American boots on Nigerian ground?

 May 12, 2014 ·

The lazy claim, which is often mouthed by the mischievous is that because the society is dynamic, anything might hap­pen with the passage of time. That is how one big politician explained it to me last week­end when I was moaning over how much Nigeria has been misgoverned, to the extent that we now have to accept the presence of foreign troops on our soil to deal with a domestic insurgency.
Nigeria has degenerated to a stage whereby Nigerians are now crawling to other countries to beg for military assistance, in spite of the fact that until very recently, the world had been crawling to Nigeria, requesting the use of its famed armed forces, which had been adjudged as having no equals on earth. When it was announced that Nigeria, under President Goodluck Jonathan had begged the United States, which had happily accepted, to send its military to come to Nigeria to save us from our irresponsible and corrupt selves, there was a billow of joy all across the length and breadth of the nation. It was a big vote against this administration.
It cannot be that Nigerians love and laud this modern day re-colonisation of the ‘giant of Africa’, but it is rather a forlorn acceptance that in the current democratic choices we have made, Nigerians have largely purchased copper for the price of gold. It is an acceptance that Nigeria has failed as a state, and that while there is hardly any point regurgitating the classic indices of a failed state as have been set out by social scientists, one of the most prominent to many, is a nation becoming incapable of defending its own people and borders.
Those who hail the fact that Nigeria is allowing foreign troops on our soul – not just in a usual bilateral exchange that is permitted even amongst nations that enjoy defence pacts, but in a full military involvement to solve a basic military challenge – are unaware of how the situation has become a proof of how the leaderships have progressively denuded the nation in all the significant sectors. Every adult Nigerian who has watched helplessly how things have continued to deteriorate cannot but weep forlornly for our once great nation, which, recently rolled out the red rugs to celebrate the fact that Nigeria’s economy had become the biggest in Africa, when it should have been celebrating the fact that it had become one of the biggest five on the global stage.
But then, this morning, I wish to begin a piecemeal discourse on the implications of what the Jonathan administration did last week by accepting foreign troops to come and fight for us in our land. Nigerians have always been a fiercely proud people, not just because our country is the natural home of all Black people, as, in any case, one out of every five black persons is from Nigeria. So, without publicly admitting it for fear of being dubbed racist, most Nigerians silently harbour a wish that Nigeria should remain a nation of unadulterated dark faced people with a typical humane and moralistic black mind. That is why you see over 99 percent of Nigerians daring everybody else when we put our feet down against such debasement like the gay culture and same sex marriage. This proud feeling is almost innate that nobody ever teaches it to the younger ones. ‘It is just in us’, as a certain commercial claims. Ditto for our military independence.
As far back as in 1964, Nigerian students in the few tertiary institutions that existed closed their campuses and marched to the Parliament in Lagos to picket the legislators, and sit out for days under the elements, to demand the withdrawal of an executive bill that had been tabled and was being debated for passage into law. The bill was a proposal for Nigeria to have a defence pact with Great Britain, Nigeria’s colonial masters. The support the students garnered nationwide was spontaneous and electric. Seeing how diametrically opposed Nigerians were to the idea of tying the national life to the apron strings of any other nation, the bill was promptly dropped.
The message that the people of Nigeria and their leaders have continued to send to the world is that Nigeria must remain unaligned; Nigeria was a founding member of the Non-Aligned Movement. This policy has paid off handsomely as Nigeria had felt safe and unrestricted to seek military knowledge and cooperation from all corners of the globe, a fact that as made the sophistication of its military to remain a mystery to most world powers, especially the United States of America. The nature and form of Nigeria’s military had remained closed and inaccessible to other nations, and so, when the US got the opportunity with their minion, Obasanjo, getting to power in 1999, they were given the opportunity to come in to understudy the Nigerian military, under the bogus pretext of re-democratizing and re-professionalizing our armed forces.
Nigerians recall the stiff resistance, which the military brass, led by the then Army chief, General Victor Malu, who, in an unusual show of patriotism, publicly disagreed with his commander-in-chief, over the fact that Nigeria was granting an unfettered access to the CIA into the Nigerian military. There were reported instances of some military officers openly warning troops not to respond to certain questions, which the CIA ‘trainers’ were posing. President Obasanjo knew how fierce and deep rooted the opposition of the military brass was against the meddling of the US in the affairs of the nation’s military affairs and must have been counseled by the CIA not to act, in his characteristic rashness against the officers.
So, as the likes of Malu railed against him in open newspaper interviews, Obasanjo, knowing that he had stepped on a live-wire, managed to keep mute and must have been happy to watch Malu retire. Only then was the ‘impertinent’ general punished with an invasion of his home base in which his old uncle was murdered and his country home razed at Zaki Biam, Benue State. However, those who understand the psychological makeup of Nigerians know that our military and football will never be bereft of fanatical and patriotic defenders in the hue of the now ailing General Victor Sylvester Malu.
