Former Chief of Defence Staff, General Martin Luther Agwai (rtd), has proffered solution on how to end insecurity in the country, particularly kidnapping, banditry and the Boko Haram insurgency. General Agwai, who is also a former Chief of Army Staff, spoke exclusively with Sunday Sun in Abuja, saying that the government can only end insecurity in the country by getting to the root causes.
He listed hunger, injustice, absence of dialogue, lack of integrating people together, the issue of being told to your face that you are not entitled to something because you belong either to a different ethnic group or you belong to a different religion, executing policies in a non-inclusive way and excluding some people and politics of the winner takes all as some of the root causes of insecurity.
The former Force Commander of African Union-United Nations Hybrid Operation in Darfur (UNAMID) Sudan, concluded that if the root causes of insecurity are not addressed, even with the best trained military with all the weapons and everything in the world, the problem with not be solved.
The Kaduna State-born retired Defence Chief spoke on these and other sundry issues. Excerpt:
What have you been doing lately?
Lately, I have been trying to see if I can get my farm alive and recovered. Actually, lately, I have been involved in so many platforms as a Visiting Professor to the African Leadership Centre of Kings College, London. I have meetings to attend. I have just came back from Kenya because Kenya houses the African Leadership Centre in Africa, affiliated to Kings College, London. So, we had the last meeting in Kenya where we came up with the African Public Square issue from the Kings College. That is one of the things I do. Besides that, there are so many little organisations like the Nigerian Working Group, a group that I work with in talking about good governance and security. I work with them and lately, I participated in the Nigerian Army Day Celebration in Jos. These are what I have been doing of recent.
You mentioned recovering your farm. What happened to your farm?
My farm was raided and all our cows, over 100, were taken away.
By who?
Well, how I wish… bandits. They came armed, they were armed.
Don’t they know that you are a former Chief of Defence Staff of this country? Why will they go to your farm?
That is a very good question. How I wish I am part of the bandits, I would have been able to answer that question. But since I am not part of them and they didn’t discuss with me, they came to the farm….
How were they able to take the cows away, over 100 cows?
How many of them first of all? That is number one. Number two, for anybody who will come and carry your cow, means he has a relationship and he understands how to rear cows. Do you understand? Do you agree with that? I am sure even you cannot go and pack 10 or 20 of your friends, even if you have weapons, you will not know what to do with the cows, to move them in the field. So, it means those people have thorough knowledge of how to handle cows.
So, what did you do thereafter?
Thereafter, I tried to recover them, but there is a limit. Number one, they came to the farm at about midnight and if you know how to deal with… it is just like a car. It is just like saying somebody stole your car and you then asks him, how did you do that? You want to recover your car, but remember that if the person knows how to drive and understands the car, he will drive the car along. And if he has started driving from midnight till daybreak, how would you recover it?
You live in Nigeria and have seen how the economy is. Is the hardship affecting you?
That is a very interesting question. I will make bold to say that there will be hardly anybody in Nigeria that will say the hardship is not affecting him or her because if it is not affecting you directly, it affects you indirectly. What do I mean by indirectly? You have relations. In our culture, you have brothers and sisters, you have relations, extended and close relations, you have friends and you have family friends. If they are in problem, you are in problem. So, if they cannot eat and they come to your house and say they cannot eat, how will you be eating without helping them? If their children cannot go to school because they cannot pay the school fees, how will you be happy? And if they are sick and can’t go to the hospital and they go to the hospital and there is prescription and they can’t buy the medication or they can’t pay for the test that they are supposed to undertake, how will you then say you are not affected?
Insecurity has been hydra-headed and has overwhelmed our government, beginning from former President Jonathan’s period till now. As someone who has seen it all, having served as Chief of Army Staff, Chief of Defence Staff, and led foreign missions, what do you think is the best approach to curtail insecurity in Nigeria?
