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.
The PUNCH