Military can’t crush Boko Haram — Agwai

Former Chief of Defence Staff, Lt. Gen. Martin Luther Agwai, in this interview with JUDE OWUAMANAM, appraises military operations against Boko Haram, the civil war, among other issues

You are featured in the book, ‘Integrity Matters: Men of Honour in Public Square,’ which recognises and honours men of integrity. Can you explain your inclusion in the book?

I think what helped me in my growth is my humble parentage. I was born to very low-class parents. My father was a teacher when I was born; he was actually a student at a missionary school, Sudan Interior Mission Teachers College, in Kagoro, Kaduna State.  Incidentally, many people don’t know how I came about my name. I quizzed him to know because I found out that I did not have any local name. I found out that what happened was that when he was in the teachers’ college, the history of Martin Luther, who protested against the Catholic Church, was told and retold and that was when I was born and because of that, he named me after Martin Luther.

My upbringing was very strict. You could not bring in anything into the house that did not belong to you, even a pencil. If it was not the one they gave you to buy, you had to explain and if they were not satisfied with your explanation, they would ask you to return it to the owner.

Again, my father assured us he would give us the best education his money could afford. I did not go to the best school, but I went to the best school his money could afford. That created satisfaction because there was no day I was sent back home from school on account of non-payment of school fees.

That was how I grew up, knowing that we had to cut our ambition, and tailor our lifestyle to the resources available to us. And when I had the privilege of having a job after secondary school up to the time I joined the military, I have always been satisfied with what I have. I have never (and I hope till the rest of my life) been envious of somebody’s property. My ambition was to own a bicycle, today I have cars. So why won’t I be grateful to God.

Was the military your first choice or you got in there by chance?

No, I did not get into the military by chance.  I grew up in the police barracks in Jos. My father was a policeman and as a young man, I wanted to join the police. We had the warders’ barracks just beside that of the police and when the police played football matches with the warders, the police always defeated them. And we always thought that the police were super. Then one day, they had a football match with a group of soldiers and the soldiers defeated them. Then, I thought the police were not as super as I thought. From that day, I dreamt of joining the army.

Actually, I resigned from my job and stayed at home until I joined the army. My family did not want me to join, especially my mother.  I joined the army in 1970, so you can understand the apprehension. It was in the thick of the civil war. My parents objected to it. It was my desire to join the army. But I went on my own and enlisted. I was selected and God saw me through it.

Can you compare the situation in the army when you joined to the situation today?

There have been challenges and there will always be challenges. I am not that kind of a person that quickly jumps to conclusions without looking at the way things are moving. You cannot assess any profession away from the values of the society. The army is made up of Nigerians. They are not from the moon.

On the whole, I think the army and the military in general are trying their best. But the society they are living in is moving too fast and the challenges are changing by the day. The value system is also changing by the day. Until we are able to put these things together, it will be very difficult for us to compare the army of yesterday and today. Definitely, the discipline that we knew when we joined the army is not the degree of discipline we know today.

You joined the army during the civil war. Looking back now, would you say that sad episode of Nigeria’s history has been justified?

First and foremost, this is a big question. Whether it was justified from which angle? It depends. If you meet the actors, each of them will tell you their views. But forget about the challenges that were faced at that time. The question should be, was that the best solution to the problem? That is the question. Was declaring secession the best way out of the problem?  And if you were on the other side, if somebody declared secession, would you fold your arms and say you will not do anything because you don’t want anybody to die? These are the challenges we have to look at. Then, we have to look at the other side. What bothers me is: What lessons have we learnt?

The justification of any situation is what lessons are drawn from it. Have Nigerians learnt any lessons? If we haven’t, we better go back and think about it. If we have, then it will be a process that will move us forward. Have we derived lessons out of the civil war; have we made everybody feel accommodated; have we made everyone feel that he is a Nigerian before he is either from the South, North or East? Unfortunately, Nigerians owe allegiance to their tribes and local government areas, and states before the country. Their last allegiance is to Nigeria and yet when they are going out, they need a passport from Nigeria. But if you go to other countries, they see themselves first as the citizens of those countries, before going down the line. You are carrying Nigerian passport and the person looking at it does not know whether you are from the South, the North or the West. That passport has already made you an ambassador of Nigeria.

