It’s humiliating to the military to probe Buhari’s certificate authenticity — Gen. Akinrinade

A former Chief of Army Staff and Chief of Defence Staff, General Alani
Akinrinade (retd.), tellsGBENGA ADENIJIandBAYO AKINLOYEthat Nigeria
may be headed for crisis if the elections are not well managed
Youare one of the finest soldiers Nigeria has ever produced. You also
fought in the civil war to keep the country as one. Do you have any
regrets?
When you have a duty, especially if it is a professional duty, you
should be happy each time you are able to discharge your
responsibilities creditably. Therefore, to that extent, yes (I feel
fulfilled.) We fought a civil war. I will say to the best of my
ability, I discharged my duties. But if you look at the reasons why we
fought the war, I will say it was an unnecessary war. If I knew at
that time what I now know after many years of going around the world,
studying history and reading biographies, I just feel it was an
unnecessary war. But, unfortunately today, we're faced with fighting
terrorism. That phenomenon is going to dominate the world for the next
50 years, like I said in 2001 in one of my lectures. We are going to
be chasing terrorists for the next 50 years if we are not careful. The
reason is simply because we ignore why people do the things they do.
We dismiss them instead of examining the message carefully and finding
answers to it. I think it is rooted in injustice — injustice that
breeds poverty in such a big way; that is overwhelming that people
become desperate to use any means to vent their frustration and
religion is an instrument they use.
Going back to the civil war, we have not attained the peace we were
looking for; we have not achieved that unity we sought. We wanted to
keep Nigeria united for a purpose. We have not achieved the purpose
from what we see now many years after the war — and that is the source
of my regret. There is too much of a class struggle in Nigeria. The
centre of power in Nigeria is so narrow and they make all the
decisions.
How will you assess the state of insecurity in the country and do you
think the Multinational Joint Task Force is the solution to the
insurgency in the North-East?
The insurgency we are facing in this country is getting more
sophisticated and aggravated by the day. The insurgents are beginning
to have high morale as if they are achieving something. The state of
insecurity in Nigeria is very bad; it is frightening. When Nigeria on
the northern border has such countries like Cameroon, Niger and Chad,
I don't think the insurgency we have on our hand now is going to
recognise any boundary at all. Boko Haram is looking for territories
they can capture; it doesn't matter whether it is in Nigeria or
Cameroon. That's certainly a reason for everyone to be sitting up and
lend a hand to the Nigerian troops. If you remember, the September 11
plot was hatched not in the United States but in a foreign land.
Therefore, there is a possibility that if neighbouring countries allow
the insurgents to establish an Islamic caliphate, the whole world has
a problem to deal with. Evidently, there is a reason for the
international community to get really worried. Unfortunately, despite
having some combined international forces fighting in Iraq many years
ago, that country still remains an unsafe place for people to live. A
similar thing is being experienced in Afghanistan; America is still
battling with the Taliban. Multinational Joint Task Force is okay but
I am not really sure that is the sole solution to the insurgency. I am
not sure the MNJTF alone will solve the problem but we need to have
all the neighbouring countries in the northern border to wake up and
start doing something. I think it's a very good idea but there are
still limitations to such endeavours.
Nigeria boasts of probably the best troops in sub-Saharan Africa but
the troops seem incapable of dislodging Boko Haram insurgents. Where
does the problem lie?
Perhaps, it is rooted in the trend of development in the Army itself
when they went into governance and coups started happening. Even
within the coups, there were coups and there were people shot and
murdered trying to attempt a coup. With a situation like that,
theesprit de corpsof the military has been eroded. I think we lost
thatesprit de corpsgradually since the day the military started
engaging in coups. That's one aspect. Second, our governments didn't
have proper ministers of defence, who represent the political class,
the political system and the professional soldiers. They are removed
in quick successions, thereby destroying the military institution.
There were periods when no development really took place.
In the case of arms, ammunitions and equipment to match what is
happening in the world, we didn't pay enough attention to that. I also
think that soldiers are humans; they live with us and they have the
same kind of connections that all of us have within the society. They
need to be encouraged. I heard an officer say that all over the world
soldiers buy uniforms for themselves. That is not true. There is no
country in the world that will send its soldiers to war and be
expecting them to buy uniforms with their own money. If it gets to
that point, then we are beginning to lose the grip on our soldiers.
Do you see anything wrong in the use of the Civilian Joint Task Force
in military operations against Boko Haram?
Even during the civil war, we needed the help of the civilians because
they knew the terrains better than what the map was telling us. They
also knew some of idiosyncrasies of the population there, helping us
to know how to handle them. But we didn't organise them into a force.
