The current Chief of Army Staff, Lieut-Gen Yusuf Tukur Buratai, will for a very long time remain a major factor when the comprehensive history of Nigerian Army is to be written.

My personal accounts of Buratai, from a close proximity, is that he outwardly looks like an officer who is 100 per cent dedicated to his duties, even as he has shown enough evidence as an officer with 100 per cent loyalty to the Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Nigeria.

Whether for good or bad, the leadership of the current chief of Army staff has become a phenomenal case study. His roles in the war on terror still waging; the unconstitutional quelling, through brute force, of civilian-led protests by members of the unarmed, but lately proscribed, Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB); particularly, the circumstances surrounding the attacks on the Afara-Umuahia, Abia State, home of the leader of IPOB, Prince Nnamdi Kanu, will for a long time remain debatable and highly explosive. The seemingly inefficient fight against armed Fulani herdsmen by soldiers is another source of considerable worry for historians.

From the positive point of view, the Army now has a full department that co-ordinates relations with the civil society, even as the existence of this office has substantially and incrementally resulted in the disappearance of the derogative term in which most military operatives describe the rest of us not adorned with military uniform: bloody civilians.

This is not to say that the different facets of gross indiscipline amongst the rank and file within the military institutions have disappeared. Indeed, there are too many bad eggs working as military operatives who still engage in the dastardly act of inflicting physical and emotional torture on unarmed civilians. In these days of information technology and the social media, there have been cases of clear breaches of human rights perpetrated by armed soldiers on entirely unarmed civilians, without any form of provocation. A video is trending on Facebook of an armed soldier who violently attacked a commercial driver in a part of North-eastern Nigeria, just because the driver refused to offer the bribe demanded by the soldier. From the visuals and the audio that make up the recording, the audience can hear a lady begging the soldiers in Hausa, to stop attacking the driver who all the while did or said nothing in return.

The creation of the Human Rights Desk in the military has not done much in inculcating the virtue of respect for the fundamental rights of Nigerians, even though the awareness that defaulters stand extremely high chance of being dealt with if caught engaging in human right abuses may have been created in the media by the Public Relations Departments of the military.

The creation of the department for civil/military relations, which is inter-related with the establishment of human rights desks in all major military formations, have also come with the increased challenge for the hierarchy of the military to deliberately fast-track the period within which civilians or soldiers can initiate petitions and hopefully get these grievances sorted out. This is where the National Human Rights Commission and civil society group such as Human Rights Writers Association of Nigeria (HURIWA) need to double their oversight advocacy campaigns to sensitise Nigerians on their rights, and how to protect them.

The frustration of the current bureaucratic bottlenecks in getting these institutions of opportunities for redress of grievances to function optimally is a major impediment. The army chief needs to match words with action because, as they say, action speaks louder than words.

For instance, the recent high-profile accusation of collusion with armed hoodlums made against serving soldiers by the erstwhile Chief of Army Staff and former Defence minister, Lieut-Gen Theophilus Yakubu Danjuma (retd) was not professionally addressed and investigated for weeks.

Against the backdrop of these allegations made by the former military General, the spokesperson of the Defence Headquarters immediately rushed to the media to counter and deny, without any superior arguments, that such negative traits exist in the military. This is a show of shame.

However, a few weeks after the hasty denial by the media director of Defence Headquarters, the Chief of Army Staff decided, belatedly, to set up a panel to investigate the allegations.

This gesture of professional excellence by the Chief of Army Staff has, however, been muddied by the obvious fact that media spokesman of the Defence Headquarters had already taken a position. The initial response by the Public Relations chief of the Defence Headquarters, who is a Maj-Gen in the Nigeria Army, is a gross dereliction of professional duty. What are the guarantees and safeguards to assure millions of worried Nigerians that the internal board of investigators convoked by the Chief of Army Staff would be objective and thorough in their search for answers to the accusations of collusion and conspiracy with the mass-killer herdsmen, as made by Gen Danjuma and attested to by many of the actual survivors of some of these deadly attacks?

