A member of the Senate Joint National Assembly Committee on Defence and an All Progressives Congress Senator from Kaduna Central, Senator Ahmed Saleh appeared to have dashed the hope of the military winning the war against terrorism even as he said that the situation was getting worse on daily basis.
“When the Chief of Defence Staff was appointed in January this year, the service chiefs made a categorical statement that within three months they will crush Boko haram. But unfortunately, what we are seeing is a complete deterioration of the situation, so it is incumbent on us to find out why that deterioration. We have heard about our soldiers’ mutiny, it is also our responsibility to find out why that is happening.
“For us to understand why that is happening, we need to go back to the Babangida (Gen. Ibrahim Babangida) era. After the 1990 Okar coup, the Federal Government of Nigeria systematically and comprehensively disarmed the military.
“All the tanks, all the artillery guns were disarmed and locked up. All the aircraft were parked in Ilorin and other places, flying stopped, training stopped to ensure regime security, not national security.
“All the good officers of the Nigerian Army were hounded out of the military. There was over concentration of power at the centre which was the army headquarters. Prior to that, General Officers Commanding, GOCs, used to have training and manouvre grants.
“They had the power and responsibility to train their troops and battalions and to ensure an efficient logistics and service support system. All that stopped. Everything was from Army headquarters, everything was from Air Force headquarters, everything was from Naval headquarters.
“The attendant result was decay. Training was no longer going on at the battalion level, soldiers lost their skills and since then, no additional military equipment was purchased for the Nigerian Army. Even things as little as machine guns were in short supply, ammunition was in short supply.
“An individual soldier’s professional skill was to be a matchman, to shoot and hit his target but can he do that if he has no ammunition? We have a duty to rebuild this army, to rebuild the armed forces, and unless we understand these basic facts, we are not going anywhere.
“Also, after some time the fighting doctrine of the Nigerian Army was changed. We were essentially brought up by the British. That means we knew how much materials we had, the tasks before us and so on. But along the line during the Obasanjo (Chief Olusegun Obasanjo) regime, General Obasanjo brought Americans here and our doctrine approach was changed to warfare.
“I make bold to tell you that up till today nobody understands that. I know it is a strategic concept of warfare but in Nigeria we are applying it to the operational and tactical level. It has created a lot of confusion within our army.
“Apart from that, our involvement in foreign operations and the kind of training we give to our soldiers for operations was a kind of defensive posture. You don’t kill until you are killed, you don’t attack until you are attacked.
“That also helped to change the orientation of some of our soldiers. Then again, I must mention here (alleged) fraud within the Ministry of Defence, fraud within the military service systems themselves has contributed a lot to diminishing our fighting capability.
“Further to that again, we have the issue of our combat service support. Because of (alleged) fraudulent activities, we monetized everything. Our supply services, our medical services are completely inefficient and are unable to support the fighting in the North East now. Right now, I stand to question how our soldiers are being fed.”
Security situation is deteriorating - Sen. Saleh
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