Those that are inadequately informed about the quality of the Nigerian military would be surprised that it was acknowledged, as one of the best in the world with concrete laurels – not just epaulettes on the shoulders – to prove it. This was not achieved by accident but rather, through deliberate policies. Since the civil war, which saw the federal military as initially weak and tattered after the former Biafran officers, which had formed about 66 per cent of its corps, it moved quickly to rearm and retrain its rank and file, helped by Nigeria’s non-aligned policy. During the war, the Nigerian Air Force flew aircraft from both NATO and Warsaw Pact counties and obtained military hardware and instruction from both sides of the Iron Curtain and, so, was friendly to and had comrades from everywhere.
In the same way, Nigeria has never ignored the so-called Third World countries in its military training, equipment and build-up. So, many of the officers and men have been trained in India, Pakistan, China as well as in other non-aligned nations. For, though they are scoffed by the West, most of the so-called Third World nations of Asia have always had very professional and efficient militaries, which date to thousands of years and no matter how much they attempt to rewrite history, the US will never forget the shameful defeat that it was handed by the ragtag Vietnamese military forces in the 1970s. In summary, part of Nigeria’s military expertise is owed to the salad of experiences that it has garnered from all the corners of the globe, coupled with the fact that Nigeria has never lost any opportunity to send its troops to peace keeping operations to every corner of the globe. The premium gained from these international campaigns can never be quantified.
The long years of military in governance has helped considerably because every military head of state saw himself as the king in the historic times marching out with his army to every battle. So, a king at head of an army always ensures that his troops are in a tiptop condition. That was exactly why Nigerian troops under the military has performed unexpected feats all across the world.
It is equally on record that Nigerian military is the only one on earth in the modern times to have not only kept peace but also enforced it. Leading the ECOMOG, Nigerian forces effectively put down stiff armed rebellions which had launched their countries into bitter civil wars in Liberia and Sierra Leone. Not only did the Nigerian military defeat those stiff rebellions, they also oversaw the installation of stable democratic governments through transparent elections, such that are even hard to achieve in today’s democratic Nigeria.
Systematically and since the Obasanjo days, Nigeria military has started to fall on evil days and has, therefore, and inevitably started to lose its clout and competence to the extent that in 2014, a sitting Nigerian government would invite foreign troops to come to Nigeria to solve a basic military challenge that pales in significance and size to what it did with perfection and success in Liberia and Sierra Leone, less than 20 years ago. Significantly, the US troops, which are now being put up as Nigeria’s saviours, have never achieved such a feat, being that their intervention in Iraq and Afghanistan have left those societies in worse conditions than they met them.
Yet, it is this Nigerian military that the Jonathan administration is disparaging by indirectly writing them off that saved the US forces in Somalia in 1993. It should be recalled that the US marines had intervened in Somalia, alongside Nigeria and a few other armies. As usual, the US threw around its weight, as the senior partners in the enterprise and in America’s characteristic under-estimate of other societies, ran into a determined but ragtag army of Somali rebels, supported by hate-filled locals, which gave the US marines a hiding of their lives, to the extent that some of them were killed while others were captured.
The disgrace was such that the irate Somalis dragged the body of one of the fallen marines along the village tattered terrain. Significantly, it was Nigerian troops – yes Nigerian troops – that came to the rescue of the embattled US marines, beat back the Somalis and rescued the Americans, who they guided to their camp. The US marines promptly rejoined their ships for a shameful retreat to their base in the United States. That was the end of the infamous ‘Operation Restore Hope’. When the Nigerian military rescued the US Marines in 1993, Lt. General Aliyu Mohammed Gusau, was the army chief; today the same general, now retired, is Nigeria’s defence minister.
There must be many people, who would come up and demand angrily that if Nigeria did not invite foreign intervention against the Boko Haram, what other options are left to the Jonathan administration. My simple answer would be that the government had not done enough. It has not taken the adequate political, judicial, not to talk of the adequate military steps that are needed to defeat the Boko Haram. It is such obvious lapses that have often moved many otherwise patriotic Nigerians to wonder whether there are things the government knows that we, the ordinary underlings do not. But, my considered belief is that there is no way the Boko Haram scourge would be solved through the intervention of the United States or other foreigners. It will rather worsen it. Nigeria simply needs to study its impact on our soil and cities when the US intervened in the faraway Iraq, to understand what will happen if ever the Americans put their boots on the Nigerian ground.
In coming weeks, I will discuss the full implications of the current Jonathanian military and political gambles and to what extent the quick fix victories he is aiming to achieve may turn out to become pyrrhic ones.