May 22, 2015 : Abiodun Ladepo
Chief of Army Staff, Lt. Gen. Kenneth Minimah
It
must confound any decent soldier as it confounded President-elect
Muhammadu Buhari the other day that Nigeria contracted out its fight
against Boko Haram to South African and East European mercenaries. It
must confound all Nigerians that our government hired soldiers of
fortune to help liberate about 14 local government areas from the
stranglehold of a non-state terrorist group. It must be a source of
embarrassment to all of us that our national security was so shredded.
When it was first reported in March by
Reuters and later picked up by the New York Times and Washington Post, I
didn’t believe it. I didn’t believe the story because the Nigerian
media, perhaps overwhelmed by its coverage of the elections, did not
give the story any traction. The international media had reported
sighting soldiers of fortune camped out in remote sections of the
Maiduguri airport, from where they launched attacks against the
terrorists at night. The next morning, the Nigerian forces roll onto the
“liberated” battlefield to mop up the place, pose for celebratory
photographs which their spokesman, Gen. Chris Olukolade, distributes to
newsmen and women in Abuja. What a shame!
Generals Azubuike Ihejirika, Abdulrahman
Dambazau, Luka Yusuf, Martin Luther Agwai and Alexander Ogomudia (all
former Chiefs of Army Staff) should be ashamed for bequeathing onto Gen.
Kenneth Minimah an army that cannot sustain a fight on its own soil
without running out of ammunition, weapons, fuel and even personnel. To
be fair, one can argue that Generals Victor Malu, Ogomudia and Agwai
(all Chiefs of Army Staff during Obasanjo’s civilian era) were
instrumental to the re-positioning and reorienting of the Nigerian Army
towards professionalism and away from coup planning which had been
ingrained in its psyche for decades. We will recall that the military,
under the leaderships of Generals Ishaya Bamaiyi, Alwali Kazir, Chris
Alli and Aliyu Gusau, during the interregnums of Abdulsalam Abubakar and
Ernest Shonekan, and during the brutish reign of Sani Abacha, was
grossly unprofessional, undisciplined and corrupt. Obasanjo, with the
help of Defence Minister Theophilus Danjuma (himself a former Chief of
Army Staff), straightened out much of the kinks in the military by
getting rid of dead woods, trigger-happy and coup-prone officers.
But rather than consolidate the gains of
the Obasanjo government, Umaru Yar’Adua (due to his fatal illness, I
think) didn’t have the time and capacity to touch Defence. Had he been
healthy, he probably would have continued the re-organisation and
reorientation begun by Obasanjo, after which he might have turned to
reforming its materiel and overall logistics’ inventory methods.
But Yar’Adua died and Goodluck Jonathan
was just too out of his depths about many things, especially military
matters. And for those six years, Boko Haram made mincemeat of our
military, humiliated our country and displaced our citizens. They
effectively altered the geographic map of Nigeria, successfully carving a
“Caliphate” out of our territorial space. This embarrassment has left
our discerning military minds asking many questions.
How, for instance, did we utilise the
Nigerian Army Special Operations Command which Jonathan created in 2014?
The way I understand it and the way it is used all over the world, a
Special Operations Command is manned by Special Operations personnel ,
those “super-human” people who carry out those “special” operations for
which your regular military personnel are neither trained nor equipped.
The SOC will have a couple of battalions under it that can be deployed
at short notices in whole or in parts for special missions. Nigeria has
at least one such battalion – the 176 Special Forces Battalion. How come
this battalion was not trained and equipped to carry out against Boko
Haram the missions for which we rented foreign fighters?
All around the world, when you retire
from a Special Forces group and you still crave “action”, you work for
private entities that provide “muscles” in trouble areas of the world –
the Middle East and North Africa especially. Is it possible that our own
176 SF personnel were the ones working under the shadows of other
countries’ retired SF personnel – those mercenaries from Ukraine and
South Africa? Keep in mind that mercenaries are, by their very nature,
not obligated to operate under internationally accepted rules of Land
Warfare, Rules of Engagement and provisions of the Geneva Conventions,
particularly with regard to treatment of prisoners of war. They are
marauding rogues outlawed by decent countries and the international
community. We must find out if we (or our mercenaries) were just
summarily executing Boko Haram fighters even when they may have
surrendered or if we were transporting them to interrogation centres.
How come Olukolade has not been briefing the press on those we captured
on the battlefield, if at all any? Could this be why some western
countries were wary of selling weapons to us?
Just before setting up the NASOC and the
176 SF Battalion, Jonathan created a whole new army division – the 7
Division – headquartered in the heart of the insurgency in Maiduguri,
bringing the total of our army divisions to six. The 7 Division’s sole
purpose was (and still is) to fight insurgency and terrorism. Below,
using the Ibadan-based 2 Division set up, is the typical composition of
an army division save minor modifications depending on whether it is
artillery, infantry or mechanised:
244 Recce Battalion; 4 Mechanised
Brigade; 177 Motorised Battalion; 221 Light Tank Battalion; 222
Mechanised Battalion; 9 Motorised Brigade; 149 Motorised Battalion; 174
Motorised Battalion;192 Motorised Battalion; 32 Field Artillery
Brigade;321 Field Artillery Regiment;322 Field Artillery Regiment and
323 Air Defence Regiment
Note: Recce is acronym for Reconnoiter; a
division usually consists of three to four brigades; a brigade usually
consists of three to four battalions; a battalion usually consists of
three to four regiments or companies; a company usually consists of
three to four platoons; a platoon usually consists of three squads and a
squad usually consists of eight to 10 soldiers. Depending on the size
of the country’s army, a division is usually between 2000 – 2,600
soldiers and is commanded by a Major General – a two-Star.
Apart from the 2,000 personnel who the
Maiduguri-based 7 Division must have on its roster to be considered a
functioning division, each of the different elements within it must also
have all sorts of equipment – combat, communication, mobility, supply,
resupply, medical etc. You are looking at about 3,000 organic and
attached elements in Maiduguri alone. Almost contiguous with 7
Division’s Area of Operation (AOR) is the 2 Division located in Jos. And
close to that is the 1 Division located in Kaduna. How these lumbering,
elephantine three divisions still needed help against Boko Haram beats
Buhari’s imagination and confounds anybody who wears (or has ever worn)
the military uniform in combat. This breakdown must be thoroughly
investigated by the Senate in which Defence’s oversight responsibilities
reside. Buhari has his job cut out for him in this area. He must
streamline and really resume the professionalisation of the Nigerian
Army. He must jettison ad hocism, which is the bane of most of our
institutions and embark on deliberate, structured and durable reforms.
And he must quickly unhinge the military
from the Nigerian corruption wall. The prevailing situation where the
army has 90 different weapon systems in its armoury, along with 200
types of ammunition of 60 different categories and yet was out-gunned,
out-manned and out-manoeuvred by terrorists to the point of needing to
enlist the help of hired guns is embarrassing and unacceptable.
Ladepo, a communications strategist, wrote in from Ibadan via Oluyole2@yahoo.com
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