On 19th October 2001, nineteen soldiers were brutally hacked to
death by suspected Tiv militia in Benue State. In a swift reprisal
action, their colleagues from the 23rd Armoured Brigade invaded the
villages of Vasae, Anyiin Iorja, Ugba, Sankera and Zaki-Biam, all
located within two local government areas. By the time the
rampaging soldiers were done, no fewer than a hundred villagers
were shot dead with several buildings razed down. In the aftermath
of that tragedy, there were strident calls for the resignation of
the then Defence Minister, Lt. General Theophilus Yakubu Danjuma
(rtd) who granted an explosive interview to TheNews magazine where
he characterised the Tiv people in very negative light.
I do not want to repeat what Danjuma said in that interview,
because it serves no useful purpose. But in my column on this page
back then, I wrote: “…I want to believe that Danjuma talked out of
anger because, even from the interview, it is evident that he has a
long relationship with Tiv people. If there are problems today
between his (Jukun) people and Tivs, he should try and find
solution to them. Danjuma should not add more petrol to the fire.
He is a respected father figure in the country and within the
Middle Belt zone so he should not belittle himself by becoming a
Jukun warrior. He should be able to rise above that.”
Instructively, the title of that piece was, “Who is Danjuma
speaking for?”
In the wake of Danjuma’s latest outburst, were I to repeat that
headline, I am sure many Nigerians would come out to say, as they
are already doing, that he spoke for them but they miss the point.
“The Armed Forces are not neutral. They are conniving with armed
bandits that kill people. They facilitate their movement. They
cover them,” said Danjuma before he warned: “If you depend on the
armed forces for protection, you will all die one by one.” For a
former army chief to impute that those who wear the same uniform he
once did are no more than hired assassins and that citizens should
henceforth take the law into their own hands is to inflame the fire
of discord, the end of which nobody can foretell.
However, that Danjuma’s statement would enjoy a measure of
public support attests to how much President Muhammadu Buhari has
damaged ethno-religious relations in Nigeria. That his Defence
Minister, Mansur Dan-Ali, would describe Danjuma’s statement as an
“invitation to anarchy” is the height of hypocrisy. In case Dan-Ali
has forgotten, this was what he said after a meeting of security
chiefs with the president in January: “Since the nation’s
Independence, we know there used to be a route whereby the cattle
rearers take because they are all over the nation. If those routes
are blocked what do you expect will happen?”
Despite public reactions to what was clearly a justification of
violence by a high-ranking cabinet member, President Buhari did not
sanction or reprimand Dan-Ali whose appointment confirmed very
early that this administration has no regard for merit and
competence. That could not have been lost on a man like Danjuma who
must have concluded, as most people have, that some appointees in
this administration are in office, despite their incompetence and
insensitivity, not to serve public good but rather in promotion of
some sinister agenda.
The military thrives on hierarchy of command yet Dan-Ali was
appointed to boss his superiors in a critical sector even when his
record of military service, to put it mildly, was rather
undistinguished. If Dan-Ali had been a civilian all his life it
would have been a different matter. But he was a military man
picked as Defence Minister shortly after retirement with the
service chiefs who were his superior officers only a few years
before now made to take orders from him.
Going by the armed forces seniority roll, the current Chief of
Defence Staff, General Abayomi Gabriel Olonisakin started his cadet
training at the Nigerian Defence Academy (NDA) on 3rd January 1979
and was commissioned as a Second Lieutenant on 18th December 1981.
The Chief of Army Staff, Lt General Tukur Yusuf Buratai started his
cadet training on 1st January 1981 and was commissioned as a Second
Lieutenant on 17th December 1983. Meanwhile, Dan-Ali started his
cadet training on Short Service Commission on 5th March 1984 and
was commissioned on 15th December 1984!
