A thousand regrets do not cancel one debt. (Turkish Proverb)
You can not write in the chimney with charcoal. (Russian Proverb)
To know the road ahead, ask those coming back. (Chinese Proverb)
The wise see knowledge and action as one, they see truly. (Bhagava Gita)
Whoever performs only his duty is not doing his duty. (Bahya ibn Pakuda)
When you cease to make a contribution you begin to die. (Eleanor Roosevelt)
To change and change for the better are two different things. (German Proverb)
Vision without action is daydream. Action without vision is a nightmare. (Japanese Proverb)
Anything the snake gave birth to must grow long (Ihe agwo muru ahagi ito ogologo) (Igbo Proverb)
You must give time to your fellow men - - even if it's a little thing, do something for others - - something for which you get no pay but privilege of doing it. (Albert Schweitzer)
The tribe that loves inheriting a dead person's properties doesn't heal their sick (aburu la eji eri okp�lo ejighi agwo ndi oria) (Igbo Proverb)

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Continued from Part I

t's good to know what kind of institution the military is: The Nigerian military is very decadent. The military started corruption on a large scale in Nigeria. Corruption as we know it today started from 1966 when a mediocre (Gowon) took over the leadership of an unwieldy country. It was Gowon and his armed and paramilitary forces that took corruption in Nigeria to high heavens and at that unenviable height it has remained till today. Corruption has led to stymied development and stunted growth of Nigeria as a nation despite the obvious fact that it has vast human and natural resources.

The Nigerian Army just celebrated its 145 years of existence. It has been one of "larger than life" in that the army and the other arms of the armed forces are in a class of their own. Normally the military takes order from the political class, but in Nigeria, the military coveted for itself both roles. The Nigerian armed forces have been the custodian of instruments of coercion and the political powers at the same time, save for the few years that they reluctantly allowed the "civilians" to hold political powers, but, still some of the civilians that ruled or are still ruling at all tiers were at one time or the other military men. Obasanjo was once a general and head of state; David mark was once a brigadier, is now the senate president; Tunde Akogun, the former IBB hitman then and the man that might as well tell us what happened to Dele Giwa and Gloria Okon, is now the House of Representatives� majority leader; Brigadier John Shagaya is in the senate; Jerry Useni was a general and was once in the senate; Muritala Nyako was an Admiral in the Navy, once a military governor and now the civilian governor of Adamawa State; Jang was an Air Commodore in the Air Force and is now the governor of Plateau State; I think the governor of Osun State was also a military man (I am not too sure about this, can anybody from Osun State help by "straightening my neck" on this one?); Marwa was once the military administrator of Lagos State, he is now our ambassador to one of the countries; and the list goes on and on.

The military leaders since 1966 dabbled into politics without an iota of knowledge or idea about what politics is all about; that's why they took the country on a downward spiral and free for all fall. The military crossed the Rubicon into "uncharted territory and unparted waters". If not because of their wielding of instruments of coercion, tell me how on earth men as timid as Gowon, a neophyte then, could have ascended to the pinnacle of leadership in Nigeria at that age and inexperienced as he was when he took over? Tell me how dunces like Abacha would have ever dreamt of leading a country of intellectuals and sharp brains like Nigeria? Tell me how IBB could have annulled that election then and walked away as if nothing happened? Tell me how Abdusalami would have connived with the Americans to get Abiola eliminated and today it seems that it was just a "little chicken" that was killed then as the government has refused uptill now to give Abiola his due honour posthumously.

Worth mentioning here are that majority of the military governors or administrators appointed then to different states were non-entities without any idea about how to run a state, some of them can beat a hawk in stealing, they contributed nothing in uplifting the states they were posted to manage. I remember one of the military governors to Rivers State who on recall back to the barracks stripped the Government House Port Harcourt of everything, even spoons were not spared and all these he loaded into trucks to his home state in the north.

There was one that served as Cross River State Governor (a Navy captain) who in addition to having left the state's coffer empty and the state itself in tatters, loved women so much that "anything" in skirt was alright for him. He made sure that any visiting senior military officer or service chief and even the then military president had to feel at home while in the "Paradise State" by providing them with an over-dose of Calabar women. He made sure the visitor(s) had as many girls as possible, all organised from the University of Calabar. At a point, they ran short of babes, his boys had to organise some Calabar hair dressers, brushed them up and presented them as babes from the University of Calabar. I was told that those hair dressers (local champions) turned out to be the sweetest for the governor and his high brow guests.

There was one posted to serve as the Imo state Governor who was compromised by Otokoto (a heinous ritualist) to look the other way while he (Otokoto), his family and friends engaged in human killings and rituals. Otokoto held Owerri under spell because the military governor acquiesced to the crimes. Otokoto debased Owerri diabolically that at a point, I was told; snakes came out and was swallowing each other (abomination). All these couldn't have happened without the tacit support of the military governor then.

