By Hakeem Baba-Ahmed
On all matters of national security, the responsible thing to do is exercise restraint, discretion and distance as dictated by one’s proximity to facts and commitment to the general good. Precisely for the same reasons, however, matters involving lives and livelihoods, peace and public safety cannot be left entirely to leaders.
There is a huge grey area where private and organized opinions and dispositions are legitimate. Speculations over the recent change of leadership of the military, and its coincidence with loud claims of an aborted coup d’etat are examples of conjectures the government cannot ignore. Its case will be better served if it adopts an enlightened engagement strategy that avoids fighting-off speculations with blunt weaponry and a back against the wall.
As we speak, the nation leans towards believing that a group of military officers had planned a bloody coup against the Tinubu administration. The administration said the officers are being held over matters related to breaches of discipline. In this particular instance, it would be fair to accuse the administration of poor judgement, at the very least. If, indeed, there were plans to overthrow Tinubu, denying it will be futile. The officers being held must be investigated and/ or charged for some offences. Wise counsel will advise that the military authorities and the administration hasten the investigation and prosecution of these suspects. The nation deserves to know what they are being held for, and will follow the process of their trials very closely. Overthrowing a legitimate government is not a source of embarrassment for the government. It is treason for which punishments are prescribed. It will not be the first time attempted coups were aborted.
It is not difficult to understand the politicization of the rumoured attempted coup. Tinubu’s administration has an army of opposition and rules over a large proportion of the citizenry which will welcome its end, by any means necessary. The tragedy here is twofold. Citizens who are indifferent to the survival of the administration, at least until another verdict on it in 2027, say a lot about our ailing democratic traditions. They express a mentality of the excluded, citizens in millions who are mere votes during elections and a nuisance that remind leaders they have failed. Still, an opposition which sees political capital in rumoured or attempted coups is irresponsible. It does not deserve the support of Nigerians. It will be worse than an elected administration, because, at the very least, the latter was elected.
Even a neutral observer will accuse this administration of lacking a good sense of timing, a valuable element in good governance. A harsher critic will accuse it of crass insensitivity. A sympathiser may think the removal of key service chiefs is a necessity forced upon the administration. This necessity will overshadow the raging clamour over clearer details of arrested military officers, long presumed as coup plotters by millions of Nigerians. Smack in the middle of very disturbing rumours that a coup was being planned, President Tinubu changes all but one of the service chiefs, drawing double attention to a vital and sensitive national institution, the military. Nigerians sat up again, pouring additional fuel to the rumour mills.
So far few adventurous souls have linked the removal of service chiefs to the rumoured planned coup. It is best, therefore, that we do not expend too much energy in this direction, except to say all those retired, and all those stepping into their shoes, had held positions of leadership and should be held accountable for the remote and immediate causes of the grievances of the suspected coup planners. What is known is that President Tinubu retired the service chiefs, and promoted one, and thanked them for their services to the nation. He promptly appointed others from the same stock,with the same DNA, same background and same disposition, to take their places. Weary Nigerians in a nation besieged by multiple types of insecurity have seen it all before. If replacing service chiefs could win the wars against crude theft and bunkering, Boko Haram, IPOB/ESN, bandits, kidnappers, ISWAP, Lakurawa, community defenders and other threats daily mutating into more deadly threats, Nigeria will be the safest country in the world.
President Tinubu appears to have learnt his predecessor’s ploy for dealing with the clamour for improving security. You wait until the demand for change of service chiefs reaches fever high, then you replace them with exactly their type. All Presidents know Service Chiefs do not fight. Those who do are lower-level officers and the rank-and- file. They retire thereafter, until more battles are lost, more citizens lose hope and the nation turns to them for help. So a few more Generals lose their jobs as everyone expects. What changes? Not much. Certainly not the Commanders-In-Chief of the Armed Forces, whose will and commitment is the most important requirement for winning our wars on many fronts.
If President Tinubu does not see himself in the overall picture of our failures, then we are in more trouble than we think. He has two ministers of defence, politicians with the potential to be useful or be part of the problem. They are still in place, which suggests either of two things: they are entirely irrelevant in terms of stopping the bleeding in our country, or they are exactly the type of ministers of defence Tinubu wants. He has a very powerful NSA he is said to be close to. Given his pedigree, Nigerians must ask if Nuhu Ribadu is as influential in Tinubu’s administration as it appears. Then there is a whole battery of security, law and order agencies. Where do their inputs go? Who coordinates their work? To what end? Where is a kitchen cabinet and circles of trusted confidants and fixers? Who is in charge? Does anyone engage Tinubu on the differences between politics and governance?
So we now have a new set of service chiefs with the same mandates their predecessors had. They know the terrain very well. They know they will be on trial in a nation that has forfeited its assets to greed and incompetence, and now exists at the mercy of criminals. They could be replaced at any stage as a token to critics and the penalty for leadership failure. Casualties are already mounting: mates and colleagues who faced the same challenges in the service will retire due to their appointments.
Can they fight corruption that has eaten deeply into every important institution in the country, including the military? Can they radically improve morale and professional standards in a manner that begins to roll back the inroads made by sundry threats? Can they convince the leadership to appreciate that what the country loosely sees as Boko Haram now represents a much more potent threat with global dimensions? Will they have enough access and clout to get a remote leadership to respond to the desperate need for fresh thinking about spreading banditry, rebuilding policing and administrative structures, reinventing strategic and global alliances and recreating places for merit and respect within the armed forces?
President Tinubu needs to do a lot more than change service chiefs. He is not the Commander-in-Chief for nothing. Nigerians will hold him personally responsible for their lives, limbs and livelihoods. If he has not heard the applause that followed his decision to change the service chiefs, it is because there was none. There is an entire defence and security industry costing trillions in Nigeria that is not working. Only one Nigerian can make a difference here: President Tinubu.
