OPINION Military must clean its ranks and acts

The permissiveness in the larger society is rooting in the Armed Forces of Nigeria with debilitating, devastating consequences. It’s already hitting its image and integrity as a professional and disciplined fighting force.

There have been sobering and sad reports of some personnel’s involvement in acts of criminality and indiscipline, including colluding with the enemy, gunrunning and the usual driving against traffic or fighting in public.

Now, they are engaging in kidnapping, armed robbery and car snatching, perpetuating some of these acts in military barracks and environments.

As expected, the military hierarchy is expressing worry, vowing to take drastic actions to deter ‘unprofessional’ conducts smearing the image of the Armed Forces.

On Wednesday January 18, 2023, a soldier, Lance Corporal Idi Mohammed, was arrested for armed robbery after he was gunned down by troops of the Army Headquarters Garrison (AHQ Gar) deployed for guard duty at the Nigerian Army Officers Wives Association (NAOWA) College, Kurudu, Abuja. His accomplice, allegedly a serving soldier, however escaped.

Sunday January 15, 2023, Corporal Alidu James Olathe was arrested by AHQ Gar soldiers on guard duty at the Nigerian Army Post Housing Development Limited (PHDL) Phase 5 Estate, Kurudu, Abuja for allegedly assisting two civilians to kidnap one Mr Emmanuel Sunday, a resident of the estate.

And last Thursday, a rating, Oyewole Femi, was paraded in Lagos by the police as head of a car snatching syndicate that operates in Lagos and its environs. Oyewole, serving at headquarters of Western Naval Command, Naval Base, Apapa Lagos, confessed to selling most of the stolen cars to senior naval officers.

Such acts and more had crept into the system, slowly destroying the very fabrics of the Nigerian military. And the seeds have long been there.

The first major incident of protest in the Army was in July 2008 when soldiers of 312 Artillery Regiment Akure, the 15th Battalion of the Nigerian Army that served in United Nations Mission in Liberia (UNMIL), demonstrated on the streets of Akure, Ondo State over unpaid international peacekeeping allowances.

In May 2014, there was a shooting protest by soldiers of 101 Battalion at the Maimalari Cantonment, Maiduguri, Borno State.

In August 2014, wives and children of soldiers blocked the entrance of Giwa Barracks, Maiduguri, base of 21 Armoured Brigade, to stop the deployment of their spouses and children to fight against the Boko Haram terrorists. They claimed that soldiers were ill-equipped to take on the Islamist militants.

These acts point to the level of discipline and regimentation and the failure of regimentation among the soldiers, which stems primarily from failure to maintain standards by superior officers. After all, soldiers are known for strict obedience to lawful orders, not openly questioning orders, “behaving anyhow” or indulging in criminal activities.

Today, some soldiers are running from battle for fear of engaging in battle against terrorists and bandits, an act unheard of even in the most difficult period of Nigerian troops’ engagement in Liberia and Sierra Leone under the ECOWAS Monitoring

Group (ECOMOG). Clearly, there is a creeping decrepitude within the ranks of the military.

These are not helped by reports of resignations by officers and men due to loss of interest in military service. It was such that Chief of Army Staff, Lieutenant General Farouk Yahaya, in a letter dated December 23, 2022 and signed by Brigadier General Oladapo Oyelade, said service personnel leaving at will did not augur well for the army.

Many blame the indiscipline in the system to the way officers and soldiers were recruited, which is sometimes questionable. The reality is that Nigeria’s elite are interfering with the normal recruitment process, forgetting that military service is voluntary, with its own rules and regulations, in addition to the laws governing the larger society.

With this interference, the military is infested with children, wards and “unemployed relatives or constituents” of the political, economic, military and social elite who see it as a status symbol, continuation of a family tradition or “job for the boys.”

These young officers and soldiers behave as if they don’t know they’re in uniform to fight and if necessary die for the country. Without needed conviction, they destroy the standards.

Relying on the strength of recommendations and connections, their godfathers influence their postings, working the telephones or visiting Service Headquarters to canvass for “better and safer postings/appointments” for their own. They distort the system as there is no passion for the job and don’t take the pressures and risks involved.

But what happens in the military should concern every Nigerian as it is the last major cohesive institution standing for Nigeria. Therefore, acts of indiscipline and criminal activities within its ranks must stop. Personnel must, with dignity, carry out their sworn duties of protecting the country and the people. Otherwise, they would soon dissolve at the sight of any enemy group.

The military high command must pay greater attention to the quality of officers and soldiers being recruited as they instil and reinstil discipline within the ranks. After all, they are in the profession of arms, meaning that they have no fundamental human rights outside taking orders in the interest of the State, and if possible dying for the State.

New technologies and attitudes must not dull imbibing the old culture of soldiering as captured in the 1932 “The Edge of the Sword” book written by French General and later President, Charles De Gaulle.

De Gaulle stated: “Men who adopt the profession of arms submit to their own free will to a law of perpetual constraint. Of their own accord, they reject the right to live where they choose, to say what they think, to dress as they like. From the moment they become soldiers, it needs but an order to settle them in this place, to move them to that, to separate them from their families and dislocate their normal lives.

“On the word of command they must rise, march, run, and endure bad weather, go without sleep or food, be isolated in some distant post, work till they drop. They have ceased to be masters of their fate. If they drop in their tracks, if their ashes are scattered to the four winds, that is all part and parcel of their job.”

This is the beauty and the challenge of soldiering.