In just about any other business when things are going south, leadership pays the price. If a company keeps making losses and isn’t delivering dividends to shareholders, the CEO would be sacked.
Elite football clubs dispose of managers like used tissue paper when they are unable to meet targets – and it doesn’t matter how reasonable their excuses for failure may be.
The military and security establishment are just like any other business organisation – except that they are not tasked with delivering monetary dividends. Theirs is to manage men and armament with a view to guaranteeing the nation’s territorial integrity.
It stands to reason that when insecurity becomes a national crisis their leadership would come under scrutiny, with many calling for the sacking of the heads of the armed forces.
If things are going well, there may be no need to change people. IEDs may not be exploding in Abuja, but life is still scary for people in Borno, parts of Yobe and Adamawa.
Insurgents cross our borders at will, ride roughshod over our territory, making headline-grabbing sorties that embarrass the government. The ghoulish Abubakar Shekau who has been ‘killed’ or ‘badly maimed’ a couple of times has reincarnated to revive his video-making career.
One of the targets of recent criticism, Chief of Army Staff, Lt. Gen. Tukur Yusuf Buratai, argued in a recent interview that internal security is the brief of the police.
That’s another way of saying don’t blame us for what isn’t our responsibility. But this classic separation of duties between the forces is becoming irrelevant.
Nations sometimes bring out their armed forces to assist in times of natural disaster. Our current insecurity challenge is a disaster by any definition which has caused the government to co-opt the military in joint operations from far north to the Niger Delta.
All over major cities like Lagos, you see vans carrying a mix of soldiers and policemen. The government didn’t take the position that soldiers shouldn’t be contaminated with internal security assignments. The military is involved because the challenges of 2020 are different from what existed in the 70s and 80s.
Buratai also argued that sacking security chiefs is no guarantee that the war against the insurgents would dramatically improve.
That may be so. But it is equally possible that assigning new hands to the task could alter the dynamics of the conflict. New leaders want to prove a point and make their mark. They will come with fresh ideas. Also, such changes refresh the system and cause upward movements that boost morale within the forces.
While this may seem like the logical step to take regain momentum, President Muhammadu Buhari, is clearly not inclined to embrace it. National Assembly leaders who have been amongst the most militant in seeking leadership changes, after meeting him emerged to sing a more nuanced tune.
Senior Special Assistant to the President (Media and Publicity), Garba Shehu, provided insight into official thinking on the matter. No one is going to be sacked in a hurry because the nation is at war, he said.
Oh, really? Examples abound in history where military commanders were changed because they had not met their target, or because a change of strategy required the redeployment of officers who were a better fit. The changes affected administrative heads of the forces as well as field commanders.
It happened during the Nigerian civil war – bringing to national consciousness a corps of star officers like Olusegun Obasanjo, Benjamin Adekunle, Murtala Mohammed, Alani Akinrinade, Mohammed Shuwa, Godwin Alabi-Isama to mention a few.
Famous United States President Abraham Lincoln faced with the real threat that forces of the southern confederacy could overrun Washington DC, kept firing general after general, until he appointed Ulysses S. Grant who was always winning battles where his colleagues were foundering. That was the turning point in the war against the rebels.
The president may be a retired general who in his present capacity knows more than the rest of us emergency security experts, still what is at stake needs not be mystified. We are not venturing into discussing principles of war or battle strategy. This is just about getting the best hands to manage men and material.
The presidential spokesman disclosed a long list of equipment that has been procured to take the war to the enemy. That is comforting and in line with the argument in this column several weeks ago that a nation at war needs to increase defence spending.
But the most powerful weapons and armaments don’t do the job on their own, they need humans to activate and deploy them. This is why strategy and leadership are more important than just acquiring things.
Before the current crop of security chiefs were hired, Nigeria made advances against the insurgents. Long after they would have left their positions the country would still have capacity to defeat the terrorists. So it is a mystery clinging on to the officers – some of whom have long crossed their retirement dates and are serving simply at the pleasure of the president.
Prominent lawyer, Femi Falana (SAN), has argued that laws regulating military service require the retirement of officers who have served for 35 years or reached the age of 60. Virtually all the service chiefs have clocked out three decades and a half in service.
I am not aware of any rigid tenure for service chiefs. Historically, most have spent between one and four years and been moved on. The present crop are well on course to becoming the longest servicing in the nation’s history.
Buhari has a reputation for being slow to hire, slow to fire. Little wonder cabinet reshuffles were a rarity in his first term. If he wants to keep his security chiefs and exit with them in 2023, good luck to him.
Nigerians are only interested in defeat of the insurgency and security of life and property – one key ground for which he was elected in 2015 and re-elected last year.

By Festus Eriye