Well, I think they will try to look at security as in those days whereby security was seen as the prerogative of security agents like the military and the police. Those were the only people who could handle security. And in those times, we still saw security as a physical thing. But have you forgotten Bob Marley’s song, ‘a hungry man is an angry man?’ So, if somebody who has not eaten for three or four days, he has no means of giving his children any food, will he be a peaceful man? Will he not even go to the extent of doing anything possible to provide for his family? If you look at it from that angle, then the security issue is not purely in the domain of the military and we have to be very clear in our mind. What has led to all the challenges that we have today that you have mentioned? Let’s go back to the beginning of this century, 2000 up till now. What has happened? If we know what has happened, then we will be able to see what has caused the overall general insecurity. I remember that food security is also a part of security. So, you and I have just discussed about my farm. I used to farm maize to be able to get feeds for my animals and my chickens that I was rearing. People used to come to the farm to work and get money. Now, how many farms can people go to? And now, do I have the means to farm? I have not got the animals or the cattle. So, you can’t farm, so those people cannot get a job and you roll it over and over and you will now find out that these are the things that have started happening at a very small level and started metamorphosing to the level we have reached that people started, like small joke, kidnapping started. Now, as far as I am concerned, kidnapping has now become a business.
How do we nip it in the bud, including banditry and Boko Haram?
Do you know the best way to kill a tree? The best way to kill a tree is to go to the roots and kill the roots. If you want to kill a tree and you think you will cut the branches, and if you are not careful, the branches will even be more than the ones that were there before.
So, in clear terms, how can we curb insecurity in the country?
That was why I said you know the causes. I have started giving you the causes. You have to find the root causes of what led to the insecurity. If you don’t address those causes, I will tell you, you can have the best-trained military with all the weapons and everything in this world and you will not solve it.
Will this be effective in the case of Boko Haram in the Northeast, banditry across the North, kidnapping, agitation and killings in the Southeast?
Again, all those ones that you have called – kidnappings in the Northwest, issues in the Southeast, Boko Haram in the Northeast, do you remember at one point, how many local governments in the Northeast were under Boko Haram? Is there any local government today that Boko Haram has absolute control over? Beautiful! What happened? What did we do? Was it only military solution? No. So, that is why I am saying whether you want to address the issue of IPOB or you want to address the issue in the Northwest of kidnapping, banditry and everything, all of them; if you want to address them, first and foremost, I will make bold to say that the military can only give you an enabling environment, but the military cannot solve that problem. You have to find the causes. What are the causes? If people are agitating for a thing for a particular reason and you cannot either convince them on why that agitation is wrong, and you cannot sit with them to make them part of the solution of the problem; if you cannot, then you can never find a solution. And if you cannot find a solution, how do you then say that the military will give you a solution to the problem? No! The military can give an enabling environment, they can create an environment of peace, of security and it is not going to be a permanent one. Remember that now, we have even moved away. It is no more just…it has become a full scale insurrection or you call it insurgency. So, if you are going to fight that full scale insurgency, then it is not just going to be military solution, it is the whole society. The whole society has to be part of the solution and that is why today, people say security is everybody’s business. And security solutions can only be found by everyone putting hands together and not only one part of the country or organization that the government has.
State police is again on the front burner. What is your advice Sir?
Ah! No! I have never been a policeman. So, I will not be able to advise. It is a political decision, it is not security as such, it is a political decision and I cannot. All I will say is, what do Nigerians want? This is again, what I have always said. We have intellectuals in this country. If we honestly sit down as a people and examine things critically, forget about ourselves, for this is where our problem lies, most of us, when we want to advise the government, we want to advise the government because which part will I belong to, which one will be my own inside? No. This country is greater than all of us and we shall all pass. How many millions have died and Nigeria is still there? More millions will die and leave Nigeria. So, for the interest of Nigeria, what do you think is best for us? Not for my interest or what will I benefit from it. No. On the whole overall interest, does the governor of a state need his security thing that he can use since he is the chief security officer of the state? Does he need it? If yes, how? If no, why? If you know the why and you see the why is very important, then we talk. But if it is a thing that can be rectified, then we rectify it and create state police. If it is not necessary, please let it go, convince people. When the advantages outweigh the disadvantages, we will all understand and they will all accept.
