BY ROBERT OBIOHA
Nigeria is peopled by all manner of people. Some are good, industrious and intelligent. Some are shrewd and some are outrightly lazy.
But there is a group of Nigerians that specialize in smear campaign and petition writing even when nothing is amiss. That is how I regard those behind the recent report in The Nation of Saturday February 2, 2013 entitled “Petitions flood National Assembly over alleged lopsidedness promotions in the Army.”
According to the report, “The National Assembly has been inundated with petitions arising from the recent promotion and retirement of senior officers in the Nigerian Army.”
The petitioners, among other things, accused the current Chief of Army Staff (COAS), Lieutenant-General Azubuike Ihejirika of “favouring the South-East where he comes from at the expense of the North and the South-West.”
They also allege that the “South-East was heavily favoured ahead of the other five geo-political zones in the recruitment of soldiers into the Nigerian Army Depot, Zaria, and particularly faulted the promotion of a military aide to the late President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua, who they accused of preventing President Goodluck Jonathan from becoming the Acting President of the country.”
The statistical data supplied by the petitioners on recruitment into the Army, showed that South-East got 1925 slots, South-South, 1916; South- 1561; North-West, 1936; North-Central, 1788; North-East, 1637 and Federal Capital Territory (FCT), 183. On retirement, the petitioners alleged: “The pursuit of General Ihejirika’s agenda also manifested itself clearly in his disregard for decisions of the Army Council. The Army Council approved the retirement of 11 Major Generals, but General Ihejirika retired 12. Similarly, 26 Brigadiers were retired instead of 25 approved by the Council, while 13 Colonels were retired instead of the 12 approved.
It should be mentioned that many Igbo officers who have an age problem were not presented with letters of retirement unlike others who have since been eased out without a chance to progress.”
There are other accusations leveled by the faceless petitioners against the person of Ihejirika ostensibly to portray him in bad light before the general public. I do not want to bore the readers with every bit of such frivolous allegations because they are mere smear campaign against the current COAS who happens to come from the South-East geo-political zone.
Assuming the statistics rolled out by the petitioners on recruitment is correct, how does the South-East with 1925 slots beat North-West with 1939? There is more to the petition than the eyes could see. I believe that the intention of the petitioners is to pull Ihejirika down since he has been carrying out his obligations as they should be.
If he is down, then the petitioners would have dealt a great blow to the Igbos whom they hate with passion. The petitioners did not hide their disdain for Ihejirika and his ethnic origin in their phraseology such as “to Igbonise the army.” What exactly do they mean by “to Igbonise the army?” I need clear cut explanation on the new phrase. Let me remind the readers that Ihejirika is the second Igbo man to be appointed the Chief of Army Staff in the Nigerian Army.
The first was the first military Head of State, the late Major-General JTU Aguiyi-Ironsi. It is public knowledge that the Igbos lost many of their military officers in the counter coup of July 29, 1966 and the civil war that raged from 1967-1970. It is also known that it took the Igbos almost 40 years after the war to have a semblance of leveling up with other geo-political zones. There was a time only one Igbo, Rear Admiral Ndubusi Kanu (rtd) was in the Supreme Military Council. That was during the reign of General Murtala Muhammed.
How many General Officer Commanding (GOCs) are from the South-East? How many Igbos are really in the commanding heights of the Army? Let Ihejirika accusers tell us. Ordinarily, I had wanted to ignore the faceless petitioners.
But on a second thought, I decided to join issues with them because falsehood if not challenged might eventually be taken as truth. It is like propaganda. If you allow propaganda to spread, over time, people will start taking it as truth. Although, this type of campaign is not new in Nigeria, it is fast assuming a dangerous dimension.
Reading tribe into a national institution as the army is evil and may breed discontent. It is a dangerous occupation that should be nipped in the bud. If a particular falsehood is not dealt with, it will definitely breed another dangerous one. That is my mission in this write-up. I am not a soldier but I am aware that recruitment into the Nigerian Army is very thorough and based on quota system. I had once applied and was not called up.
I did not begrudge anybody or any tribe. The army advertises its recruitment exercises and publishes the outcome in some national dailies. I believe that such recruitment is solely based on merit. I do not know where Ihejirika’s traducers got their facts and figures from. If their business is to rubbish a gentleman and an accomplished officer of Ihejirika’s standing, they have failed woefully. Their petition contains fabrications and outright falsehood even from the start.
They have hate agenda to accomplish. They should not be taken seriously. Their allegations should be dismissed for lack of merit. To show the shallowness of their allegation, let the army authorities publish state-by-state or zone-by-zone all serving members of the Nigerian Army, Navy and Air Force so that Nigerians will have a correct picture of which zone has the highest.
This inventory should be extended to the Nigeria Police Force as well as the Nigerian Customs, Prisons and Immigration. The same should be done in the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) and other oil and gas related agencies. Let the federal government publish state-by-state all staff of Federal Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs).
Nigerians deserve to know who gets what in all these MDAs. Official statistics, I believe, will give the true position. I believe that publishing all these will settle, once and for, all the accusations of lopsidedness being peddled whenever an Igbo or any other tribe is heading an agency. In a nation of over 250 ethnic groups, such allegation cannot be unexpected.
But the current one has all the trappings of ethnic vendetta. I believe that those accusing Ihejirika of nepotism have taken the fight to bring him down, by all means, to a ridiculous level. They are hatchet men out to do a dirty job. They are simply jobbers. They have gone to the National Assembly and without waiting for the outcome of their petition, rushed to the press to drum up their campaign.
That alone gave them up as alarmists, intent to cause tension and disaffection. They want to heat up the polity, once again, at a time the nation is grappling with mounting insecurity problems. The smear campaigners and their sponsors want to cause disaffection in the army and thereby distract the COAS from his laudable anti-terrorism campaign.
They want to derail his good leadership of the army. If that is their target, they have, again, failed because the COAS is a highly focused officer, who can never be deterred by such unfounded and baseless allegations that have no basis in truth.
Those carrying out this campaign of calumny should note that the military is apolitical non-ethnic and non-religious. It is one national institution that can be called Nigerian. It has Nigerians of every tribe and religion. I do not understand what Ihejirika accusers stand to gain from this mudslinging coated in ethnic colours of hate and bias.
Even if they don’t like the face of the current COAS, must they go to this length in order to pull him down from the enviable height he has reached in the Army based on merit and solid hard work of many years.
There is no way they will discredit the reputation the COAS has built over the years. Ihejirika is a detribalized and patriotic Nigerian, who wants the best for his country. He has been doing that even before his elevation as COAS and he will continue to be guided by that zeal in the service of his fatherland.