Buhari’s pick for the Inspector General of Police office was
similarly informed by the same principle of placing personal
loyalty above competence and public good. It was therefore no
surprise when, following the Benue State tragedy, Mr Ibrahim Idris
also made some reckless statements even when he presides over a
Force whose men and officers have been reduced to carrying handbags
for concubines of VIPs. Little wonder that the ‘Ajekun-iya’ Senator
is now running rings around them, perhaps in preparation for
another video release.
To compound the problem, Buhari decided to appoint another
Katsina man as Director General of the National Intelligence Agency
(NIA) at a time most Nigerians were already complaining very loudly
that his National Security Council was dominated by a section of
the country, an insensitive disposition that is in itself a threat
to national security. That explains why the same people who told
the world that Boko Haram has been “technically defeated” are now
talking about ongoing negotiations with the murderous insurgents
whose commanders were recently hailed when they came to drop some
of our abducted school girls because they now have a “moral
burden”!
In a way, it is the president who unwittingly created the
climate of suspicions that have now fed into conspiracy theories in
a toxic political season. What we are witnessing is how disruptive
promotions and appointments into the military and security
hierarchy have combined with curious decision making to render them
practically impotent and our country unsafe. Therefore, the thread
which connects the variants of violence that we have in the country
today, including those being perpetrated by suspected herdsmen, is
that the Nigerian state has lost what Max Weber described as the
monopoly of “the legitimate use of physical force” to sundry
criminal cartels.
Security structures work best when the objectives are clear, the
managers uphold a devotion to duty with lines of authority that are
based on competence rather than sentiment and the political control
at the apex is strong and focused. In the absence of such clarity,
the system will suffer from internal incoherence as we see with
inter-agency squabbles and blame shuttling under the current
administration. At the receiving end of all this is the civil
populace which is then left at the mercy of non-state actors
unleashed by compelling socio-economic forces and the divisive
politics of the day.
It is within the foregoing context that Danjuma’s statement
becomes very unfortunate. Accusing the Army of aiding criminals to
attack and kill defenceless citizens is too heavy a charge to make
by a man with his pedigree. It is possible that there are rogue
elements within the military being used for some nefarious
activities but to accuse the institution the way Danjuma did is
very dangerous and he, of all persons, must know that.
Incidentally, because of the way we have mismanaged our affairs,
with the police incapable of restoring law and order; we have
saddled the military with the task of internal security for which
they are ill-prepared with damaging consequences. We saw that in
the excessive use of force in the South-east last year under the
pretext of ‘Operation Python Dance’. But in highlighting the fact
that some otherwise respected retired military officers of a
certain era now enjoy peddling conspiracy theories against the
army, my friend, Mahmoud Jega reminded us in his column on Monday
that in March 2014, then Adamawa State Governor, Admiral Murtala
Nyako, accused President Goodluck Jonathan of deploying both the
military and Boko Haram to destroy the North.
Like Danjuma who retired as Army Chief to become a stupendously
wealthy oil baron (he even donated N100 million after his outburst
last Saturday), Nyako, who also retired as Chief of Naval Staff at
the same period, is today one of the biggest mechanised farmers in
Nigeria, if not in the entire West Africa. So, members of their
generation have done very well for themselves in this same Nigeria
and that should temper their engagements with the rest of us.
In that infamous 2014 speech delivered at the United States
Institute of Peace in Washington, DC, Nyako not only alleged that
the arms and ammunitions being used by Boko Haram were purchased by
the Jonathan administration, he also incited Nigerians against the
military. “How else could there be such timely actions regarding
the withdrawal of the military near vital positions such as schools
and colleges with the immediate arrival of Boko Haram squad of
murderers?”, Nyako asked before he added: “It is now clear to all
and sundry that there is an unhindered coordination between the
activities of Boko Haram cells and some strategic commanders
sitting in some high offices in our national defence system…these
strategic commanders are waging a war of terror as well as adopting
insurgency tactics of using terror to achieve a political end
against Northern Nigeria.”