During the administration of former President Muhammadu Buhari, Nigeria purchased Super Tucanoes from the United States and conditions were applied to them. Why should weapons to be deployed to fight insecurity have conditions attached to them?
Again, if you meet some Nigerians, they will say we need our own military industrial complex. What does that mean? It means that we should be able to start thinking of how we produce our own military equipment. There are some of these things that are not too sophisticated for Nigeria to produce. Let me tell you, I had the privilege when I was the Chief of Defence Staff. The president appointed me as the chairman of a committee that rehabilitated and reinstated DICON in Kaduna. At the time we went into that job, over 94 per cent of the equipment in DICON were down. In a matter of less than six months, we had 98 per cent of the equipment of DICON revived. The range was rehabilitated, the equipment, the weapons, virtually all the G3 riffles that were in Nigeria’s possession – the Army, Air Force and the rest, were bag-loaded there and they were refurbished and became brand new weapons. So, what I am saying is that it is just the will. I am convinced from what I saw then that if we really put our heads and our acts together, we will be able to go a long way. I don’t know if you are following the events of how many vehicles that the Army has actually introduced. There are some of them that are virtually 90-something per cent locally made. That is why we are talking of industrial complex. It is not viable to run an industry just producing armed forces, military equipment. You must have either similar or something on the same line that can produce something for the consumption of the majority of Nigerians. Did you see Hummer Jeep (SUV)? Hummer Jeep is from the same line, if you look at virtually the Armoured Personnel Carrier (APC) that America used in Iraq. It is the same line that produced Hummer Jeep.
That people were buying…?
People were buying. So, you see, there is a military similarity. The same line produced you military equipment and the same line produced you… So, you will find out that the factory can survive. But if you put it purely on military, then you will have a problem and that is the problem… I wish you had the time to visit the Army Day Celebration and see the exhibition that took place in Jos. Even myself that have headed the Army for three years, when I saw those things, I couldn’t believe that that was product coming from the army I headed some 15 years back. It is wonderful what our officers and men have been able to discover. But then, how do you put them into commercial use? This is why we need an industrial complex to really sit down and look at how do we produce these things. For example, in some industrial complexes, not one factory produces everything. One factory specialises in producing tyres, whether tubeless tyres or run-flat tyres or this. That is what they specialise in. So, depending on the tyres you will need either for your plane, your helicopters, your armoured personnel carriers that are using tyres or any of your military equipment, you will go there and buy. Then if you need battery, you know the batteries differ. Another complex just specialises in battery. At the end, when you want to couple to begin something that you want, it becomes easier. Again, that thing will not be just purely military. It can be used for the civilian products that will keep the factory and the manufacturing going on.
Kaduna where you have majority of the military formations in Nigeria has proved tough to govern because of insecurity. El-Rufai could not curb it and the current governor too. What can be done to return peace to Kaduna, your home state?
Again, you see, we are still looking at security from the physical point of view and I want you to really take your mind away completely from that. I am telling you as a former Chief of Army Staff and former Chief of Defence Staff, if you put all the Nigerian Armed Forces into Kaduna State, all of them and you don’t correct certain things that are happening, they would not solve that problem because the problem in Kaduna is not purely military. Do you know that it is even worse in the Southeast than in Kaduna? Are people carrying weapons in Kaduna fighting anybody? The only people that are carrying weapons and killing people are bandits. But there is no group that has identified themselves and come out openly in Kaduna and said we are this fighting for that. So, what will the military do?
Why Kaduna is different is because people think the presence of the military will scare bandits and Boko Haram away. What is your take on this?
