Certainly, there is everything wrong with the hasty appointment of the ex-service chiefs as non-career Ambassadors by President Muhammadu Buhari. In the trenches, the war on terror, compounded by kidnapping and generalized insecurity is going very roughly. In the minds of a beleaguered citizenry, Nigeria’s leaders are making things even worse. This should not be so and the government must rein in its officials before they hand insurgents and criminals a propaganda victory. The cavalier manner in which the immediate past Chief of Defence Staff, Gen. Abayomi Olonisakin and the erstwhile service chiefs explained why security challenges bedeviling Nigeria could not be surmounted during their over five year tenure, leaves much to be desired. Even as the Buhari administration has demonstrated palpable incapacitation, some of its officials have advertised monumental individual irresponsibility. The excuses proffered by the former military helmsmen who appeared for screening before the Senate Committee on Foreign Affairs attributing their inability to solve the myriad of security problems facing the nation to logistics and insufficient funds, were unbecoming of high-ranking security officers and an obvious display of impudence and its consequent embarrassment to the pride of Nigeria’s security forces. Their flippancy certainly calls to question the presence of strategic thinking and panache within the operational architecture of the security formations in the country.
First to appear before the Senator Mohammed Bulkachuwa-led committee yesterday, was Olonisakin who blamed the nation’s over 1,000 forest reserves that are not well managed and secured by the respective state governments for the prevailing insecurity. Olonisakin’s excuse was that the war against insurgents and insecurity cannot be won since it is more of an asymmetric cum hybrid warfare as against conventional warfare where the enemy can easily be confronted and defeated. Hear him: “I want to say that the solution to insecurity is multi-pronged. We talk about conventional warfare and asymmetric warfare. We are talking about hybrid warfare where everyone is involved. It is not about kinetics. Kinetics gives only a 35% success rate in any war we are fighting. It is a national approach that must be properly galvanized for us to actually surmount the insecurity… three years ago; I conducted research on the forests in the country. I realized we have over 1,000 forest reserves. I sent the team to Kenya and brought out a paper and I said then, three years ago that our next crisis will be in the forest.” This insane excuse is laughable, were it not pathetic!
Also advancing excuses for the unabated insecurity, particularly the Boko Haram insurgency in the war-ravaged Northeast, the former Chief of Army Staff, Lt. Gen. Tukur Buratai, shamelessly said it may take Nigeria 20 more years to finally eliminate Boko Haram. Buratai while appearing before the committee said: “Unless certain things are done, this insecurity will continue because the truth must be told it may take another 20 years for the country to surmount the problem of Insurgency and that is the truth.”
According to him, Boko Haram insurgents through indoctrination are winning more communities to their side, aside from the problem of ungovernable spaces in the area and across the country. His words: “My state (Borno), is an epicenter, where this indoctrination has penetrated so deep. They (insurgents) have won the communities to their side. That is why they (communities) keep Boko Haram. So, it is complex, it requires a whole of government approach to solving this, military action or activity is just one aspect. One mistake that we have been making is that only the military can solve this. It is not. There are political, social, economic aspects that need to be addressed.
The story was not different when former Chief of Air Staff, Air Marshall Abubakar Sadique; former Chief of Naval Staff, Vice Admiral Ibok–Ete Ibas and former Chief of Defence Intelligence, Air vice-Marshal Mohammed Usman appeared before the Committee. Specifically, the ex-Intelligence Chief identified lack of synergy among the various security agencies, as one of the reasons for the lingering security challenges the country is facing. Usman told the committee that the military was in possession of an intelligence report on the planned kidnap of Dapchi schoolgirls in February 2018 but the information was not well managed. After screening of all five nominees, the committee chair, Senator Bulkachuwa, said the committee will submit its report to the Senate at plenary next week.
Nigerians can only pray and hope that the senate would do the right thing by rejecting these nominees and saving the country any further international embarrassment in which these soldiers who be given the opportunity to replicate their failure in the diplomatic service. Does anyone really believe that the problem with Boko Haram and insecurity is the lack of funds despite the billions of naira that has been spent on security votes to defeat the insurgents? The truth of the matter is that the ex-service chiefs just inadvertently admitted Boko Haram’s audacity and superior strategy; and made obvious the imperative of a coordinated intelligence and information management involving the country’s armed forces and the police. Despite a reasonable effort in this direction with the National Orientation Agency (NOA) as its hub, a discordant note still plays from the presidency and other agencies of government in terms of war strategy, leading the Nigerian people to wonder who really is in charge of affairs.
The height of such unguarded statements was the one by the ex-Intelligence chief, Usman who admitted publicly that the military was in possession of intelligence on the planned kidnap of Dapchi schoolgirls in February 2018, but did nothing to prevent the abduction of the schoolgirls; who were rescued after huge ransom payments were made to their kidnappers. Even if the information were true, should it be for public consumption? And in that manner? Would that revelation not further jeopardized the sources and methods of intelligence gathering? And while no one believes defeating Boko Haram will be a cake walk; must Buratai tell the whole world that it might take 20 years for that to happen? Making such information public is certainly a big gaffe that betrays ignorance about what the responsibility of a chief of army staff should be in the scheme of things. The COAS is not a commander. He is a staff officer to the president and coordinates the components of the armed forces. Even if need arises to comment on the state of the war against insurgents, the appropriate thing is not to demoralize the troops on the frontlines by telling them that they would remain in the trenches for at least 20 more years; which seems like an open-ended commitment.
These ex-service chiefs have brought the country to further ridicule as a people unable to get their act together despite the huge resources and manpower that Nigeria enjoys. Apart from underlining the low quality of leadership in the country today, it simply reinforces the cynicism of outsiders about Nigeria’s capability even in matters of keeping a sealed lip on intelligence matters. It can only be to Nigeria’s utter shame that people who, until recently were in charge of the nation’s security can openly tell Nigerians with hubris, that expecting them to end insecurity and the insurgency was a mere luxurious desire. Regardless, their statements should expectedly, rankle the presidency if Nigerians now know that the president was aware of these problems and did nothing to protect the lives and property of Nigerians. If this is not dereliction of duty, one wonders what else is!
While the point can be made that the soldiers on the frontlines had, at some point in time, lacked the requisite gear and equipment to prosecute the war, the problem of insufficient funding is ridiculous because the crux of the matter here is order and coordination. Even in routine security operations, there is always the need for discipline, secrecy, scrutiny and coordination before information dissemination. This brings to the fore the matter of the absence of a definitive commander for the operation against the insurgents which we have repeatedly drawn attention to as an anomaly as well as a hindrance to the war. This should be corrected. The current war on the insurgency calls for tactics and a high sense of responsibility, not marketplace chatter. It makes a lot of sense under the prevailing circumstances to stick to a clearinghouse arrangement in the dissemination of information to the public if the war on terror, now hard enough in the trenches, would not be lost in the minds of Nigerians.
More importantly, however, the hubris oozing out of the President’s spin-doctors, notwithstanding, the buck stops on the President’s desk. His servants, which advisers and aides, however high up, are, cannot act as substitute for the passion, will and intellect of the President. The President’s act of being and the autonomy of decision to carry on as such, rest on the person of the President himself. He is the only one who can hold the gavel to stem the current of pestilential perfidy. As the Commander-in-Chief, President Buhari owes the hurting people of this nation a moral duty to end the insurgency and insecurity. Above all, he should go to the theatre of war, to send the strongest signal yet to all Nigerians that he not only cares as their President, he is taking full command of the war on terror and insecurity.