Some say the military has been adversely affected by its incursion into politics. Do you believe this?

Definitely. It has some effect. I will be the last person to say that it does not have any effect. But having been lucky to be in the military, from the 70s till I left in 2009, I would say it was later that the incursion into political life really had a toll on the military. I don’t know what the country would have become if the military had folded their arms and done nothing. And believe it, the military is the last line of defence. There are some politicians that enjoyed having the military in the forefront and they stayed behind, enjoyed it and they encourage the military to stay. There are also military boys that enjoyed it and had the backing of their friends and partners in politics. They thought it was a thing they could enjoy forever. But if military coups were staged for the sake of solving a problem and a retreat was then taken for the politicians to play their roles, we would not have been where we are today. But having said that, I also want to say there are two sides to a coin. It was not all military officers that were involved in politics. Throughout my stay in the military, I never enjoyed any political posting. I was performing my roles as a soldier. Whether it was military or civilian, I would still have performed the same roles. There are still a lot of people in the military that did not get directly involved in the running of this country. Remember that minus the military governors, not many military officers were involved in running the states. The rest were civilians. The number of officers and soldiers that got directly involved in politics was minimal. The highest percentage could be five.

How would you react to claims, often by politicians, that the military is the cause of Nigeria’s present predicament?

The people talking now only want to find excuses for their failures. They could have also said the colonial masters were part of the problem. You will not be far from it if you say the colonial masters share some part of the blame.

But the military at the helm of affairs dictated the tune.

Yes, but how many politicians believed that the tunes dictated were wrong and had the conscience to challenge them? How many of them resigned in protest? They were accomplices. I am not a lawyer, but if I am stealing and you see me stealing because I have a gun and join me, you are equally culpable. What did you do to show that you disagreed with what I was doing? Look at the world today. We woke up to witness where people woke up in Egypt and said we don’t accept this…

Do you see such happening in Nigeria?

Frankly I cannot tell because if you have asked somebody in Egypt a year before the uprising, he would not have said yes. But circumstances forces things and unfortunately, if we do not get our acts together, it would not be difficult. People learn easily and sometimes, we copy things from others very fast. Before when you see men putting earrings, what would say? Today it has become the fashion. We are just copying; we have become copycats. I am saying if we build our society based on our own value system, things will be different and if we say military had brought bad things, I think we should disengage our thoughts from what we think military rule has done and chart a way forward.

All over the country, you find soldiers mounting road blocks, is this right?

I gave a presentation at the Nigerian Bar Association conference in Calabar and the topic was The Challenges and Prospects of Military Involvement in Internal Security. I argued then and I am still saying internal security is not the job of the military. We have to sit back and ask ourselves this question you have asked. All the stakeholders – not only the military – we have to ask ourselves for how long will the military continue to stay on the streets? Is that what we want the military to do? If not, whose primary responsibility is it to maintain law and order? It is not the military, and if the military wants to do it, tell them that it is not their role and then train and prepare the man whose responsibility it is to do that. Equip the person and once you have done that, you then hold the government responsible for their job. There has to be a defined role as to who takes the lead in internal security. We may be doing the wrong thing and this is why we have the military everyday on the streets.

Since there is no external war, what will they be doing when they get back to the barracks?

Fortunately there are so many roles that can be performed by the military. Internal security is just one of them. The military have engineers. Go to America and find out how many bridges and roads were constructed by army engineers. How many dams have been built by army engineers? And by the way, do we need to have an army? It depends on what your threat is. You have to sit down and analyse your threat and determine the strength of the military. Maybe you may need, given a hypothetical case, 500,000 policemen and 100,000 in the military. But I will not be among those who would say that we don’t need the military; we need the military. Go to the developed world today, they are bringing down the strength of their military. There are a lot of things the military can do for us even in peace situations. They will never have an idle moment if we have a proper military culture. If you start seeing insurgency and militancy coming, then you can increase the strength of the military. In some countries they have reservists. The reserves are pulled out into service in times of problems and you start building another reserve. It does not mean that we must have a military strength of 500,000 standing any day, no. You slow done, disengage people, find another livelihood for them and then create a reserve and use them during emergencies. Train the police who will maintain law and order, give them equipment and proper motivation and they will perform. Then you will not find the military on the streets everyday. When the situation has gone completely beyond control, you can then invite the soldiers.