The above scenario of hasty response followed by the choreographed and sponsored solidarity rally paid for allegedly by the Defence Headquarters, which brought together roughly 100 hungry and jobless youth to stage solidarity rally at the Defence Headquarters have demonstrated the weakening of professional discipline, which the Chief of Army Staff should endeavour to address and respond to in a very comprehensive way.

If I may ask, what is the motivating factor for this sort of demonstration in support of the military by these civilians who apparently were paid pittance to participate?

Was this rally organised because the accusations made by TY Danjuma are not factual? Can these civilian demonstrators claim to love the military institutions much more than Danjuma, who became who he is now because of the generous professional and career trainings he got from the military institutions in Nigeria?

May I, please, seek indulgence of the Chief of Army Staff to direct his operatives and officers to pick up copies of the book entitled: Issues in the Mobilisation of Public Support for Military Operations in Nigeria, written by erstwhile spokesman of the Defence Headquarters, Maj-Gen Chris Olukolade (retd).

From this well-researched book, we can learn that the main triggers for public support to be built for the military institutions include, but not limited to the human rights record of the country and the military personnel. Currently, both of these records are outrageous and abysmal. This is why serving soldiers must spare time to read the above mentioned book by one of them.

Maj-Gen Chris Olukolade also listed other strategic factors to include the state of the nation’s economy; nature of the threat and good governance. These factors as I write are incredibly poor and non-existent.

The economy is porous and ballooning poverty has become the other of the day, just as bad governance and lack of accountability and transparency have assumed troubling dimensions in all facets of the governance structure.

Although the prejudicial statement by the current media director of the DHQ, who immediately denied the allegations made by former Chief of Army Staff will, to a very far-reaching extent, harm the credibility of the ongoing investigation put in place by Buratai, it will still be better to capture the under-laying currents and dynamics that gave rise to these allegations. The investigation by the internal panel should be followed by an entirely independent panel of investigators to be composed by statesmen and women who have shown undying passion and commitment to the wellbeing of the Federal Republic of Nigeria. Persons with links to the military, who can be bribed, must not be included in such investigative panel. This much one can say on this level just before progressing with the rest of this article.

The article about what I consider labour of love for the military institution by current Chief of Army Staff cannot be complete without dwelling on the emerging information that the army chief has started the implementation of medical tourism for critically wounded soldiers who are affected by the ongoing war on terror in the North-east of Nigeria. Information also abound that there are many wounded soldiers who have been abandoned to face very cruel fate. Commendable as these gestures are, the graphic picture of wounded soldiers being flown abroad for the much-needed medical emergencies also raises certain national security issues of what constitutes sovereignty, if the nation lacks facilities in Nigeria to treat wounded soldiers.

For example, how will South Africa look like in the eyes of international community, if her wounded soldiers are to be flown to Britain or India for medical emergencies? Have we no sense of national pride?

Readers must appreciate the exact perspective from which the postulation on these medical matters is coming from. For one, yours truly will be the first to applaud any effort put in place to save the precious lives of our gallant soldiers wounded by terrorists.

The steps to fly wounded soldiers abroad for emergency medical treatments are pragmatically correct, no doubt. But beyond the immediacy of this approach, I am for the sustainable process that would see our fatherland building and maintaining world-class military medical facilities across the six geo-political zones of Nigeria.

A reading of this particular news item on the medical tourism being organised for wounded soldiers, will provide the needed urgency for all hands to be on deck to ensure that in a very short period of time, that Nigeria will establish state-of-the-art military medical hospitals in the six geo-political zones of Nigeria.

Media has reported that Buratai is said to have approved the treatment abroad of wounded soldiers in the North-east counter-insurgency operations against terror group Boko Haram. The revelation was made by the Acting Chief Medical Officer of 68 Nigerian Army Reference Hospital, Yaba, Lagos, Brig-Gen-Adekola Dada, who explained that the welfare of soldiers fighting in the North-east is important to the authorities of the force. He said that every personnel of the Nigerian Army wounded in the fight against Boko Haram in the North-east requiring treatment abroad will be quickly flown to India, Egypt or United Kingdom, to be properly treated.