If you arm a man and afterwards he is hungry, he will use the weapon
to find something to eat. Boko Haram also was supposed to have started
that way except that religion was part of it — where a governor was
alleged to have used some people as thugs, though organised, and he
abandoned them. They also abandoned him and turned on the people, the
police and the nation. Though that danger is there for the civilian
JTF to become a menace, it is not unusual to use civilians to help the
military in terms of intelligence gathering. It is easier to send
someone who is not a soldier around the enemy line, who is part of the
population whom they know.
Nobody knew the depth to which they could go simply because we don't
have a police force within the people. That's one problem and that's
why the military now need an organised civilian JTF. But if the
soldiers cannot face the guns of the insurgents, how do you expect
people carrying bows, arrows and some dane guns to be effective?
Beyond using them for gathering information, and assisting the
military in carrying out some logistic duties, they can't be any more
effective. We are on dangerous grounds, more so when we now have
elections around the corner; they may be available to unscrupulous
politicians.
The court marshalling of soldiers accused of mutiny in the current
fight against Boko Haram has been described by some people as
ill-timed. Some say it should have been done secretly not to
demoralise other soldiers on the war front. What do you think?
We have to be very careful. We are in a democracy and there is freedom
of information. Democracy thrives on information being freely
available; it will be difficult to defend in the future if the
military went into the barracks and secretly court marshal people on
matters of life and death — in which case they can be sentenced to
death. That can be very dangerous. Maybe in military era, you can do
that. But in this democracy, all of us have the responsibility to
demand for an open book so that we know exactly what is going on. It's
a lesson for all of us. Be that as it may, there is no good time or
bad time of disciplining soldiers. I think what we should worry about
is the frequency and the magnitude of it. When the country has a
hundred soldiers, including officers, being court -marshalled at the
same time, we should start asking ourselves questions. Are we really
going down slope to the extent that we will not able to retrieve these
things if we just apply the simple law? It's unlawful to demonstrate
in the army. Yet, I don't think it is enough to rely on the law to
discipline erring soldiers in this case. We need to ask why. I tell
myself that if these (mutinies by soldiers) happened under my watch, I
will court marshal all the officers. I will disband the units because
soldiers cannot under these circumstances do anything on their own.
Therefore, the senior officers must have done something wrong. We
should find out exactly what it is. The soldiers gave all sorts of
reasons — that they were badly equipped and that they didn't have
food. We suggest to the armed forces to look deeper into the reasons
these things are happening. Using ordinary complaints about equipment
not being good enough to fight the war does not entail discipline. The
military authorities, particularly the civilian authorities, have a
primary responsibility to critically consider this issue and find out
exactly why the soldiers acted the way they did.
Some people are agitating for the postponement of the general
elections. How do you see the call for poll shift or otherwise?
Those using the security situation as a reason for poll shift owe us
answers on when it will be conducive to conduct the general elections.
When is the situation going to be better than now? Before we can
debate this, they must advance what will happen if the elections are
held at the scheduled time. I haven't seen or heard anyone oblige us
with those arguments. I have a feeling that this situation that we are
in is not going to change for a very long time. If elections could be
held in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iraq, we will have to think again;
if really we want democracy or we want something else. I know there
are cases in court concerning the election. I think the most annoying
one is the case about (Muhammadu) Buhari not having a certificate.
Why is it annoying?
It is an insult to the armed forces — a terrible insult to the armed
forces. If they are so embedded in the system and they have lost their
souls, then they can go ahead and join everybody else in castigating a
General of Buhari's calibre. They are now talking about a school
certificate. What is that? By the time he joined the army, in those
days, there were no cutting corners. It is later when these same
civilians took over from the army that admission into it became less
transparent. I can give you an instance. There was Course Five around
1964: if one did not have a school certificate one couldn't apply to
join the army. And I know up to 1963 when the last General Officer
Commanding left Nigeria, there were no corners to be cut. There was no
such thing. Everything was on merit. And, that was how it was till
Buhari's time. Buhari attended the Mons (Officer Cadet School in
Aldershot in England) and the Staff College; I don't want to think
they have an idea what they teach in those places. And the rest of us
pretend as if we don't know what they do there. You send a man to
America for one and a half years in a military school. Do they think
he just went there to learn how to fire a rifle? No.
But why is it difficult for Buhari to produce the original copy of the
certificate?