There was one posted to Abia State who wanted all the local government chairmen to surrender the key to their respective local government vault to him and who dared disobey him was whisked off to a secret location and held under house arrest until he cracked in.

There was one posted to Ogun State that was "directing" the affairs of the "Gateway State" from Lagos and might have spent as little as good 100 hours, all together, in the state in person, but still, the state's coffer was empty when he left. The story was the same the states over, from east to west and from north to south and from predecessors to successors. Infact what the civilian governors have been doing since 1999 are exactly what they learnt from the successive military governors before them. Suffice it to say that the civilian governors since 1999 learnt the trade or lessons (embezzlement of state's fund, looting of state treasury, indifference to the needs, wants, wishes and aspirations of their people) well from their successive military predecessors.

Obasanjo as president did a great job by retiring many of the military politicians and professionalising the military to a certain extent, otherwise we would have been singing another tune by now. But, sadly, the north has started re-grouping them again by retiring the senior officers from the south while those lower in the hierarchy from the north are being promoted to take the place of those retired southern officers. That's part of the northern agenda Yar'Adua is being ordered to promote.

The corruption that has eaten deep into all fabric of the military and paramilitary forces remains largely unreported due to the "secrecy" of everything military save for the few cases where we read about the sleazes in the Police, Immigration and Custom Departments and these cases were made known because these three departments are not in the Armed Forces bracket, they are the para military forces; otherwise those few exposed sleazes like the case of Tafa Balogun, Sunday Ehindero etc would have been covered up.

In my article posted on this web on November 21, 2007, I wrote this:

".. early this year, our Defence Attach� at the Nigeria Embassy in India was recalled by the order issued out by Yar'Adua. The Defence Attach�, who is a Navy Captain, was caught with a huge sum of money running into millions of dollars at New Delhi's Airport and he failed to declare it first to the Airport Authorities. He was arrested and later released due to his diplomatic immunity, but, was later recalled back home. How did he come about such an amount of money? This kind of things is soiling our already battered image the more abroad. The Nigeria Embassy in India should please clean up its act, it doesn't look too good".

The money found on the Defence Attach� to my understanding was meant for his superiors in Abuja. The Defence Attach� was searched because the Indian authorities stepped up their search for drug monies and decided to waive the Nigerian Defence Attach�'s immunity since he is a Nigerian (the land of crooks) otherwise nobody would have searched him and his case was an isolated one as many other Nigerian Defence Attach�s or Nigerian diplomats elsewhere might have passed through with their monetary cargoes undetected because of their diplomatic immunity. Not every country is as stringent as India when it comes to revoking diplomatic immunity.

Just think of it, nobody hears again about all investigations initiated against the corrupt practices of some of our officials: The case of the Defence Attach� might have been buried. What of Siemensgate, Wilbros scandal, why is it that none of the corrupt ex-governors and government officials so far charged has been convicted despite all the evidence against them? I will not be surprised if at a point, we will hear nothing about those cases again. Oh Nigeria, there is something wrong with you!!!

In my article posted on this web on June 17, 2007, I wrote this:

"....Yar'Adua should also beam a "searchlight" on the military, they are also as corrupt as the Police, if not more corrupt; the only thing is that they are yet to be exposed. If Nigerians know the kinds of corruption going on in the Military (Army, Navy, Air Force) and how deep-rooted the corruption there is, they will marvel and the Tafa Balogun and Sunday Ehindero�s cases put together will be a child's play. Some of us that were privileged to see the goings in the military at one time or the other know better. The corruption in the military is as overwhelming as the Tsunami. Because the military boys are the "untouchables", nobody dares to probe them; but, I hope this will change now".

The Nigerian Armed Forces have the role of defending the nation against external aggressors, but, in Nigeria, I doubt if our armed Forces will ever be equal to this task. The Nigerian military will do anything to avoid going to war against any country even if it means giving away parts of our territory to other countries, even if Nigerians are killed in hundreds by other countries sharing borders with us. Because the military hopes not to go to war against another country, the senior officers always recycle their family names in the military by making sure that before they retire, their sons and brothers will enlist in the military as commissioned officers to take their place and to sustain their families' names in there. The military prior to 1999 was the fastest way to political power and "easy wealth"; so the retiring top military brass replacing themselves with their children and brothers had in mind that their families will continue having the opportunity to share in the national cake as any of those children or brothers might be appointed military governor, minister, chairman or member of board of directors later along the line. Some of those retiring top officers had it both ways; while they retired and went into politics, their children and brothers were advancing fast up the military promotion ladder so that which ever way, their families will participate in the looting of the commonwealth. Has anybody stopped to think why we still have today such names as Major Obasanjo (the son of General Olusegun Obasanjo), Major Yar'Adua (the junior brother to the president and the junior brother to General Shehu Musa Yar'Adua, the elder brother to the president who was also the Chief of Staff (No. 2 man) Supreme Headquarters during Obasanjo�s tenure as head of state), Captain Ejoor, Major Haruna, Navy Captain Aikhomu (the junior brother to Admiral Augustus Aikhomu who was the No. 2 man to IBB after Commodore Ukiwe resigned that post on principles), Lt. Danjuma, Lt Akali, Major Buhari, Ft. Lt. Alfa etc Please note that the rank attached to each name mentioned might not necessarily be the person's present rank as many must have advanced more than that.