At a period when daughters of the high and mighty are marrying
across religious lines (Senate President Abubakar Bukola Saraki);
across ethnic lines (Kano State Governor Umar Ganduje) and across
political party lines (Vice President Yemi Osinbajo)—a commendable
development I must say—the poor of our society should not continue
to allow themselves to be used as canon fodders by members of the
business and political elite who are secured in the knowledge that
they, and members of their immediate families, are far away from
the theatres of war they most often help to ignite.
The crisis that we face in Nigeria today is that of poor
governance and all citizens, whether in the North or in the South,
are affected. To therefore couch it in ‘We versus Them’ narrative
is most unfortunate. Asking Nigerians to defend themselves and
disregard the institutions of state, as Danjuma did last Saturday,
can only lead the nation to the abyss of a Hobbesian jungle. The
kind of free-for-all violence that such a state of affair could
engender may not affect the Danjumas and Nyakos of this world but
it will compound the problem for the majority of our people who are
already going through difficult socio-economic upheavals.
As Danjuma is one of the supporters and financiers of Buhari’s
long aspiration to rule Nigeria, it is not likely that this
administration will go after him. That, at least, is comforting
because to do so would be very dangerous since, as I stated
earlier, his remarks resonated with several constituencies as a
result of the mismanagement of certain issues by this
administration. Whatever may be his motivation, Danjuma’s outburst
should be taken as yet another wake-up call to a president who not
only continues to squander enormous goodwill but has refused to
rise up to the demands of leadership in a diverse society.
The Essence of Easter
Tomorrow is Good Friday which commences the most important weekend
in Christendom. And as Christians all over the world mark the death
and resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ, there can be no better
time to reflect on the essence of our faith. For me, nothing best
exemplifies this season than a story I read recently which brought
tears to my face. It was reportedly told by the late Charles
Wendell Colson, a former Special Counsel to the American President,
Mr Richard Nixon, who resigned from office in the wake of the
Watergate scandal in 1974. Colson was also jailed for his role in
that scandal but following that experience, he became an
Evangelical Christian leader who founded Prison Fellowship
International.
According to Colson’s story, during the Second World War, a
group of American prisoners of war (POWs) were made to work in a
prison camp. One evening, 20 POWs were lined up after the day’s
work and when the shovels handed them were counted by the prison
guard, only 19 were found. In rage, the prison guard demanded to
know which of the prisoners did not bring his shovel back. When no
one responded, the guard drew his gun and said he would shoot five
men if the guilty prisoner did not step forward.
After a moment of tense silence, a young soldier, aged 19,
stepped forward with his head bowed down. The guard grabbed him and
shot him in the head. He then turned to warn the others that they
would suffer a similar fate if they exhibited the same
carelessness. When the prison guard left, the 19 remaining POWs
gathered the shovels only to discover there were actually 20. The
guard had miscounted.
In his commentary on the story, Pastor John Piper wrote: “Can
you imagine the emotions that must have filled their (the remaining
19 POWs) hearts as they knelt down over his (their slain colleague)
body? In the five or ten seconds of silence, the boy had weighed
his whole future in the balance—a future wife, an education, a new
truck, children, a career, fishing with his dad—and he chose death
so that others might live. Jesus said in John 15:13, Greater love
has no one than this; that one lay down his life for his
friends.”
I wish all my Christian readers Happy Easter!
Now Available!
Copies of my book, ‘Against The Run of Play: How an incumbent
president was defeated in Nigeria’ are now available at N3,000 each
in several bookshops across the country. Interested readers can
check out the addresses of where they can get the book on my web
portal, olusegunadeniyi.com. Bookshop managers
interested in wholesale copies can also contact The
Booksellers
Limited on 08033229113.
