allAfrica.com: Nigeria: When Will Military Reinvent Itself in Niger Delta? (Page 1 of 1)

The billions of naira shovelled down the drain of the Nigerian military establishment on its personnel since 1999 for training, hardware and infrastructure should by now at least have started working for its major provider - the Nigerian taxpayer.

The inability of the Nigerian military in combating the criminal element of the Niger Delta struggle is particularly worrisome, especially against the backdrop of the recent open-hulled gunboat attacks at the Bonga offshore production platform.

One does not need to read a CIA dispatch or any "sexed-up" intelligence reports to know about Nigeria's naval incapacity; all you need is to take "a passing glance" across the Lagos lagoon at our aging and idle warships berthed at the Apapa quays. Every past Nigerian Air Force press release on any of its air crashes unmistakably includes a caveat that the downed pilots concerned "were the best". In April 2007, a band of ragtag "foreign combatants" held the garrison of an army brigade hostage in Kano in a gun fight for more than 48 hours with the divisional headquarters spokesperson in Kaduna shamelessly claiming they had "beaten them back" within the borders of Nigeria!

During the Obasanjo presidency, virtually everything was "reformed" with perhaps the notable exception of our military sector. If for the sake of argument any reform had taken place, it was not extended to operational efficiency as is blatantly obvious in the Niger Delta region. During the era of the stern Gen. T. Y. Danjuma as Defence Minister, the remaining trenches of military "superiority" were finally subordinated to "bloody" civilian authority to secure the future of a fresh shot at democracy against misguided adventurers and buccaneers in uniform and their larger society accomplices. Nevertheless, the prior peculiar and all-pervading "who bil dis gada" military mentality has also been our country's most veritable means of upward social mobility with barracks life the most integrated and tolerant of communities in Nigeria.

With due respect to the quantum professional ability of succeeding generations of gallant, competent and able Nigerian officers, there doesn't seem to be a collective will on their part to come under the microscope of informed public scrutiny for ostensibly "security reasons" as evidenced in the ongoing trial of Henry Okah and others at a Federal High Court sitting in Jos that has taken a particular camera dimension not for national interests but to shroud primordial lapses.

To briefly appreciate the extent of our military's logistical wrinkles in the Niger Delta region, let us briefly go to the European Union. "When Somali pirates hijacked a French yacht with 30 crew members aboard in early April, the French just took over an hour to start organising a counterattack. While negotiators talked about a ransom, French commandos parachuted directly into the Indian Ocean and joined up with ships from France, the United States, Britain, Canada, Germany and Pakistan already operating in the region as part of a naval task force set up in 2002.

A week later, the ransom was paid, the hostage freed, safe and sound. Then the French Special Forces moved in after intelligence located an SUV in Somalia carrying six of the alleged pirates, a sniper in a helicopter fired into the truck's engine killing it dead. The men were captured alive and are now in jail in France." (P19 Newsweek, May 5, 2008).

The military reward process has always been a chest full of medals (not the Idi Amin type anyway) and mess walls of displayed plaques for valour and ability but overstay in the political arena has in Nigeria's past rather fostered juicy political appointments, a cult-like loyalty to points of vain hero-worshipping and the constant rubbing of thumb and forefinger "anything goes" over professional dedication to service in officers' first calling. Today, military efficiency is more than barking orders, smart salutes and fancy footwork. It is all about vision.

During the eight years that Vladimir Putin was in power, he tripled the Russian defence spending acquiring a new generation naval muscle, a state of the technology air fleet and laying the foundation of a 21st century missile defence shield system thus jumpstarting massive private sector participation in research and development, creating hundreds of thousands of jobs in that country's military industrial complex, decayed and moribund from the Cold War years.

The Nigerian military is no doubt in search of heroes but not the type that characterised the over-exaggeration of Pfc. Jessica Lynch's "rescue" but Maxwell Khobes and an occasional "Black Scorpion" who shake complacent high commands. The principle of ultimate responsibility has to take more roots in our military public relations away from the peculiar artistry of information management perfected by Mohammed Saeed al-Sahaf (the comic end-time Saddam era military spokesman).

General Leopold Galtieri was commander-in-chief of the Argentine armed forces during the 74-day Falkland Islands war that put a temporary great back to Britain. Upon the loss of the war, the nation not only ensured that he was removed from office, but he was tried and subsequently imprisoned for the singular incompetence of a commanding five-star General and the official negligence of losing Malvinas (as the contentious islands of Falkland were originally called).

Here, our peacekeeping combatants get cheaply routed by some faceless Darfur rebels and part of the returning remnant 243 Recce Battalion get roasted in a road mishap with no principal officer even proffering some plausible explanation or at least any semblance of a public apology - overall servant leadership notwithstanding.

Many Nigerians wallow in the wishful thinking that it is the lack of political will and not institutional malaise that is bogging down the fight against criminality in the Niger Delta region. There is yet a transparency dimension that arose during the African Pride saga as exposed by an outstanding House of Representatives Navy sub-committee; whatever the reality checks, the days of conventional warfare in the creeks are over. The gangs of the Niger Delta are not as random and unorganised to be appeased with massive monetary inducements and decimated by haphazard skirmishes in the long term.

A classic guerrilla scenario has emerged such that only touch-button surgical strikes and deep penetration by compact specialist forces from a roving offshore Command and Control centre should be the backbone of any serious engagement to reconcile that hostile region with the rest of federated Nigeria. It is one thing for an occupation force to lose to a guerrilla enemy beyond its borders as the Red Army did in Afghanistan, but it's another ball game within borders; ask the Chechnya's. For us, the Bakassi front while it lasted obviously failed as a veritable breeding ground for jungle warfare expertise as the litmus test of the Delta is now proving.

If the prevailing vocation of public hearings firmly takes root in our political culture, the next parliament would subject the post-Yar'adua administration to a forensic post-mortem on the unprecedented amount of funds channelled to the military and security forces in the Niger Delta region (starting with the 2008 budget). Only then would the predictable public outcry facilitate the much-needed monumental reforms in that sector that has for so long hoodwinked Nigerians with a never-ending cheap blackmail of "serving the nation" seemingly oblivious of the huge contrast between the colossal private fortunes of many of its brass and their legitimate entitlements.

Joe wrote from 53, France Road, Sabon Gari, Fagge Local Government Area, P. O. Box 9030, Kano.

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