By Steve Osuji
MAXWELL KHOBE WAS HERE: As President Mohammadu Buhari openly invites the United States to relocate its Africa Command, AFRICOM, to Nigeria, Brig. Gen. Maxwell Mitikishe Khobe comes to mind.
You must have heard the recent stupid calls by all sorts of cranks in high places for Nigeria to seek foreign military support in the fight against motley insurgents in the country.
The most recent being Senator Smart Adeyemi wailing on the Senate floor and almost rending his FOREIGN SUIT before the world.
Following from these unintelligent and perhaps orchestrated outbursts, Mr. Anthony Blinken, the U.S Secretary of State came rushing to Aso Rock last Tuesday where he reportedly had a VIRTUAL MEETING with President Muhammadu Buhari.
The outcome of a casual, virtual meeting between an ailing President Buhari and a HIGH-WIRED American, perhaps No. 5 in current US official hierarchy is: “Buhari appeals to US over insecurity, wants AFRICOM in Nigeria.”
Buhari’s spokesman, Femi Adesina, in his statement, said: “President Buhari asks US to relocate Headquarters of AFRICOM to Africa, warns of likely spill over.”
What this seemingly innocuous but cunning act betokens is that Buhari has covertly and overtly invited American foreign military force to Nigeria without proper consultation of Nigerians and without admitting his colossal failure at the mandate Nigerians handed to him.
GEN. KHOBE, BRAVE SOLDIER, BRILLIANT TACTICIAN: In April 2000, Brig. Gen. Maxwell Khobe was 50 years old and was heading the Sierra Leonean military as Chief of Defence Staff.
He had earned the position after leading the military expedition to Freetown, Sierra Leone in February, 1998, to oust the rebel army of Major John Paul Koromah which threatened the elected government of Alhaji Ahmad Tejan Kabbh.
Gen. Khobe personally led a Ground Task Force in the city of Freetown deploying offensive tactics that has become a classic universal case study in military schools.
Gen. Khobe’s tactic and maneuvers were lauded far and wide that when the Americans were in town to give fillip to Gen. Abdul Salam Abubakar during his transition programme, they reportedly sought a copy of the General Khobe Freetown papers.
Khobe’s expedition was thought to be unique in that an urban warfare against drug-addled rebels was executed with minimum civilian collateral damage.
Gen. Max Khobe represented the best of Nigerian military. Born in Zekun, Adamawa State, in 1950, he had the best of military training as most Nigerian officers are wont and was among our best – he was at the Nigerian Defence Academy, NDA; Fort Knox, USA, and Armoured Corps School, Bovington Camp, UK.
A soldier’s soldier, he trained as combatant, infantry and was also an Armoured Officer.
Prior to the Freetown expedition, Khobe had served four tours of duty in Liberia and he earned ECOMOG Liberia Medal on each occasion.
On Gen. Khobe’s demise in April 2000, a BBC report eulogised him thus: “… a brave soldier whose tough and wily tactics overcame the generally low level of training and equipment in the Nigerian army. ”
LIKE KHOBE, LIKE AZUBUIKE IHEJIRIKA: General Azubuike Ihejirika is a more recent example of the quality imbued with most of our generals and senior military officers.
As Chief of Army Staff (COAS) between 2000 to 2014, Gen. Ihejirika had reportedly outlined brilliant tactics to conquer and eliminate the Boko Haram insurgency in the Northeast but he was framed up and stopped in his tracks.
Elements of the north, including current president, then Gen. Buhari (retired) were on record to have said that attack on BH was attack on Islam.
A white Australian crank by name, Stephen Davies, had been concocted by the then nascent APC to accuse Ihejirika of financing Boko Haram. Gen. Ihejirika had been yanked off abruptly and since then, BH has grown in leaps and bounds.
Nigerian military, security and intelligence corps, just like Nigerians generally, have always excelled outside our shores. As the BBC pointed out above, Khobe was exceptional in Freetown in spite of the poor situation in the military at home. This column is therefore of the opinion that Nigeria military architecture has not failed in the fight against BH, what failed them here is leadership.