• You can follow me on my Twitter
handle, @Olusegunverdict and
on www.olusegunadeniyi.com
On 19th October 2001, nineteen soldiers were brutally hacked to
death by suspected Tiv militia in Benue State. In a swift reprisal
action, their colleagues from the 23rd Armoured Brigade invaded the
villages of Vasae, Anyiin Iorja, Ugba, Sankera and Zaki-Biam, all
located within two local government areas. By the time the
rampaging soldiers were done, no fewer than a hundred villagers
were shot dead with several buildings razed down. In the aftermath
of that tragedy, there were strident calls for the resignation of
the then Defence Minister, Lt. General Theophilus Yakubu Danjuma
(rtd) who granted an explosive interview to TheNews magazine where
he characterised the Tiv people in very negative light.
I do not want to repeat what Danjuma said in that interview,
because it serves no useful purpose. But in my column on this page
back then, I wrote: “…I want to believe that Danjuma talked out of
anger because, even from the interview, it is evident that he has a
long relationship with Tiv people. If there are problems today
between his (Jukun) people and Tivs, he should try and find
solution to them. Danjuma should not add more petrol to the fire.
He is a respected father figure in the country and within the
Middle Belt zone so he should not belittle himself by becoming a
Jukun warrior. He should be able to rise above that.”
Instructively, the title of that piece was, “Who is Danjuma
speaking for?”
In the wake of Danjuma’s latest outburst, were I to repeat that
headline, I am sure many Nigerians would come out to say, as they
are already doing, that he spoke for them but they miss the point.
“The Armed Forces are not neutral. They are conniving with armed
bandits that kill people. They facilitate their movement. They
cover them,” said Danjuma before he warned: “If you depend on the
armed forces for protection, you will all die one by one.” For a
former army chief to impute that those who wear the same uniform he
once did are no more than hired assassins and that citizens should
henceforth take the law into their own hands is to inflame the fire
of discord, the end of which nobody can foretell.
However, that Danjuma’s statement would enjoy a measure of
public support attests to how much President Muhammadu Buhari has
damaged ethno-religious relations in Nigeria. That his Defence
Minister, Mansur Dan-Ali, would describe Danjuma’s statement as an
“invitation to anarchy” is the height of hypocrisy. In case Dan-Ali
has forgotten, this was what he said after a meeting of security
chiefs with the president in January: “Since the nation’s
Independence, we know there used to be a route whereby the cattle
rearers take because they are all over the nation. If those routes
are blocked what do you expect will happen?”
Despite public reactions to what was clearly a justification of
violence by a high-ranking cabinet member, President Buhari did not
sanction or reprimand Dan-Ali whose appointment confirmed very
early that this administration has no regard for merit and
competence. That could not have been lost on a man like Danjuma who
must have concluded, as most people have, that some appointees in
this administration are in office, despite their incompetence and
insensitivity, not to serve public good but rather in promotion of
some sinister agenda.
The military thrives on hierarchy of command yet Dan-Ali was
appointed to boss his superiors in a critical sector even when his
record of military service, to put it mildly, was rather
undistinguished. If Dan-Ali had been a civilian all his life it
would have been a different matter. But he was a military man
picked as Defence Minister shortly after retirement with the
service chiefs who were his superior officers only a few years
before now made to take orders from him.
Going by the armed forces seniority roll, the current Chief of
Defence Staff, General Abayomi Gabriel Olonisakin started his cadet
training at the Nigerian Defence Academy (NDA) on 3rd January 1979
and was commissioned as a Second Lieutenant on 18th December 1981.
The Chief of Army Staff, Lt General Tukur Yusuf Buratai started his
cadet training on 1st January 1981 and was commissioned as a Second
Lieutenant on 17th December 1983. Meanwhile, Dan-Ali started his
cadet training on Short Service Commission on 5th March 1984 and
was commissioned on 15th December 1984!
