Our military runs like a municipal govt — Enahoro, ex-Army chief

Major-General David Olanrewaju Enahoro, a former Commandant, Command and Staff College, Jaji,
retired in  2002 as Chief of Policy and Plans, Army Headquarters. Before then, he served as Director, Military Training, Nigerian Defence Academy; Directing Staff, Director and Acting Commandant, National War College. Born on May 2, 1947 in Uhonmora-Ora, in Owan West Local Government Area of Edo State, Enahoro, an alumnus of University of Benin and a holder of University of“Ibadan Master of Science Degree in Strategic Studies; has been guest lecturer and external examiner to the National War College and National Institute of Policy and Strategic Studies, Kuru, and is a“recipient of Fellow (fwc) and Member (mni) of both institutions. In an one hour forty-five minutes interview  at his farm centre in Uhonmora-Ora, Edo State, he spoke  on issues bordering on security with particular emphasis  on restoring the integrity of the military and the police. Excerpts:“

Gen EnahoroLet me start by asking you about your military career?

I had a management career, post command….What I am trying to say is that I commanded from platoon to the infantry corps. I also served as staff officer from adjutant through brigade major in a brigade to Colonel HQ, Colonel GS in a division. I ended up as Chief of Policy and Plans at Army Headquarters. And I was a senior instructor in jungle warfare, combat survival at Jaji at the time we started a special warfare course.

 You mean counter terrorism course? What year was that?

We started a course in counter terrorism as far back as 1982.

 You mean you had started preparing for counter terrorism even at a time it wasn’t so much an issue in Nigeria?

In spite of these anomalies, do you think there will still be solution?

There is always a solution. I am not too sure how many insurgents they have identified and how many camps they are in. The first thing was to identify or locate them. And the Americans, the British and French were here and they went back. Why? They went back because they didn’t have the high command to liaise with. They met staff officers. They were being told to work with staff officers. They are not used to working with staff officers. They wanted to know what the commanders were doing and they wanted to be sure that the message that they wanted to convey to you was safe. If they were not sure, they will not share the message. I am not even surprised too that they didn’t agree to sell to us the …..helicopters because they knew that they would not be used for the purpose they were meant for.



Now you heard President Buhari say five years of insurgency enough is enough. And you heard him ordering relocation of military high command to the centre of the storm in Maiduguri. All these point in one direction, that if you do not have military background as leader of a country, you are not likely going to have it well administered because a President with military background knows how many soldiers make a battalion and so there is no way a so-called professional will, for budget reason, come and misinform him and will get away with it. You earlier on said you hoped the high command would not be enmeshed in budget scandal. I mean, a minister of finance saying N500 billion was given to the military and there was no up-to-date weapon commensurate with the fund to prosecute the fight against Boko Haram, for which the new President is considering a probe. Amnesty International has asked President Buhari to probe alleged war crimes committed by the military under the guise of fighting Boko Haram. What is your opinion; should he go ahead and probe?

It is normal that Amnesty International will raise issues when there is war because they do not take sides they have no business with any side. And unfortunately because of their particular background, and I have that problem too; I really don’t talk on sentiments whenever I comment on something, I just say it the way I see it.“One mistake that came up was the Nigerian military attempting to raise issue with Amnesty International because the whole world will tell you, `Why would Amnesty International blackmail you? But I am glad that that statement did not come from the President of the country or members of government.

So, they will see it as (military) people attempting to defend themselves. It is normal to accuse. It is also normal to defend.  When President Olusegun Obasanjo authorized the operation in Zaki Biam, Amnesty International actually came up to accuse Nigerian military. You didn’t hear the military respond but it was actually probed. Open investigation was done to prove that, like the case of Zaki Biam, for example, it was known that riff-raffs, ex-soldiers were slaughtering people with photographs taken and were selling them in open market. Amnesty International or America did not go further. A clear conscience fears no accusation.

Then you talked about the background of the Commander-in-Chief. Let me be very frank here. I have looked through American history and I think only two of its Presidents so far didn’t have  military background. Even in other countries that you don’t think that they have military background they have the advantage of military training and national army. Most countries in the world run their national service within the ethos of military training. When the National Youth Service Corps was established in this country, we had thought that it was the beginning of something. That was an opportunity to infuse ethos of military training in graduates.

And if you read The Prince, you will find that those who aspire to rule need military training, military education, because of the completeness of military education.“I have always looked at this nation too and have said if General Gowon were to be civilian President at the age he was head of state, this nation would have gone far in development. All those military officers succeeded to the extent they did because of their military background. The first thing is for you to know and appreciate the situation, define your mission, identify weaknesses and strengths and it applies to other disciplines which is where strategy has suddenly become a common term.

It is a military term that has now spread into other disciplines. If you talk of history now, they even tell you ‘strategy for collecting data. So, there is something in military background for a Commander-in-Chief. Even if he has none, he must  have those advisers that see things dispassionately. You must let the Commander-in-Chief see things openly without hiding anything. Your loyalty will be judged from the day the Commander-in-Chief takes a decision. People say but the military is autocratic. I just laugh.

I served for 34 going to 35 years in the military and I have not seen any organization that gives everybody so much room to prove himself. A platoon commander sits down with his privates and others to discuss and they express their minds. When the company commander now comes to discuss with his company, he sends his platoon commanders away and speaks with everybody without their commanders so that they can even report their own commanders.

Up to the highest level like in the Army Headquarters when I was there, every week, the staff in the headquarters would meet with the commanders on the field. That is sufficiently consultative. The difference now is where you have to take a decision. Remember, the buck stops on your table and I am sure you are not going to ignore the facts that are laid bare. This is now where your level of loyalty comes. Whatever your view, once the commander has taken those decisions, you owe a duty to implement them. That is part of what would have come out from a basic military training for a Commander-in-Chief.