ENTERS BUHARI’S NARROW, BUNGLING MINDSET: Since the emergence of President Muhammadu Buhari as president in 2015, the war against the recalcitrant BOKO HARAM terror group has actually suffered acute setbacks in spite of government’s propaganda that BH had been technically defeated.
First, the arms ordered by the exiting Goodluck Jonathan administration was in use for a couple of years during Buhari’s time. There has been much finaggling with arms funds in the last four years or so leaving the insurgents more armed than the military in recent years.
But what has been the bane of Nigeria and indeed the terror war is President Buhari’s penchant to base important decisions on ethnic and religious sentiments. President Buhari has appointed all his strategic military, security and intelligence personnel based on the narrow prism of Islamic religion and Hausa-Fulani bias.
Worse still he kept them for too long, even beyond the statutory periods of service.
So if they were poor generals and war tactician as many experts claim they were, their mediocrity lingered for about six years.
In other words, competent Nigerian military officers have not been allowed to prosecute what is ‘merely ‘ an internal insurgency in one corner of the country. It is mind boggling that the behemoth Nigerian military has been unable to contain this ‘war’ for all of 10 years.
That the war against BOKO HARAM has failed so far is not because Nigeria’ military is not good enough, we want to wager that it’s because the commander in Chief has not commanded adequately.
BUHARI WANTS AFRICOM/MILITARY OCCUPATION IN NIGERIA THROUGH THE BACKDOOR: AFRICOM is short for US Africa Command. This is the United States’ strategic and fighting military command overseeing about 53 countries in the African continent.
While it’s currently based in Stuttgart, Germany, it has a toe hold in Djibouti at the horn of Africa and there are military reps and attaches in most America embassies in Africa.
AFRICOM, which became operational in 2007 in the heat of the Al Qaeda murderous insurgency, is not yet headquartered on the African continent because South Africa and Nigeria (Egypt not under AFRICOM) the biggest powers on the continent have demurred so far.
In 2007, Nigerian government and Nigerians had openly opposed an AFRICOM base in Nigeria, especially in the Gulf of Guinea. Though the rejection was for largely illiterate, primordial reasons, but that has been the situation.
Coupled with the fact that in 1962, shortly after Independence, Nigeria had raucously and indeed riotously opposed what was then known as the ANGLO-NIGERIAN DEFENCE PACT.
While this column does not see any overly debilitating harm in having AFRICOM military base on Nigerian soil, (what is more harmful to Nigeria is INCOMPETENT leaders who cannot make the best of such a base as Egypt has done for decades) allowing a base must be for good reasons.
In other words, if Buhari is inviting AFRICOM base to Nigeria, let it not be because NIGERIA’S MILITARY HAS FAILED, BUT BECAUSE HE HAS FAILED.
U.S. UNDERHAND ROLE IN BH TERROR: This column has written several pieces about the less than savoury roles the US has played in the Nigerian terror war over the last decade.
First, the US has been less than supportive, declining at a point to SELL arms to the Nigerian government for some flimsy reasons.
Second, after the abduction to the Chibok girls, the US and some of her allies had invaded Nigeria and indeed were given access to the Northeast forests ostensibly gathering information and setting up digital surveillance equipment.
US, Britain, France, Israel, etc were all over the place and there was high hopes among Nigerias that help had come. But after spooking about our forests, they all vanished and left us to our wiles since then.
Third, an AFRICOM drone unit was to be set up in Niger Republic. We thought it was in aid of the the Multinational Joint Task Force against BH. Zilch, not a word was heard ever again.
For a decade, the West seemed to have watched Nigeria and Nigerians bleed profusely and ceaselessly, roiling in the broth of the worst human degradation of this age: millions on IDPs, sicknesses, diseases, deaths. Plus a mortgaged future of unprecedented numbers of out of school children rate. What a blighted decade it has been!
IN SUMMARY: LET US NOT BUNGLE INTO THIS, THE BUHARI WAY: There’s nothing wrong in the Nigerian military as composed in fighting and defeating local insurgency. If Nigeria seeks military occupation/support, nothing wrong with it but let it be on negotiated and clear terms. Let us not bungle into it, the Buhari way.
▪︎ Osuji is a newspaper columnist.