•

of ensuring that the place is properly secured?

Haven’t you considered that it could be a major target by the terrorists, should it be located in those areas considered to be epicenter of Boko Haram?

No no, if the place is properly secured… after all the American forces that fought in Afghanistan did not say this is the place we want to stay is not very safe. Why? Because they can protect the place. So this MNJTF Headquarters being in Baga or any other location in Nigeria could as well be secured.

This now brings us to the inaugural speech, where the President’s first policy decision was the order for the relocation of the Military Command and Control Centre from Abuja to Maiduguri. Do you think this is appropriate or that it will make a difference in the ongoing campaign?

I don’t think it’s appropriate to relocate our command and control, if what the president meant was that all the service chiefs and all the apparatus of the command be moved to Maiduguri, that is not fair or safe for our country. You don’t move the entire command structure to a particular place and what gives us the impression that something may not come up somewhere in the Niger Delta or somewhere far away from the North East. I don’t think it is a proper thing to do and by the way why do we have to even move an entire command to Maiduguri? I was reading an article, an analysis on this somewhere and it noted that we are living in the age of science and technology, meaning that you can as well stay in Abuja and monitor whatever is going on in Maiduguri. But I understand the symbolism in what the president has just done. What the president may be targeting at achieving is to show leadership by example, that you cannot go to war and you the generals stay back in your cozy and air conditioned atmosphere, instead of going to the field.

But the Service Chiefs even under the immediate past administration do visit the war zones and even participate in the operations from time to time?

I must concede to the President that he is a general who must have known the advantages and the disadvantages of either relocating or allowing them to stay in Abuja and let us even try that model and see, if it’s going to work. But as far as I am concerned, I don’t think it’s a proper thing to do. However, if the president has decided to do that in his wisdom let us give him a benefit of doubt and see how that pans out.

What do you think is the problem with the insurgency coming back in full force under the new administration, after it looked like the military had crushed them in the last couple of weeks?

One of the things I think we must tackle immediately is how to secure our borders, just like what I have said we have to take concrete measures to protect our borders. If you allow your border and for instance you build a house without a fence it will be open for all manner of people to walk in and out.

What I mean is why the upsurge in the terrorist attacks in the last one or two weeks, especially following the inauguration of the current government?

I think what we may be witnessing is that having found themselves (terrorist) under very intense fireworks from the military, they may also have planned their own revenge kind of strategy. And as all of us know, the kind of battle that is going on in the North East, is what I think is called asymmetric warfare. It is not something that is conventional in our choice and they did not have a definite timeline; that this is the time we the terrorists are going to launch an attack and this is the time the military will strike back. But I think the Nigerian Military has to up their game and effectively crush these armed terrorists once and for all and they need to be crushed.

Talking about crushing, sometimes ago, the Commander, USAFRICOM made it clear that Boko Haram or any modern day terrorists cannot be defeated by the military might alone. So apart from the military what should be the other solutions?

There cannot be any other solution that would be more effective other than military presence. Why it has not worked is because we don’t have good intelligence. Americans have been able to defeat terrorists within their own country and the Al-Qaida that struck the World Trade Centre (WTC) and the various attacks they have heard against the American interests and within America are no longer possible but they have been able to degrade the capacity of these terrorists to infiltrate the US. They invade Iraq and Afghanistan and were it not with their military might?

But they did not achieve this using military or military alone. Don’t you think other strategies may need to suffice?

That kind of position they (Americans) took when the former president (Jonathan) was there (in power), was antagonistic and if you are saying that maybe the Federal Government has neglected the widespread poverty in the North, then the question that you should ask is that, is it only in the North that we have poverty? Or is it only in the North that the youths are not gainfully employed or engaged? Is it only in the North opportunities for educational advancement are rare; poverty is a general problem that we have all across the Nigerian federation and I still believe that we need to develop our military capacity properly and have the right kind of equipment and have the right kind of motivation. Mind you, when the last government was around, there were a lot of activities of saboteurs within the military most of the military recruits, people that joined the military in Nigeria, about 50 per cent of them do not have that kind of patriotic zeal and discipline, the professional love and discipline, which is very important. Most of them just went into the military for economic reasons because they didn’t have jobs.

Still on our military and issue of discipline and professionalism; you must be aware of the recent, Amnesty International report, indicting our military for the umpteenth time for various degree of war crimes. What is your opinion on that?

I think what they just did amounts to racism. You cannot just come to Nigeria and dish out a report and particularly lift out some generals maybe retired or even those that are serving that these are the people that should be taken to the ICC for trial. And even before the Amnesty International released that report, they had already submitted that same report to the ICC in The Hague, Netherlands and why do you have to come to Nigeria to come and release the report if you have already gone to ICC. Meanwhile, the Rome Statutes, setting up the ICC have a very important key provisions that if suspected war crimes are committed in a given sovereign state, there are local remedial institutions or processes that have to be exhausted and its only if the judicial or the Nigerian court system is no longer working or lack the capacity to handle those cases that you now refer such cases to the ICC. Why should the Amnesty first of all route their report to ICC before asking the Nigerian government to act on it and why not submit the report to the Nigerian government and wait for them to act on it. That tells you that they have an intention, target, aim and objective, which are against us. Let me tell you that it is very wrong for amnesty to say that a general who probably operates from Abuja should be held criminally liable for an offence that was committed by an operative in faraway Maiduguri without his own knowledge. That violates the doctrine of superior command responsibility and total breach of standards. Why did amnesty not ask for generals in the US military to be indicted and prosecuted for offences that was committed by the operatives of the ground forces in Afghanistan and Iraq, not even the Guantanamo Bay, I am talking of the crimes they committed in Afghanistan and Iraq and all of us know that