The force, he said, is on the verge of flying seven wounded personnel who sustained injuries fighting in the North-east to India for treatment. Dada added that Gen Buratai has approved their movement and that of their medical escorts to India, to ensure they get the best treatment. Brig-Gen Dada said that Army authorities had recently embarked on a remodelling and reconstruction of the 68 Nigerian Army Reference Hospital in Lagos and the 44 NARH, Kaduna to ensure that they get the necessary equipment and atmosphere conducive for treatment of personnel in future. He noted that two phases of the process in the remodelling of the hospital have been completed, and that the third phase would soon commence with the remodelling of the administrative block. He regretted the huge financial burden on the Nigerian Army for medical evacuations, explaining that an evacuation for each personnel could cost as much as $40,000, excluding estacode and funds for the escorts.

Dada described as unfortunate a recent publication that the force does not cater to its wounded personnel, noting that the Army has engaged private hospitals in Abuja, to ensure that personnel who are wounded in battle get the best treatment possible.“There is pragmatic value and goodness in granting quick medical evacuations to our wounded soldiers to better and much more efficiently equipped hospitals abroad.”

Good as that gesture of the Chief of Army Staff appears, when put side-by-side the recent mass promotions announced for soldiers who are engaged in the war on terror, there is the need to adopt a holistic approach to the ways and manner that the war on terror is being prosecuted. However, let me repeat that Nigeria is ripe enough to build, maintain and operate functional reference military medical hospitals in all zones of Nigeria.

In conceptualising a military budget frameworks, considerations must be given to the urgent need for the country to run efficient military medical facilities, which should be upgraded to a level that they will become commercially viable and serve as one local remedy to the problems of capital flight, associated with high incidence of medical tourism by rich government officials and the elite.

This point was expounded by global scholars such as Aristotle and Adam Smith.

Adam Smith was a Scottish economist, philosopher and a moral philosopher who doubles as a pioneer of political economy and a significant figure during the Scottish enlightenment era. As an accomplished economist, Adam Smith took time to carry out a research, which also focused on how to effectively fund the military of a nation-state. In his view, “the first duty of the sovereign is to provide adequate defence; and this should be done from the tax-payers’ money.”

Olukolade observed that more recently, Jean Babel informed us that war has remained a persistent feature of human civilisation. He noted: “Over the last 51/2 millennium, the planet lived in peace for a mere 292 years. In the long period, there have been 14,500 wars, big and small, that carried off an astronomical 3.64 billion people.”

Olukolade stated that wars, terrorism, insurgency, militancy, riots, and communal clashes today continue to deplete the earth of human beings.

“The end of the Cold War in 1989, which was expected to douse the embers of war, failed to achieve that hope. With nations still keeping their piles of nuclear war-heads, and more sinister terrorism wreaking havoc on the world, the fears of Kidron and Smith remain valid.”

The duo had asserted that: “The global reach and destructiveness of modern armed forces are such that war and preparations for war have become a source of worldwide insecurity, and not merely its reflection. War, now has the potential not only to determine, but to terminate social and political organisations.”

Last words: Gen Buratai should consider delivering legacy projects of successfully completing the remodelling of military medical facilities all over Nigeria, so we can treat our soldiers at home and end the shame of military evacuations of wounded soldiers to another nation for treatments, which deplete our foreign reserves and increases capital flights and, indeed, make Nigeria look like a Banana republic.

•RIGHTSVIEW appears on Wednesdays and Saturdays, in addition to special appearances. The Columnist, a popular activist (www.huriwanigeria.com, www.emmanuelonwubiko.com), is a former Federal Commissioner of Nigeria’s National Human Rights Commission and presently National Coordinator of Human Rights Writers’ Association of Nigeria (HURIWA).

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