Buhari’s pick for the Inspector General of Police office was
similarly informed by the same principle of placing personal
loyalty above competence and public good. It was therefore no
surprise when, following the Benue State tragedy, Mr Ibrahim Idris
also made some reckless statements even when he presides over a
Force whose men and officers have been reduced to carrying handbags
for concubines of VIPs. Little wonder that the ‘Ajekun-iya’ Senator
is now running rings around them, perhaps in preparation for
another video release.
To compound the problem, Buhari decided to appoint another
Katsina man as Director General of the National Intelligence Agency
(NIA) at a time most Nigerians were already complaining very loudly
that his National Security Council was dominated by a section of
the country, an insensitive disposition that is in itself a threat
to national security. That explains why the same people who told
the world that Boko Haram has been “technically defeated” are now
talking about ongoing negotiations with the murderous insurgents
whose commanders were recently hailed when they came to drop some
of our abducted school girls because they now have a “moral
burden”!
In a way, it is the president who unwittingly created the
climate of suspicions that have now fed into conspiracy theories in
a toxic political season. What we are witnessing is how disruptive
promotions and appointments into the military and security
hierarchy have combined with curious decision making to render them
practically impotent and our country unsafe. Therefore, the thread
which connects the variants of violence that we have in the country
today, including those being perpetrated by suspected herdsmen, is
that the Nigerian state has lost what Max Weber described as the
monopoly of “the legitimate use of physical force” to sundry
criminal cartels.
Security structures work best when the objectives are clear, the
managers uphold a devotion to duty with lines of authority that are
based on competence rather than sentiment and the political control
at the apex is strong and focused. In the absence of such clarity,
the system will suffer from internal incoherence as we see with
inter-agency squabbles and blame shuttling under the current
administration. At the receiving end of all this is the civil
populace which is then left at the mercy of non-state actors
unleashed by compelling socio-economic forces and the divisive
politics of the day.
It is within the foregoing context that Danjuma’s statement
becomes very unfortunate. Accusing the Army of aiding criminals to
attack and kill defenceless citizens is too heavy a charge to make
by a man with his pedigree. It is possible that there are rogue
elements within the military being used for some nefarious
activities but to accuse the institution the way Danjuma did is
very dangerous and he, of all persons, must know that.
Incidentally, because of the way we have mismanaged our affairs,
with the police incapable of restoring law and order; we have
saddled the military with the task of internal security for which
they are ill-prepared with damaging consequences. We saw that in
the excessive use of force in the South-east last year under the
pretext of ‘Operation Python Dance’. But in highlighting the fact
that some otherwise respected retired military officers of a
certain era now enjoy peddling conspiracy theories against the
army, my friend, Mahmoud Jega reminded us in his column on Monday
that in March 2014, then Adamawa State Governor, Admiral Murtala
Nyako, accused President Goodluck Jonathan of deploying both the
military and Boko Haram to destroy the North.
Like Danjuma who retired as Army Chief to become a stupendously
wealthy oil baron (he even donated N100 million after his outburst
last Saturday), Nyako, who also retired as Chief of Naval Staff at
the same period, is today one of the biggest mechanised farmers in
Nigeria, if not in the entire West Africa. So, members of their
generation have done very well for themselves in this same Nigeria
and that should temper their engagements with the rest of us.
In that infamous 2014 speech delivered at the United States
Institute of Peace in Washington, DC, Nyako not only alleged that
the arms and ammunitions being used by Boko Haram were purchased by
the Jonathan administration, he also incited Nigerians against the
military. “How else could there be such timely actions regarding
the withdrawal of the military near vital positions such as schools
and colleges with the immediate arrival of Boko Haram squad of
murderers?”, Nyako asked before he added: “It is now clear to all
and sundry that there is an unhindered coordination between the
activities of Boko Haram cells and some strategic commanders
sitting in some high offices in our national defence system…these
strategic commanders are waging a war of terror as well as adopting
insurgency tactics of using terror to achieve a political end
against Northern Nigeria.”
