ARISE O NIGERIANS (I)

[Salimonu Kadiri]

​Currently, many Nigerians have been complaining about insecurity of  lives and property in Nigeria due to proliferation of rural banditry, rural and urban murders, rapes, cattle rustling, topped by Boko Haram's insurgency. Among complainants of insecurity of lives and property in Nigeria is our highly respected Professor Jibrin Ibrahim who in his column in the Daily​ Trust of Friday, June 12, 2020, remarked among other things thus, "For one decade now, attackers would move in large numbers and kill and there will be no response from the State while it is happening. …//… No one understands how people can steal cattle and drive them on foot for days, going through villages and they are never caught. There are only two explanations to this situation that makes sense. They don't care or they are complicit." Professor Ibrahim noted, correctly, that the phenomenon he described had existed in Nigeria over a decade which was even why the present regime was voted into power five years ago having promised to end corruption which, in reality, is the progenitor of insecurity to lives and property in Nigeria. Unfortunately for Nigerians, while Buhari keeps on talking about fighting corruption, since 2015, his combatants at the warfront have been walking and working with corruption. That thieves, as pointed out by Professor Jibrin Ibrahim, can steal cattle and drive them on foot for days through villages, in year 2020, without being apprehended is not new in Nigeria where the leg of an elephant can pass through the needle's eye. Worse things have happened in the past.

Let us begin with Borno State which was under emergency rule in 2014, when Giwa Barracks in Maiduguri, the capital of Borno State, was subjected to a daylight attack by Boko Haram. Twelve Hilux Pickup Trucks were said to have transported two-hundred Boko Haram fighters into Maiduguri, in an area under emergency rule, to demolish Giwa Barracks. While the Barrack was jammed packed with the latest Euro-American imported luxurious cars, the Barrack itself had only a dysfunctional army tank. Boko Haram had a feast day setting ablaze the Barracks and vehicles before withdrawing orderly to their base on 14 March 2014. Borno State, like the rest of 35 States in Nigeria had special Security Votes, even though the Federal government held lion shares of the Security Votes. Since Emergency Rule was declared by the Federal Government in Adamawa, Yobe and Maiduguri States, it meant that all the Armed Forces of Nigeria were in the emergency area in addition to the Constitutional fact that the Governors were the Chief Security Officers of their respective state. The ability of Boko Haram to freely move about and pass through all military checking points undetected under a State of Emergency rule and then retreated safely to their base must surely give rise to the question, where were Nigerian army and Air Force on 14 March 2014? Before answering that question, one needs to remember that as a consequence of increase in Boko Haram's attacks, the Service Chiefs were replaced with effect from 16 January 2014. Air Marshal Alex Subundu Badeh from took over from Admiral Ola Sa'ad Ibrahim as Chief of Defence Staff (CDS); Major-General Kenneth Tobiah Jacob Minimah took over from Lieutenant General Azubuike Onyeabor Ihejirika as Chief of Army Staff (COAS); Real Admiral Usman O. Jibrin took over from Vice Admiral Dele Joseph Ezeoba as Chief of Naval Staff; and while Air Vice Marshal Adesola Nunayon Amosu took over from Air Marshal Alex S. Badeh who had been elevated to the CDS. As the CDS, all armed forces in Nigeria were under Air Marshal Badeh. Therefore, when he assumed office as CDS on 20 January 2014, he assured the nation that by April 2014, Boko Haram and its murderous insurrection would be history. He told the press, "I can say confidently that this war is already won. The security situation in the Northeast must be brought to a complete stop before April 2014. We must bring it to a stop before April so that we will not have constitutional problems in our hands." Barely two months after the assurance given by CDS Badeh, 200 Boko Haram fighters devastated Giwa military Barracks in Maiduguri in a broad daylight without being challenged on the ground or from the air. The very April when CDS Badeh promised that Boko Haram would have been history witnessed the abductions of over three-hundred secondary school girls at Chibok by Boko Haram who transported them in convoys to Sambisa forest, sixty kilometres from Chibok, without being apprehended by the Nigerian Armed Forces. On Monday, 26 May 2014, the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN), reported the CDS, Air Marshal Alex Subundu Badeh, as having excused the inefficiency of the Nigerian Armed forces in rescuing the Chibok girls thus, "We want our girls back (from Sambisa forest). I can tell you that our military can and will do it, but where they are held, can we go there with force? Nobody should say Nigerian military does not know what it is doing; we can't kill our girls in the name of trying to get them back." By October 2014, Boko Haram had captured Mubi, the hometown of the Chief of Defence Staff, Air Marshal Alex Subundu Badex, in Adamawa State, which they included in their declared Caliphate of 50,000 square kilometres controlled land area inside Nigeria. Boko Haram's menace, especially, in the Northeast continued when Mohammadu Buhari became President after 2015 election.

