address and the implied plea for restraint which if made by the President of any great country, instead of a Banana Republic, would have been accepted as an order. But not the Nigerian Army.

The last four or five Chiefs of Army Staff rose through the ranks of an army where promotion was not determined by competence but by the ability to successfully gang up against superior officers and push them out of office. Murderers, rapists, safe crackers have reached high ranks in the Nigerian Army whose armed chair Generals and Brigadiers cannot withstand an Israeli captain in combat. So, the army ignored Obasanjo’s plea for restraint and went on a rampage as if the C-in-C had spoken only for himself because in fact he did. And when the C-in-C ordered them to leave Benue, one saucy officer proclaimed that they would not withdraw until they fish out the culprits. Apparently after killing 200 people in retaliation, our blood thirsty soldiers still want more blood.

Meanwhile, the President who once prematurely praised them for self-restraint has found some virtue in retaliation. According to him people who shoot soldiers are asking for trouble. Well, we knew that all along and we don’t need a President to remind us. In fact we can tell the President that people need not kill a soldier for the armed gang he leads as C-in-C to commit murder. Ikorodu town in Lagos State recently experienced army brutality when soldiers went on rampage on account of a matter that should have been handled by the police but which was not because it involved soldiers.

Till today, if a hit-and-run driver kills a soldier near an Army Barracks, everybody in the vicinity should run for cover, even innocent passers by are not spared. Obasanjo, like his predecessors might be C-in-C of Aso Rock but his influence beyond the gates of the Rock over the armed forces is doubtful. And he has the embodiment of military indiscipline in 1966 as his Defence Minister.

November 2001