If the Nigerian military is a war fighting one or one that envisages the inevitability of war at a point or the other, those retired first generation senior military officers would have thought twice before enlisting their sons and brothers into the military and if the business of serving in the military wasn't a good one for those retirees, those men wouldn't have allowed their children and relations to enlist. Those men by their actions denied many other Nigerians the opportunity to get enlisted as the quota granted to each state for enlistment are always taken up by their children, brothers or their friend's children.

In 1985, Nigeria avoided war against Cameroon for the soul of Bakassi peninsula just by minutes as IBB called off the war at the last minutes. Then, the senior military officers were quacking like cocks beaten by the rain as they were unprepared for any war. The senior military guys don't go to war fronts, but, their fears then was based on the obvious fact that they will not be able to prosecute the war satisfactorily because, the wining or losing of any war depends largely on the planning and the orders from the top brass as it is what they give out that the men in the war front will carry out and those top brass having virtually nothing "upstairs" were afraid because they will be blamed if Nigeria loses the war and the world would have seen their hollowness despite the fact that they have high ranks and medals adorning their shoulders and chests.

As Nigeria was about to declare war against Cameroon in part because the Cameroonian gendarmes were sacking Nigerian villages in the peninsula with reckless abandon, even killing some Nigerians in that process with impunity, the Nigerian senior military officers became jittery and uneasy, then IBB having read the body languages of his senior military brass decided to call off the war minutes before it was billed to start, in order to avoid national calamity and ignominy. Because Cameroon as little as it is territorially and demographically would have trounced the "big for nothing" country of ours hands down. More to that, fighting Cameroon would have drawn France into the war on the side of Cameroon with no foreign country ready to come to Nigeria's aid.

Nigerian military has never been to war save for the fratricidal Biafran war that Nigeria nearly lost to Biafran soldiers fighting with their bare hands. What saved Nigeria from ignominy and defeat during the Biafran war was the British, Russian and Egyptian military that prosecuted the war against the determined Biafrans on their behalf and still it took them (Nigeria and its allied) three good years to "defeat" men fighting with bare hands, improvised and self made weapons.

The Nigerian Army, as a colonial outfit created by the colonialists as an instrument of coercion to rein in the agitation of the local people for self rule, has failed uptill today to shake off its colonial vestiges and mentality. The Nigerian military is only strong when it comes to dealing with the Nigerian "bloody" civilians, as Odi and Zaki raids can attest to, but, when it comes to dealing with external aggressors, the men of the military will turn into dogs with their tails tucked in between their legs.

These few examples are to show that Nigerian armed and para military forces are only strong when it comes to dealing with Nigerian civilians. I read how a navy lieutenant shot an Okada man dead at Ojuelegba roundabout in Lagos for denting his car in a go-slow, I also read recently how a naval rating stabbed (many stabs) a civilian to death around Alakija Junction Lagos, just very close to the Navy Town because the victim unintentionally stepped on a pool of water that collected on the road and it splashed on the Navy guy's cloth. All plead for mercy made by the victim and passers-by to the Navy guy fell on deaf ears before he stabbed the poor guy. The victim had a young wife (17 years old) and few months old baby, tell me how anybody can explain this kind of wickedness to the widow and her child? Stories of Army, Air Force, Police personnel manhandling civilians abound.

The United States or British militaries encourage their officers and men to further their education as that will help them in performing their duties while enhancing their personal and intellectual development as well as their career advancement; many Nigerians that joined the U.S. military did that because of the opportunity it afforded them to further their studies on scholarship from the military, but, in Nigeria, a personnel of lower cadre dares not dream of furthering his education even if he or she manages to gain admission into the university. The Nigerian military will never give scholarship or study leave to its personnel and who ever sponsors him or herself through the university will not have his or her certificate recognised by the military and might be punished for going to school without the military's approval. Abacha as the Chief of Army Staff once instructed that no Army personnel should be allowed to go to the university and whosoever does without permission will be severely punished. What would have one expected from a dunce that rose to the position he shouldn't have? For the Nigerian military, once one enters as a non-commissioned officer, the chance of being commissioned an officer is as good as zero!

While celebrating the 145 years of chequered existence, the time is more than ripe for the Nigerian Army to shake off its colonial structure, tutelage and mentality bequeathed to it by a pirating and thieving nation. The Army and infact the Nigerian Armed Forces should ask themselves the soul searching question of whether they have lived up to expectations or not? Are majority of their officers and men happy, are Nigerians satisfied with their performances so far? And I am afraid the answers will be a big NO!

CONCLUDED

THE THANKS IS YOURS!!!