What makes Boko Haram tick or whatsoever or banditry or anything that you are talking about? It is not just the sight of military. Anyway, let me correct you – you said all the highest military thing – training institutions, yes. But if you remove training institutions, Kaduna has anything more different than Enugu. There is a division in Enugu. Yes, I am telling you. Lagos, you have Air Force and you even have what you have in Lagos that Kaduna doesn’t even have – the sea. Kaduna has no sea. So, there is no Navy. Port Harcourt, Calabar, they have Navy, Air Force, Army and Kaduna doesn’t have. But having said that on a lighter note, I want to still tell you that the security today, to solve security problem, they are not purely military. I will give you one example, hunger. If you cannot feed people, if people have no any means of getting a meal tomorrow, you think you will bring all the army in this world and they will run away? After all, if I run, I will die because of hunger; if I fight, I will die, so each direction I go, it is death. So, it is not. Have you ever looked at the issue of injustice? Have you ever looked at the issue of lack of integrating people together? Have you ever looked at the issue of being told to your face that you are not entitled to this because you belong either to a different ethnic group or you belong to a different religion? These have nothing to do with the military. You can bring all the military in this world. If you have policies and execute your policy in a non- inclusive way and you exclude some people and say no, you are not part of this and it becomes a politics of winner takes all, then you have a problem. So, I wish that we begin to look at these things and don’t always believe that the military will solve our problem.
How do you see the one year of the Tinubu administration, looking at the major policies taken by the government so far like the removal of fuel subsidy, forex harmonization and the rest?
I am always very good in talking about what I know. I spent 40 years of my life wearing military uniform. So, when you start talking about policies of… I don’t know the implication of this economic thing. For example, let me be very honest with you, when I hear them saying oh, your economy is improving by 10 per cent or this, we are the largest economy in Africa and then, I see so many people on the street with no food, nothing, and you say that the economy is booming and this, you see, this is my problem. From that background, it will be very difficult for me to really come out and say whether it was a good policy to remove subsidy or not to remove subsidy. All I know is that it is bringing a very difficult life for people because as you stated at the beginning whether there is hardship and if I am experiencing it, I was buying diesel. Whether you want it or not in Nigeria today, you may have to run on a generator. How much is diesel? How much is a litre of diesel? How much do you need to run for a day or in a place? Two, food. How much was a loaf of bread? How much is it today? How much was a bag of rice? How much is it today? These are the challenges that I tell you that for me, a common person who has not got a real, in-depth knowledge of this big, high-sounding thing about the economy or this or that, these are the indices I judge on my own. They may be wrong, but these are the facts. If our economy is improving and we are one of the largest economies and some people cannot eat a meal a day, then something needs to be done.
Nigeria has experienced democracy for 25 unbroken years. What would you like to say about your colleagues in service, who in the past would have used an excuse to seize power, but have allowed democracy to thrive despite the errors and mistakes?
First and foremost, I thank God that throughout my almost 40 years in the military, I really never held any political appointment. So, I really don’t know. But I have always been finding it difficult to understand why the military will feel that they are the alternate government, that if the civilian government is not performing, you will have the moral, or the constitutional, not the constitutional because there is nowhere in the constitution that says if a government does not perform, the military should come in. So, what gives the military the feeling, the moral high ground to do it? That is one. Two, has their training prepared them to run a government? I will make bold to say that there are countries in the world today that you can see; I will tell you, one of the largest democracies in the world today is India. India has never had a military rule and India can survive. And today, whether you like it or not, India is on the road to becoming a world power. They are going to the space, they have aircraft carriers, and in the field of technology, ICT, India is really a force to be reckoned with in the whole world. So, I do not believe… Let me tell you for your interest if you may not know. In 2006, when I was the Chief of Army Staff, I intentionally requested from the government and I got the approval to invite the Chief of Army Staff because India does not have a CDS. I invited the Chief of Army Staff of India to visit us. He visited us for a week, he had talks with senior, middle rank officers of Nigerian Armed Forces and the question I put to him and I said, General Sir, what I want you to discuss with my people is that why is it that Indian military has never taken over government? Are there no mistakes that if you call them mistakes? And do you know the best way to learn? It is to learn from your mistakes. Maybe if the military had not stepped in to rule in Nigeria, maybe things would have been a little bit different because the politicians would have made their mistakes and learn from their mistakes and we would have known the value of democracy by now if we have been practising it for 60 years; that no group of people and bloody fool us and say that civilian rule, because they are now comparing military and civilian rule. If you have been ruling for 60 years, would you tell us that you are comparing with whom? People who are electing leaders would have been perfect now that nobody will sell their votes. And they will know that they will have the power to remove and put people into position.
@Sunday Sun