The immediate past Chief of Defence Staff, Air Chief Marshal Alex Badeh, on Thursday confessed that the Nigerian military faced heavy betrayal from some officers in the fight against Boko Haram while he commanded the military.
Badeh said there were soldiers who constantly leaked sensitive information, strategies and plans and hindered effective battle and success against the insurgents.
This same fifth columnists and betrayals, according to him, caused the death of many soldiers who confronted the Boko Haram. They innocently fell into the hands of the insurgents in various ambush.
Recall that Badeh’s hometown, Mubi, was part of the towns captured by the sect in 2014 as the attacks of the insurgents became very ferocious.
Badeh, who delivered a valedictory speech at a pulling out parade organised in his honour at the Mogadishu Cantonment, Abuja, Nigeria’s capital, also accused past governments of furthering the activities of the sect without mentioning any particular government.
He only maintained that these governments deliberately weakened the military.
“The activities of fifth columnists in the military and other security agencies who leaked operational plans and other sensitive military information to the terrorist, combined to make the fight against the insurgents particularly difficult.
“The activities of these unpatriotic members of the military not only blunted the effectiveness of the fight, but also led to the needless deaths of numerous officers and men who unwittingly fell into ambushes prepared by terrorists who had advance warnings of the approach of such troops,” he said.
To him, some of these past governments killed the Nigerian military by giving up to foreign influences and advice that the Nigerian government cut down its military size thus denying the country of defence forces of the requisite funding and size.
In accepting the advice, he said, such past Presidents never considered the effect on the country and or realised that Nigeria was different from other countries of the world especially as a third world country lacking in technology to compensate for the costly reduction in the size and strength of the military.
Badeh said to shore up its base and weakness, the military had to resort to emergency recruitment and training of soldiers to fight the Boko Haram, but the figure remained inadequate because of the serious security challenges posed by the insurgents.
He appealed for a comprehensive review of the nation’s military structure by the Federal Government, appealing further that this should be done with respect to its size, capacity and the equipment that should be at its disposal to carry out its responsibility of defending the country.
He noted that nations’ militaires are equipped and trained in peace time for the conflicts they expect to confront in the future, but that “unfortunately, that has not been our experience as a nation.
“Over the years, the military was neglected and underequipped to ensure the survival of certain regimes, while other regimes, based on advice from some foreign nations, deliberately reduced the size of the military and underfunded it.
“Unfortunately, our past leaders accepted such recommendations without appreciating our peculiarities as a third world military, which does not have the technological advantage that could serve as force multipliers and compensate for reduced strength.
“Accordingly, when faced with the crises in the North-East and other parts of the country, the military was overstretched and had to embark on emergency recruitment and training, which were not adequate to prepare troops for the kind of situation we found ourselves in.”
To him, equipping the military would have reduced the massive destruction of towns and villages by the sect as had been witnessed just as he said battling terrorism is a very complex and challenging assignment.
And in Nigeria, the refusal by some countries to sell arms to the country to fight the battle was a major challenge in the fight against the terrorists.
He said as head of the military, he led a force that had no relevant equipment and motivation to fight an enemy that was invisible and embedded with the local populace.
“It is important therefore for the government to decide on the kind of military force it needs, by carrying out a comprehensive review of the nation’s military force structure to determine the size, capability and equipment holding required to effectively defend the nation and provide needed security,” he said while thanking officials of the Armed Forces for their support and resilience even in the face of serious challenges.