At a period when daughters of the high and mighty are marrying
across religious lines (Senate President Abubakar Bukola Saraki);
across ethnic lines (Kano State Governor Umar Ganduje) and across
political party lines (Vice President Yemi Osinbajo)—a commendable
development I must say—the poor of our society should not continue
to allow themselves to be used as canon fodders by members of the
business and political elite who are secured in the knowledge that
they, and members of their immediate families, are far away from
the theatres of war they most often help to ignite.
The crisis that we face in Nigeria today is that of poor
governance and all citizens, whether in the North or in the South,
are affected. To therefore couch it in ‘We versus Them’ narrative
is most unfortunate. Asking Nigerians to defend themselves and
disregard the institutions of state, as Danjuma did last Saturday,
can only lead the nation to the abyss of a Hobbesian jungle. The
kind of free-for-all violence that such a state of affair could
engender may not affect the Danjumas and Nyakos of this world but
it will compound the problem for the majority of our people who are
already going through difficult socio-economic upheavals.
As Danjuma is one of the supporters and financiers of Buhari’s
long aspiration to rule Nigeria, it is not likely that this
administration will go after him. That, at least, is comforting
because to do so would be very dangerous since, as I stated
earlier, his remarks resonated with several constituencies as a
result of the mismanagement of certain issues by this
administration. Whatever may be his motivation, Danjuma’s outburst
should be taken as yet another wake-up call to a president who not
only continues to squander enormous goodwill but has refused to
rise up to the demands of leadership in a diverse society.
The Essence of Easter
Tomorrow is Good Friday which commences the most important weekend
in Christendom. And as Christians all over the world mark the death
and resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ, there can be no better
time to reflect on the essence of our faith. For me, nothing best
exemplifies this season than a story I read recently which brought
tears to my face. It was reportedly told by the late Charles
Wendell Colson, a former Special Counsel to the American President,
Mr Richard Nixon, who resigned from office in the wake of the
Watergate scandal in 1974. Colson was also jailed for his role in
that scandal but following that experience, he became an
Evangelical Christian leader who founded Prison Fellowship
International.
According to Colson’s story, during the Second World War, a
group of American prisoners of war (POWs) were made to work in a
prison camp. One evening, 20 POWs were lined up after the day’s
work and when the shovels handed them were counted by the prison
guard, only 19 were found. In rage, the prison guard demanded to
know which of the prisoners did not bring his shovel back. When no
one responded, the guard drew his gun and said he would shoot five
men if the guilty prisoner did not step forward.
After a moment of tense silence, a young soldier, aged 19,
stepped forward with his head bowed down. The guard grabbed him and
shot him in the head. He then turned to warn the others that they
would suffer a similar fate if they exhibited the same
carelessness. When the prison guard left, the 19 remaining POWs
gathered the shovels only to discover there were actually 20. The
guard had miscounted.
In his commentary on the story, Pastor John Piper wrote: “Can
you imagine the emotions that must have filled their (the remaining
19 POWs) hearts as they knelt down over his (their slain colleague)
body? In the five or ten seconds of silence, the boy had weighed
his whole future in the balance—a future wife, an education, a new
truck, children, a career, fishing with his dad—and he chose death
so that others might live. Jesus said in John 15:13, Greater love
has no one than this; that one lay down his life for his
friends.”
I wish all my Christian readers Happy Easter!
Now Available!
Copies of my book, ‘Against The Run of Play: How an incumbent
president was defeated in Nigeria’ are now available at N3,000 each
in several bookshops across the country. Interested readers can
check out the addresses of where they can get the book on my web
portal, olusegunadeniyi.com. Bookshop managers
interested in wholesale copies can also contact The
Booksellers
Limited on 08033229113.
• You can follow me on my Twitter
handle, @Olusegunverdict and
on www.olusegunadeniyi.com
Read more https://nairalaw.com/the-danjuma-protocol-by-olusegun-adeniyi/