PDP’s grand conspiracy theory of last week alleging that the Buhari Administration orchestrated the abduction and rescue of Dapchi schoolgirls for diabolical 2019 reasons had not run its full course when another, even grander conspiracy theory exploded on the national scene on Saturday. It would not have gained much traction if not for the calibre of the conspiracy theoretician.
Speaking at the maiden convocation ceremony of Taraba State University, Wukari, retired Lieutenant General Theophilus Yakubu [T.Y.] Danjuma asked Nigerians Middle Belt citizens] to defend themselves against killers [ cattle herdsmen] because the Nigerian Army colludes with killers to attack people of the “riverine states” [read: Taraba, Benue and Kogi states].
General Danjuma said the army is biased in inter-communal conflicts and that “it has failed in its responsibility of securing the country from attacks.” Failing to secure the country is different from colluding with the attackers, as we shall see. TY said, “The armed forces are not neutral. They collude with the armed bandits. They kill people, kill Nigerians. They facilitate their movements, they cover them. If you depend on the armed forces to stop the killings you will all die one by one. The ethnic cleansing must stop in Taraba State, must stop in all the states of Nigeria. I ask everyone one of you to be alert and defend your territory, your state. You have nowhere else to go.” He added that Somalia will be “child’s play” if killings continue in Nigeria. Some people alleged that he is aspiring to become our Mohammed Farah Aideed.
In Nigeria as in other places, a statement gains traction first because of the person who made it, secondly the context in which he made it, and thirdly the history of certain phrases that he used. In this case the person who made the allegation is, paradoxically, one of the country’s best known soldiers. He was a major actor in the July 1966 countercoup; a frontline commander in the Civil War; General Officer Commanding [GOC] the 3 Division in the Gowon era; very powerful Army Chief throughout the Murtala/Obasanjo regime and Defence Minister under President Obasanjo in 1999-2003. Let’s add that he was the man who got the contract from General Buhari to hire Israelis to grab Alhaji Umaru Dikko off London streets and bundle him into a crate in 1984. Since he left the Obasanjo government in a huff in 2003, TY returned to his role as a prominent businessman and philanthropist and an on-and-off statesman who does some good deeds but every now and then strays off the high road of statesmanship.
In Nigeria as in other places, a statement gains traction first because of the person who made it, secondly the context in which he made it, and thirdly the history of certain phrases that he used. In this case the person who made the allegation is, paradoxically, one of the country’s best known soldiers. He was a major actor in the July 1966 countercoup; a frontline commander in the Civil War; General Officer Commanding [GOC] the 3 Division in the Gowon era; very powerful Army Chief throughout the Murtala/Obasanjo regime and Defence Minister under President Obasanjo in 1999-2003. Let’s add that he was the man who got the contract from General Buhari to hire Israelis to grab Alhaji Umaru Dikko off London streets and bundle him into a crate in 1984. Since he left the Obasanjo government in a huff in 2003, TY returned to his role as a prominent businessman and philanthropist and an on-and-off statesman who does some good deeds but every now and then strays off the high road of statesmanship.
Ordinarily, there is nothing wrong in asking people to defend themselves against attack, except that the way it is said could sound like an incitement for people to take the law into their hands and proceed from defence to attack, which soldiers say is the best form of defence.
The most controversial use of that phrase in recent times was by former Christian Association of Nigeria [CAN] President Pastor Ayo Oritsejafor. He said so in 2012 in response to the Boko Haram bombing of churches on Sundays. Many people saw his statement as inciting. When Boko Haram later changed tactics from bombing churches to bombing mosques, Oritsejafor did not balance matters by asking Muslims to defend themselves.
I am not happy that this is the third time in 7 years that I am disagreeing with Danjuma on a major statement. The first time was in 2011 when he described Borno as a failed state. I had to remind him that the concept of failed state refers to nation states, not their sub units that have no security forces of their own.
The second occasion was August last year, when a group called Nigeria Christian Elders Forum charged that Muslim heads of security agencies were put in place to carry out a Jihadist agenda. Danjuma was one of the supposed signatories of the statement, though it turned out that he did not attend the NCEF meeting.
The charge that TY made on Saturday is similar to the one made in Washington, DC by then Adamawa State Governor Vice Admiral Murtala Nyako in March 2014. Curiously, Nyako’s military credentials mirror TY’s because he was a former Chief of Naval Staff and former Deputy Chief of Defence Staff. He sensationally told a foreign audience that the Jonathan Administration was sponsoring the Boko Haram insurgency in order to destroy the North.
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The way Nigeria works, many of the people who agreed with Nyako’s charge at the time [Northern Muslims, essentially] are also the ones who will vehemently disagree with Danjuma’s recent charge. Conversely, many of those who at the time accused Nyako of treasonable felony [Southerners and Christians, essentially] are the ones most likely to agree with Danjuma’s recent allegation.
As for me, I am an equal opportunity basher of conspiracy theories wherever I cannot see the evidence. In 2014 I wrote a column titled Enough Blames To Go Round and totally disagreed with Nyako. Last July I wrote another column titled Not Northern, Not Christian, Not Elders and disagreed with NCEF. Today I am disagreeing with Danjuma and I also promise any future conspiracy theoretician of any hue, provided I am still alive, that I will take him or her up unless he presents solid evidence to back up his allegation. Now, few Nigerians know the army as much as TY does.
There is however a reason to believe that many people lose touch with the current reality of institutions that they once headed.
Even a cursory look reveals that all Nigerian Army Divisions, Brigades, Battalions, Companies, Platoons and Sentries are ethnically, regionally, religiously and temperamentally mixed up. There is no Army Battalion, not to mention Division that is so ethnically or religiously pure that it can conspire to take sides in an inter-communal conflict. In any case, military training first and foremost aims to demolish a soldier’s earlier socialisation, including ethnic parochialism. If this training didn’t succeed over the years, TY cannot escape blame. Sure there are rogue soldiers but I doubt if they are very many. If the Nigeria Army appeared unprepared to fight internal wars, its former commanders cannot escape blame either.
General Danjuma began from the premise that the army has been unable to stop killings in the Middle Belt. Insofar as the army has been unable to stop killings in the North East, in Zamfara State and in Birnin Gwari after many years, that fact alone cannot stand as evidence of complicity in the killings. On many occasions in the 1970s when TY was Army Chief, soldiers attacked and killed civilians but no one said Danjuma was complicit because he couldn’t stop them. The fact that Federal Commanders including TY failed to stop soldiers from carrying out atrocities against Biafran civilians during the civil war did not mean they abetted it. I make an exception of the 1977 attack on Fela’s Kalakuta Republic, which TY personally ordered, as well as Odi and Zaki Biam. The fact also that 130,000 NATO troops from 51 countries failed to protect Afghans from the Taliban did not mean they colluded with it.
How times change. At the height of the Tiv-Jukun conflict in 1990, Citizen magazine sent Tawey Zakka and I to go and do an extensive report. We spent one week in Wukari, visiting crisis spots and conducting interviews. Tiv spokesmen told us that TY procured an army battalion from Yola and used it to shoot Tivs. We refused to include that charge in our story because there was no proof. A year later when conflict erupted in Takum between Jukun and Kuteb, irate Kuteb youths attacked TY’s motorcade, saying he was arming the Jukun militia. Again the charge was unsubstantiated. See who is making unsubstantiated allegations now.
That General Danjuma has fallen out with the Buhari regime over some issues does not mean he should incite Nigerians against the army, without which there could be no Nigeria, even though he said in the same breath that we should all work to preserve our country.
*Written By Mahmud Jega