On 13 July 2015, President Mohammadu Buhari announced the names of new Service Chiefs of Nigeria's Armed Forces while previous Service Chiefs were to be retired at the end of the same month. Thus, at his ceremonial pull out from Service on Thursday, 30 July 2015, at a Senior Military Barrack in Abuja, the Chief of Defence Staff, retired Air Marshal Alex Subundu Badeh lamented that he presided over a military that was ill-equipped with poorly motivated troops. Badeh's lamentation was the headline cover of the Daily Trust, Leadership and Punch Newspapers of Friday, 31 July 2015, in Nigeria. If Badeh was correct, the question then is what happened to the appropriated funds for Defence and Security both at national and states' levels? Answer to that question surfaced when Buhari's regime revealed that $2 billion appropriated for purchase of arms was shared by the immediate past National Security Adviser, retired Colonel Sambo Dasuki, to politicians in the PDP. But that was not the major reason why Boko Haram grew in strength as EFCC and other investigating agencies subsequently discovered that the immediate past Service Chiefs and senior military officers had turned war profiteers.

​Air Marshal Alex Subundu Badeh was Chief of Air Staff before he was elevated to the head of Nigeria Armed Forces as Chief of Defence Staff in January 2014. Although he was retired by Buhari's government in July 2015, it was not until 24 February 2016 that his house at No. 6, Ogun River Street, Maitama, Abuja was searched by combined EFCC/DSS operatives. A million US dollar  cash in addition to business and bank documents were harvested. A document revealed that a Shopping Mall at a cost of N1.4 billion was under construction for his company, Prince and Princess Multi-services Ltd. Another document showed that between November 2012 and November 2013, he deposited $900,000 into his personal account. Between January and December 2013, Air Marshal Badeh was withdrawing N558.2 million every month from the Nigerian Air Force account after payment of Air Force Personnel salaries and the said 558 .2 million naira was laundered through his company, IYALIKAM NIGERIA Ltd. The damning revelation was that by the time Air Marshal Alex Subundu Badeh was promoted to CDS from Chief of Air Staff on 16 January 2014, Nigerian Air Force possessed only spiritual Jet-Aircrafts and Ghost Pilots. The 558.2 million naira extra he was paying to himself every month from January to December 2013 was supposed to be salaries for Air Force Pilots that should exist but did not exist. That explained why 200 Boko Haram fighters transported in 12 Hilux pickup trucks could attack Giwa Barracks in a broad daylight without being bombed by the Nigerian Air Force. Similarly, the abductions of over 300 Chibok's School girls and their transportation in convoys to Sambisa, 60 kilometres away without the intervention of the Nigerian Air Force, was due to lack of pilot jet-planes. It would not have been any problem to parachute troops from the plane to surround the exiting Boko Haram from Giwa Barracks and Chibok respectively to their base. As a military man, Air Marshal Badeh had committed high treason because he stole money meant to recruit and train pilots and thereby facilitated the expansion and attacks of Boko Haram insurgents. Yet, instead of being court martialled he was arraigned in a civil Court in March 2016 for pilfering Air Force funds to the tune of N3.9 billion. Thereafter, the usual maradonic legal dribbling was set in motion after he was granted bail for N2 billion. Unfortunately, Air Marshal Badeh was killed on 18 December 2018, by armed robbers who were said to have been tipped off that the ex-CDS was ferrying in his car a huge amount of money to buy farmland in Nasarawa. On Monday, 4 March 2019, Court terminated charges against him but ordered forfeiture of his properties and that of his company , Iyalikam to the Federal Government. On Thursday, 18 August 2019, the EFCC announced the handing over of a 13-bedroom one-story building and a basement in Abuja, seized from Badeh, to the management of North East Development Commission (NEDC). Another building located in Abuja was handed over by the EFCC to Voice of Nigeria (VON) as its new headquarters. CDS, Air Marshal Alex Subundu Badeh was not alone in diverting defence funds set aside for war against Boko Haram into his private pockets since subsequent EFCC investigations showed that most top ex-military officers had turned the Armed Forces into their cash cow private companies. (To Be Continued).