By Mudiaga Affe, Kassim Omomia and Emma Obe
Mixed reactions have continued to greet the appointment of the new Chief of Army Staff, Maj.-Gen. Farouk Yayaha.
While a retired army colonel and security consultant, Col. Chinedu Owhonda (retd.), said that the appointment of Yahaya conformed with the rules, some concerned Nigerians, including two retired major generals, frowned on the President’s discretionary power in appointing the new CoAS.
President Muhammadu Buhari had last Thursday appointed Yahaya as the CoAS barely a week after the demise of the former CoAS, Lt.-Gen.Ibrahim Attahiru and 10 others in a plane crash in Kaduna.
Yahaya, a member of the 37th Regular Course of the Nigerian Defence Academy was until his latest appointment, the Theatre Commander, Operation Hadin Kai, an outfit responsible for counter terrorism and counter-insurgency operations in the North-East.
The new CoAS appointment initially received some knocks from Nigerians, especially South-Easterners, who wondered why the president has consistently refused to appoint one of them into the nation’s security architecture. “Many people had hoped that the regime would appoint Maj.-Gen. Benjamin Ahanotu from Anambra State as Attahiru’s successor both to water the perishingly shrivelling tree of national unity in the country and to pacify the South-East whose sense of alienation in the last five years is resurrecting the ghost of Biafra secessionist agitation,” a United States-based Nigerian, Prof. Farooq Kperogi, noted on Saturday.
Beyond this, Yahaya’s emergence, stakeholders, who spoke to ThisNigeria, said the action would lead to the early retirement of many generals that would have been of great service, especially during this period of rising security challenges in the country.
Insurgency, kidnapping, among other vices have been ravaging the country in recent time, resulting in the death of hundreds of persons and the displacement of many others. Meanwhile, the fear of massive compulsory retirement has gripped officers of the Nigerian Army, particularly graduates of the Regular Course 35, 36, and 37 of the NDA. ThisNigeria gathered that with Yahaya’s appointment, early retirement awaits no fewer than 25 generals who were his seniors.
According to the Lagos-based retired major-general, who craved anonymity, it is not proper for the President to have skipped over 20 generals to pick the new CoAS.
He said, “When the system does not have proper succession by way of seniority, records, and others, everything becomes too discretional, and discretion of power is crooked. It should be the rule of law than a crooked cord of succession. “If you went down up to 20 generals before you got someone, are you saying that the others who got there are not good? If, so, how did they get to that level? From number one to 20, are you saying they are not good? “There is no reason to go far down and send so many people away. If it is one or two that you are retiring, it is understandable, but not this many. This will only happen in Nigeria.”
Another retired general, who also sought anonymity, described the early retirement of the officers as akin to “a tsunami”.
The first implication of the appointment, he said, was that officers of 35,36, and most from 37 Regular Course would be retired soon. He said, “All the generals of 35, 36 and some 37 Regular Courses would be retired. It would be quite a tsunami”. He added that retiring the officers would be a huge and needless waste to country in the face of the current fight against insurgency.
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“In fact, it is a huge and needless waste in the face of insurgency. Actually, a forced and mass retirement based on political expediency is very wrong and antithetical”, he added.
The retired general argued further that as a professional institution with defined standards, the military should be treated as such by the political players and insulated from undue political interference. He noted, “The conditions for retirement in the military are age on rank, 35 years of service, failure at promotion exams, and indiscipline”. Similarly, an Onitsha-based lawyer and security consultant, Mr. Jideofor Chinwuba, said the retirement of several generals who are still active was an economic waste to the nation.
He said “The cost of the exercise is three-fold. And all of them are very telling on the system. Immediately, all those retirees will have to be paid their entitlements, which are huge on an economy that is still undergoing a recession. “The second cost is psychological, which borders on the morale of serving officers and men of the armed forces. You may never be able to tally the cost of disaffection and disloyalty in the military in a period when the nation is at some kind of war, where the full loyalty and energies of officers and men are required.
“Then the ultimate cost on Nigeria is the waste brought about by retiring senior military generals on whom so much investment has been made. If one looks at the cost, it entails a huge sum for one military officer to be trained from the defence academy through all the training at home and abroad, which runs into hundreds of millions of naira. You can imagine what the nation loses when it sends its generals home without them giving back to the nation.
“There is no general in the Nigerian armed forces, whose cost of training, remuneration, and welfare for close to 35 years does not run into at least N500m. If 50 generals are going now, you could be looking at about N25bn just gone down the drains.
“And the worst of it is that the country has not been calling its rich reservoir of generals and top military officers from the reserve to help with situations such as the country has now. They just retire and enjoy their fat benefits.” Also, a Nigerian-born US attorney, Dr. Asukwo Archibong, said appointing Yahaya ahead of others was an improper way of managing the military.
“We must remember that upon the appointment of the late Lt.-Gen. Attahiru, of Nigerian Army course 35, a lot of senior army officers were forced to retire due to their seniority. Our nation lost a lot of talented, seasoned, and experienced officers as a result of that appointment. “With the appointment of a Maj.-Gen. Yahaya, of Nigerian Army course 37, a lot of generals will be forced to retire. Nigeria would have lost two sets of army generals in a short period. This is simply bad, poor, and improper management by the Commander-in-Chief of the Nigerian Armed Forces.
“At a time of such great insecurity in the country, we need a stable and professional military. The appointment of Maj. Gen. Yahaya leading to the forced retirement of over 20 generals does not lend itself to a “stable and professional” military in Nigeria. “It should be noted that Lt.-Gen. Buratai, the former CoAS was Nigerian Army Course 29.
It means within five months we have lost generals from Course 29 through Course 36. It is harmful to the nation,” he said. However, Owhonda, a Port Harcourt lawyer, told one of our correspondents that apart from the fact that the President and Commander-in-Chief had the prerogative to appoint any qualified officer as the CoAS, Yahaya had the requisite qualifications and experience to fit into the position.
The truth is that most of the generals from Course 35 and 36, he said, were just marking time and waiting to retire, after a former CoAS, Gen. Tukur Buratai, overstayed his due in the office. Owhonda said, “The generals do not prosecute wars. They stay in the background and give orders and so on. Those that prosecute the war are the field commanders. “Farouk Yahaya, the new Chief of Army Staff is not a junior ranking army officer. He has been a major general for the past three, four years. He has been a baton-tested officer among his class.
“The generals we have today, most of them, their run-out dates are already there like the 35th and 36th course mates. So, there is no need for their being in service. It is just that something happened along the line. Gen. Buratai was made Chief of Army Staff when he is of the 25th course. And since then, up to 36th, so many generals had been on the line doing nothing. They were not doing anything.
“The truth is that the appointment of Farouk is on the good side. And it will help develop the army so that those of them that have come out of run-out date, we will expect retirement of over 45 generals if they are to follow the main rules and regulations. Thirty-five, 36, 37 will have to go home and 27 Short service, my course mates. “They didn’t appoint him as a junior ranking officer. He merits it. He has been on the field fighting all this time.
“The appointment of the Chief of Army Staff is the prerogative of the President and Commander-in-Chief. He has the right to appoint anybody that he feels to serve the nation. “You know that the first two in the hierarchy are from the Eastern Zone. If the President doesn’t want to appoint any person from the east or the west or South-South, he has the prerogative of appointing anybody that appeals to him. “There are so many other major generals from the other parts of the region that he can also appoint. Appointing Yahaya is in line with the rules. It is left to Yahaya to perform. I know him personally. I believe he would perform.”
