Major Christopher Musa is the Chief of Defence Staff (CDS). In this interview he speaks about the war againstterrorism, what the military is doing to decimate Boko Haram and banditry, why engaging private military contractors is an option, among others. JOY ANIGBOGU brings the excerpts:
The president said they about 300 Boko Haram commanders have been eliminated, people are returning from Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) camps to the home. The president says that it’s unfinished business. What are the unfinished business?
Unfinished in the sense that we still have work to do. It is not yet Uhuru totally. It is almost impossible to expect that we have total peace in the entire world. You know the challenges we are facing is not in Nigeria alone. Africa and indeed the entire world. The Rusia/Ukraine war is causing a lot of issues for us. Recent Israeli/ Palestinian, now Israeli/ Iranian war they have implications. We still have the implications in Nigeria. So, it is not only circus alone and that is why we always want to appeal to Nigerians to support the armed forces, support Nigeria as a whole. The challenges that we are facing is not isolated. The challenges that we are facing is a Nigerian challenge and Nigeria must take the responsibility. I am happy to be here because you give us a platform where we can talk to Nigerians directly, let them understand that they equally have roles to play for us to succeed. So it’s work in progress. We’re notwhere we want to be but we are heading there
What are the roles you think that Nigerians should play to complement the effort of the military, you are talking about complementing your efforts I want to refer you to the statement made by Senator Ali Ndume. He said that the military should consider engaging private militarycontractors to fully decimate and win the war against terrorism, particularly Boko Haram, do you agree with him?
You know that of recent we have militarycontractors in Mali, how far have they gone? Americans have used militarycontractors in Afghanistan. They fought for over 20 years, they packed and left, didn’t finish the war. So, what I am saying is that asymmetric war is a very difficult operation because you are dealing with non-state actors, people you don’t know. These are your own people and the only way you can identify them is if you see them armed and these people, immediately you move in they drop arms and clear. They carry the arms and try to blend with the civilian populace, and tracing them would be difficult. One of the reasons this campaign has prolonged is because we are obeying human rights we try to as much as possible if there are civilian populace within a particular area we avoid collateral damage. That has made it a bit difficult. But we remain focused, we remain very professional. Senator Ndume has said what he know, and there is freedom of speech in democracy. I understand he is trying to look at options but for us it is not an option. We are doing a lot of joint training with the American and European Union team. So we are doing a lot together to build capacity and win this war. The war we are facing is not a conventional warfare where the enemy is there, you know where he is, can always go and get him there. This guys are highly mobile. Like I said once you are running after them, their informants are giving them information about your movement, your strength and they blend as quickly as possible. The northwest has a land mass of 200,000 square kilometers and it’s massive. It’s highly forested, a very difficult terrain. We share a common border with Benin Republic and Nigeria, 1,500 km to Niger, that also very big. So, these are the things that we are facing. The 300 that has been mentioned, we are still counting. I think we have done more than that. We have a high rate of poverty, illiteracy, so they are susceptible to be recruited as quickly as possible. I can guarantee you that we are doing well. Militarycontractors not solution. The money that we are going to give them, because we are going to pay heavily, why notuse the money to equip your military. That will be a better option. I am very happy that Mr. President has approved Defence Industry Corporation of Nigeria (DICON) to partner with other original manufacturers to produce Ezugwu MRAP vehicles, I think that will be our solution. What we have realised over these years, is even with our money we can’t get the equipment that we need. Anywhere you go they place priority other than you. Except we produce what we need that will give us the leverage and I think that we are working towards that. We have started now, we are producing our own ammunition. We have local contractors that are producing local APCs. We have Equipment Protective Applications International Limited (EPAIL) that is producing locally. We have Armour-shield Solutions Limited and Proforce Defence Limited, they’re producing local APCs. I think that in years’ time we’ll be able to produce and sell to our neighbouring countries. I think that will give us the leverage.
I want to talk about a female officer, Ruth. It looks like you people didn’t handle the matter properly. I want to talk about defending the rights of women here. She was not listened to and allegations of mental unbalance and all that. Can we make a case for that woman?
I can tell you that we fight for our men. We stand for them, we protect them. There are limitations. That particular case didn’t start this year. Everybody had tried to assist the lady to ensure that she is properly taken care of. It is notthat she is mentally challenged, and we just dropped here. We don’t do that. The truth is that anybody that tried to assist her she came after the person and malign him or her. Even myself. I hope you heard comments that she made that she reported to me. She didn’t report to me. She came to me directly and I was able to get across to her commanders. We took her to the medical people which is the procedure. The medical was able to look at her and the case was investigated. She said that she was sexually harassed by a commander. It didn’t happen. If it happened, we take actions we don’t hid our men. Anybody who commits an offence will pay for it. My policy is that if you do well, you are rewarded, and if you do bad, you get punished. Sometimes she may seem to be coherent on what she is saying. Remember that she also came after the chief of army staff saying that she wanted her to send her nude pictures. These are things that never happened. Be rest assured that we take care of our men and it is of paramount importance. I am sure that you have listened since last year. We have talked about the welfare of men because we know that without good welfare they will notgive us their best. We are always watching out for them and talking about the increment in their salaries. Appealing for the increment in their Rations, Clothing and Entitlements (RCE). I can tell you that we are working. We are committed and we will continue to work.
Advertisement
What she said in the interview was different. She gave copious insight into that incident as regards the sexual advances being made at her. Which authority even investigated to discover that she is medically unstable, I know that in the military you have your own internal mechanism, but it’s already a public issue and for us it’s the optics, what it looks like in the public, can the issue be reassessed?