But many Nigerians don’t really see the military in the light you so project?

What is wrong with Nigeria is that the military thoroughly messed up itself because of its involvement with politicians. If the military did not take over, may be the respect for the military would still have been a lot higher. You see the military that now has decided, since our time, just turn your back at politicians and let them do what they want to do the way they want to do it because, in the final analysis, the military will never get praise for anything.

“In this country, nobody remembers that, but for military intervention in 1966, there would have been no Nigeria again. I was not in the military then. But it got to a stage you could no longer move from Lagos“to Ibadan through Ikorodu Road. How would you do it when the whole of Western Religion was on fire, when the whole place was no longer safe, when the politicians themselves were boasting and bringing in the boys, when local police were recruited? When the military came in, normalcy returned but they should have been able to know when to go.

And in any case, even in their entrance, they were perceived to be partisan and then it was obvious that some people would react. So, that they reacted was not unexpected. But I was already in the military  when they started the baton exchange from one military regime to another, when all we could have done was to go away at that time, we ran down the essence of the military. Now let me go to the question of equipping the military. When I look at this country I smile. We have an Army that manufactures, a Navy that manufactures, an Air Force that manufactures.

I don’t know whether the police have started manufacturing; of course, I won’t be surprised. These are not primary military functions. You don’t manufacture what you want to use. It is not possible. Even the ordinary pistol, you will be surprised the number of parts and the diverse ways those parts come about. Even when we said we set up DICON (Defence Industries Corporation of Nigeria) in Kaduna, we didn’t seem to see it as a military company heading a very wrong concept. In developed countries now, nations collaborate to produce even the most basic military ware but here we think that we can do it within the military.

I read in the papers that the Air Force had manufactured unmanned vessels and I have been asking myself, where are the unmanned vessels? The money being allocated to the military may not actually be going for what it is meant to achieve. We have a military that is like a municipal government: you run schools, you run markets, you run everything. That is what we have. What bothers me most is that we run so many services that very little is left for the actual materials required. I am not criticizing the current, but the truth is that the Nigerian military was never planned, is not planned and must be planned. And it does not necessarily mean that you are going to throw away the present military. No. You will also consider the present military from what we call the forces in being  a factor in arriving at your new plan.



Security, as you can see, is mostly considered in the focus of the new President. What is your advice towards effective security re-positioning?

In considering security, adequate attention must be paid to the police. Our policing is at zero level. If the police is effective, most of what is happening now would not happen because it is the police that is closest to the populace. In every Local Government, the police is there or should be there. As a matter of fact, as a junior officer, when we had a joint operation, we had to do it from police operations centre because they used to have communication covering the whole country. If that were still there, what happened that Boko Haram spread out of control? That should not have been so.



What would you say is problem of the police therefore and what is the solution?

I am aware that the problem of the police started when they removed what they call e-branch, the intelligence wing and merged it to form the National Security Organisation (NSO) at that time, which is precursor for SSS. That was the beginning of the collapse of police effectiveness.

The police e-branch was a critical aspect; they focused on the locality.“The second thing that went wrong was that they decided to behook the police. Police suddenly became interested in living in barracks and so they were distancing themselves from the people they were meant to be close to. Behooking, that is, you are putting them in barracks when you don’t even have the  means to maintain them there and that affected their morale and that also affected their equipment. If there was anything the police was proud of, it was his baton and torchlight.“Nigeria Police is perhaps the only police in the world that is too sophisticated to do foot patrol. If you go to Britain from the airport and I have been to 97 countries in the world, you see police men on foot patrol, their hands at their back. So, if you have that, there could still be this suicide bombing once in a while but not daily occurrence like we have in Nigeria now.

The security challenges we have are so because, like some say, the level of policing is too distant from the people. I hear some people say state police will make things worse now as politicians will be using them. And the question I ask is, the federal police, is it not being used by politicians; not necessarily the politicians in the Federal Government, even politicians outside government?“Every level of law making must have a law enforcement agency. Until we recognize that, we are just not ready for a good police. Even the palace should have police. Local government should have its police.“Universities should have their police. In Nigeria here, go to Shell, they have their police. They just train them with the Nigeria Police because they are serving them. So, the earlier we tell ourselves the truth, we need the police to be closer to the people.“There are areas of policing that must be centralized: investigation, intelligence.

That is why when we think that the EFCC is the solution, we are joking. The police is the solution. Even“the functions of EFCC, ICPC, NDLEA are all police functions. So, it is just a matter of looking at those functions and see those that must be centralized and then you think of the funding and making a common standard for all levels of the police. The central government will now use funding to effect compliance.“Again, there is no uniform for the police and it is bad. I don’t know whether you observe that the police wear camouflage. They wear T-shirts. Does it mean that they are ashamed of their uniform or that“only when by wearing camouflage looking combative will drive away the criminals? Even in the military, combat uniform is meant for combat.

Now, as a police man,  you want to look combative and it comes to a time that nobody is even frightened and too many people are just willing to die.“I hope the present administration will tell them to wear their uniform, to have working dress for the Army, for the Navy and  the Air Force. You even have working dress for them, they are different because they work in a different environment. The camouflage is for forest environment. Even the police ADC behind a governor wears camouflage because he has to look combative. No, no, no.

And you think it is simple? It is not. There is the case of a man in Benin, each time he goes home he sees the police on the road wearing just any type of dress. So, one day he took for granted that they were the police and they told him, “Mo boy, shut up your mouth. We are armed robbers.” Many times that armed robbery happened on the road, people thought that they were police because the police on the road no longer want to wear uniform. Who knows whether they are policemen or not? If policemen wear their uniform and the uniform is provided by the authority with a standard, when we see a policeman we will know he is a policeman, not a soldier-police.