He did. As I speak to you, I don't know where my original certificate
is because we gave the original to the Military Board. They took it
from us when we applied to join the Army. You give the original copy
of credential to the board. They take it and keep it in your file,
that's what happened. How many years ago? 50 years. And Nigeria with
our (poor) record-keeping and filing things into an archive -if we
have an archive at all; an archive inhabited by rats and cockroaches.
I think it's an insult.firstclassnewsline.net
I take it as a personal insult.
You feel the general elections should go ahead?
Yes. That is what the constitution says. Let the election hold and
let's see in how many places people cannot vote before we start this
hue and cry. We're back to 1993. They took us back all the way to
1993. We have seen this before. I am unhappy that (Pastor Tunde)
Bakare was ever part of it (call for poll shift) because he is a great
fellow of mine. They see a difficult situation instead of going head
on to confront it, Nigeria wants to take a path that leads to nowhere
to only perdition. We have been on this route before and we know the
result. Why do we think this current situation is going to end up
differently? The danger in this one is that we have been hearing of a
possible disintegration in Nigeria; not from outside the country but
within. It was a subject (disintegration) at the National Conference.
I was there. We are driving ourselves towards that route. The result
may not be very palatable. What is more, we have created so many
warlords all over Nigeria. There are private armies around the whole
place.
Will you encourage the call for the international community like the
European Union, African Union, and the United Kingdom to prevail on
the Federal Government not to postpone the February 14 elections just
as the United States recently did?
For people who are democrats, exactly what America said is what they
are going to say. We did this (presidential election) four years ago
where they swore in President Jonathan and four years after we are
going to have another election. This is not the time to start swaying
about like lilies in the wind. They can't do much more than they have
done; to warn us and also to send election observers. I hear a lot of
them already have observers in the country, which should be at a great
cost to them. Therefore, what else do we want from these people? We
must think of ourselves as being very much devalued and we earned it —
we deserve it. The international community has done its bit. It is
also disturbing that up till now we still need policemen to be
standing by polling booths before we can even be sure we can vote. If
we are expecting much more from the developed world, we are wasting
our time. A few things have changed since 1993 that can make the
situation worse now, if we are stupid enough not to have an election.
We might realise that the world is not so enamoured with us. Perhaps,
they are angry with us because we have made a very bad specimen of a
country in a developing world. We're not even developing because we're
still very backward.
Buhari has been portrayed as being an honest man. Do you think being
an honest man is enough for someone to rule Nigeria?
It is not enough but it is the first thing in the order in which I
would put the qualities of a Nigerian leader. Considering where we
find ourselves today, honesty is the first quality a man should have.
The people should trust a leader to the point that his words are taken
as a bond. If it is your worry that is honesty enough, I will say yes
it is enough. The next one is wisdom so that the leader is able to get
people who will do the work for him.Jonathan seems to be the most
criticised President the country has ever produced. Do you think he
deserves the criticisms?
I will just say he earned the criticisms. There is no smoke without
fire. If fish wants to rot, it starts from the head. The market, women
know that when they go to the market they open the gill. If it is
green inside, the fish is rotten. Even if he didn't personally commit
all the offences levelled against him, he's still responsible. He is
the President. He can ensure that justice is done where there are
infractions committed by people under his watch. He shouldn't allow
impunity to thrive.
Recently, Niger Delta militants threatened to go to war if Jonathan
loses his re-election bid. What do you make of that?
I know only one of the militants but I don't think he was old enough
to really talk about what happened during the civil war. They must
also remember, especially the ethnic militias in the Niger Delta area,
that the war went through their places too. They got away very lightly
then simply because it was the area we wanted to carve out of the
jurisdiction of (Emeka) Ojukwu. First, they were the minorities and
they didn't sign an agreement that said they wanted to form part of
Biafra. As a result, the rest of us were under obligation to protect
the minorities. The war was also fought in their territories. If they
were old enough they would see the misery even though they didn't
suffer ten per cent of what the East-Central, the present South-East
went through. They are giving wrong reasons to keep their son in the
Presidency. It's a filthy reason. It doesn't show they understand what
democracy is all about. Nigerians are not going to vote under duress.
Politics is a game of numbers. The one we refused to do in 1993, we
have not come out of it. We're going through the same cycle. I don't
think they lived at that time. I don't think even the politicians
today were old enough at that time to see exactly the drama that
unfolded. It seems to me: we learn very little from our past. What we
are risking is a complete disintegration of our country. Thereafter,
we will blame America for predicting the doom staring us in the face.
In 2010, John Campbell wrote in his book what could lead Nigeria into
a bigger trouble. Is that not what is happening now?
Firstclassnewsline.net