Mental issue especially in the military is something we view very seriously because if you give somebody who is mentally unstable, he has the ability to carry a weapon, he can take down everybody that is there when issues come up. So, it’s something that we view very seriously. We respect everybody who is committed to serve in the military because we know that you have agreed to lay down your life for your country. So, for us as commanders it’s something that we take very seriously. We appreciate that and we also want to ensure that their health status is well respected that is why we went through the entire process. We have our procedures. For every arm of the military we have our procedures that we follow. Of course it’s possible to have a review.
I still want to go back to these private military contractors, your predecessor, General Lucky Irabor said that no militarycontractor is up to the task that the Nigerian Military can do. You have repeated almost the same thing but the same Nigerian government engaged domestic security outfits, whether along the gulf of Guinea or in the north east and north west, what does that say about the capacity of the Nigerian militarybecause the basic comments they make is that Nigeriamilitary cannot handle some of these assignments. Secondly Senator Adams Oshiomhole said on the floor of the senate that some of the funds appropriated to the military are usually used by the militaryhigh ranking either to build universities in their home towns or do CSRs in their own towns, they are notusing the appropriated funds to do the main assignment as matter of public interest, is transparency and accountability in the military governed by martial law that is different from the transparency and accountability that civilians talk about?
The military is highly professional there is no general in the army today that has spent less than 25 years in service. We have been to Liberia, we have been to Sierra Leone, we have been to other countries. We have done so much. We are here in our country facing these challenges and like I said asymmetric warfare is an entirely different operation. On the issue of transparency, I can guarantee you that we are going through every scrutiny that is there on the land. We have audits that always come consistently to do that. When you talk about use of funds in building universities and CSR, that is asymmetric warfare and that is what we call the non-kinetic part of it. We have two options, the kinetic and non-kinetic. The kinetic is where we use military force. The military force as solution to non-state actors is just about 20 to 35 percent of the solution. Mistake people always make is that they think is that it is entirely a militarysolution, it is not. The non-kinetic plays a higher role and that is why if our youths are engaged, educated, if they are well feed, well housed, they would notgive in to these terrorists. On weekly basis we take over thousands down but they keep coming out in their numbers, why is that so? Because we have a lot of them notdoing anything. They are just willing tools to be used by these criminals to take advantage. So, I can guarantee that the funds being released are properly utilised. The CBN, ministry of finance, all procedures they use in checkmating what we do is there. We have the oversight functions by the National Assembly that is ongoing. We also have our own mechanism from within that we use to do that. I can tell you that no money is wasted. One position missile is about 200, 000 dollars. I’m sure that you are aware that everything we buy, we buy in hard currency. From our ammunition to our bullets. Convert our budget to dollars, fact check the costs of a missile, of a drone, of helicopter, fighter aircraft and see how many we can buy with the budget that we have. We know that the country is going through a lot so we don’t expect to get everything but the little that we have we are utilizing them properly.
The issue of militarycontractors, like I said the America has used them in Afghanistan, in Iraq and other countries but how did they end up? Bring anybody here involve costs and they will also have their own interest, and his interest is not to end it, aggravate the issue. So you have more complex issues to even deal with. The Wagna forces in Mali recently 87 of them were killed. They went there and they got killed by the same terrorists. So we are dealing with individuals that have sworn to kill for whatever reason and the worse element you can ever fight is to fightsomeone who has nothing to lose. If they die nobody cares because they feel they are going straight to heaven or that they have rewards somewhere they are going to get. So, they are ready to die. Niger State alone is almost 10 percent of Nigeria’s land mass. The Northwest is over 200,000 square kilometers. These are huge, massive land areas. So what we need to do is first to leverage on technology. If we have enough satellite to use to give us information, we have enough drones. We may not have enough but we are making due with whet we have. Asymmetric warfare is not what you start today and end today. It is gradual, and painful drawn- kind of war. It takes time to heal but it must be deliberate. It entails all society to be together. Why they survive is because they have informants that reach out to them. I always remind people the last APC that got burnt it was the locals that saw our APCs had bucked, and informed them. Nigerians are the ones sabotaging our efforts. We have unscrupulous elements that think they are making money. In north east people will go to filling stations take full tank and sell the fuel to them. Once you get across to them you can make good money which is what people are going after. We have a lot of sabotage from within and outside that we need to come together and say, ‘enough is enough’. We all must take ownership. It is notonly a military solutionbut a general solution.
What about domestic corporate guards in Nigeria, all these non-state actors that you can engage to monitor our waters and support the security agencies. Do you have any objections to them?
I was a theatre commander in northeast. It is an all-society approach. Communities must stand in and be counted. In the northeast what did we do? We got the communities to rally round select youths that we know were positive, no criminal records. They were profiled by the police and DSS. We have then some level of training on how to protect their communities that has assisted us because we cannot be everywhere. They do that to delay until the troops come in to take immediate action. That has helped. So we need the support of everyone. Boko Haram couldn’t survive in Kano. People in Kano knew that Boko Haram in Kano will affect their commerce so they refused. Anywhere they went to rent accommodation they were reported, anybody they saw was strange in any community they reported them and actions were taken. That is why we are appealing to people notto allow terrorists settle in their communities, don’t give them support. When you do that you are encouraging them. Terrorists found within the communities, if the communities freeze them they cannot survive. That is our appeal to Nigerians.