The situation of things now – worsening security, corruption etc – was worse than it was when the military intervened in the polity. Do you see such a prospect today given what Nigerians are going through now?

That will be very difficult. Frankly speaking, it will be very difficult for the military to intervene again. That’s what I told you earlier about evolution and transformation. The world has gone beyond that. Things are changing, society is moving forward. There are things that are out of fashion now. Coups are out of fashion. What I fear is what I fear. If we allow the drift that is going on to continue, then I am afraid. If you continue to blow and inflate a balloon, it will come a point it will burst. If the political class cannot check themselves, people who elected them can checkmate them. We have to sit down and talk. All stakeholders, stop over heating the system because none of us is going to benefit anything from it. When people talk about revolution, I laugh because when it starts, we may not know where it will stop. It is just like fire. It is very easy to strike a match and throw it to the wild bush, but when the wild fire starts, you don’t know where it is going to end and how many people it will consume. So people who cry for revolution do not know that it may consume them also. It is not the other man alone.

The activities of Boko Haram have reached an alarming stage to the extent the military appears helpless. As a military strategist, how do you think Nigeria can tackle the security situation in the country?

I said in one interview I had with a television station that we have to come out with a strategy of carrot and stick. If you use the stick and believe that military might be able to crush insurgency, it is not possible. This is because it is an internal problem. It is not an external problem. It is very easy if we are fighting with an external country; then we use all might to crush their will. They are our brothers and sisters. They will mingle into the society. If I am a member of Boko Haram, how will you know? Do I have a mark on my face? We have to ask ourselves what is making them tick.

Is that why you were quoted as saying Boko Haram is not a problem of the military?

Yes, it is not only a military problem because even if you kill all the members of Boko Haram today, another set will come up because you have not solved the problem.

After heading internal security operations in many places, what advice would you give to the government?

I did not only work in Sierra Leone, I also worked in the Sudan and the United Nations and I have some little experiences here and there. One thing I want to say is that no one size fits it all. You cannot just say this was done in Sierra Leone and it must be replicated in Nigeria and get it right or that this was what happened in Cambodia and if you apply it in Nigeria, you will get it right. But if you put all the experiences together, you will be able to find a mid course. You will be able to understand first what the centre of gravity of the insurgents is and what is making them stronger by the day. As long as you don’t identify that and do something about it, you will just be beating around the bush. You will have to understand why it is difficult to flush them out. Do they have external support; where are they getting their weapons and training from? They need finance; who is financing them? If you want to put out a fire, the rule of the Fire Brigade is that you must start from the source. When you are just spraying water, you may soon run out. It is just like a tree; if you want to cut a tree, you don’t just cut the branches, you must go to the root and remove it. So we have to identify what the roots are and not just say Boko Haram is attacking Christians, planting explosions and you post soldiers there. Those are just the consequences of their actions. You are cutting the branches. In my studies of conflict resolutions, you must address the causes. If you don’t, no amount of intimidation, actions can solve the problem.

Can you identify as the cause of Boko Haram insurgency?

I am no longer in the army and so, I no longer have those intelligence reports. If you asked me when I was in the military, we identified the root of some of the disturbances then and you saw how we solved them. You saw what we did to reduce the tension in Niger Delta. That was when I was in charge. That was when I had a say and had access to information and could use it. I had intelligence and everything to work with. Now I don’t have them and I have to talk only on principles. Honestly, I cannot lie to any Nigerian that I have the solution because I don’t have the information. It is just what I read in the newspapers.

What is your advice?

My advice is that we must all come together and talk. Boko Haram is not a military problem; it is not a police problem; it’s not the problem of the politicians. Everything in Nigeria has collapsed. Our infrastructure has collapsed, the educational system has collapsed. People are afraid to interact and buy things; foreigners are afraid to come and invest. So, it is affecting all of us. We must all come together, sit down and honestly address this. If we think that we will continue to play politics with this problem, the country is standing on a precipice. If we continue to accuse one group or the other and if we think that it is either the military or the police that can solve this problem, then we are deceiving ourselves.

Punch