No Garlands for Badeh, No Cheers for Olukolade

We don’t expect an answer and while we are waiting, we must thank God for small mercies. With time, Badeh might return to public office either as a sinnator or civilian governor of his state. Such transformations are not uncommon in our animal farm.
Badeh is a lucky man; luckier than those who share the misfortune of being born in the same village. While their son was ensconced in his gated compound, guarded by armed soldiers in Abuja, they were left at the mercy of Boko Haram insurgents, according to news, shortly after Badeh had evacuated his own kinsmen.
This happened months after he led President Jones to Kaduna to launch Gulma, a supposed home built drone that he claimed would give the military unmanned edge and surveillance over Boko Haram giving his soldiers a blood nose. Badeh’s valedictory message was silent on the fate of Gulma. We are eager to know what happened to the wings of the spy drone after its multi-million launching.
Badeh is luckier than the parents of the Chibok girls some of who have died. He was grinning with his wife and perhaps his children were in the audience as he pulled out. Under his watch, over 300 Chibok schoolgirls were kidnapped. Chris Olukolade, his mouthpiece operating from his airconditioned offices in Abuja deceived the nation first into believing that the girls had been rescued. No apologies for the mischief, no resignations, no sackings.
Badeh is luckier than the scores of young officers fresh from the military academy and sent to their untimely deaths while their commanders partied the nights away. Badeh shares his luck with the soldiers who dropped their jammed weapons and ran across the border to Cameroon, a shameful tactic that Olukolade infamously tagged ‘tactical maneuver’. Badeh could not get soldiers to fight Boko Haram, but he got 3,000 to go to Ekiti to rig elections for the PDP.
Badeh’s army denigrated the military by dragging it into politics. They provided buffer for those who claimed that candidate Muhammadu Buhari, a General did not pass his school certificate and had no credentials only to find the missing credentials after election.
Badeh’s army surrendered the nation’s maritime security into the hands of brigands drawing money from government’s amnesty programme and acting as military contractors. Without scruples, they stuff a complicit pastor’s plane with dollars to launder in South Africa claiming America won’t sell them arms. But they had no problem buying decommissioned ships from Norway or grounded helicopters from America. Some of those copters are still grounded in Washington as we write.
A government contractor repackaged airplanes bought under the Shagari era and got their commander in chief to commission it with pomp and fanfare as new.
While Badeh retires to an amenity ward with his pregnancy, some truly pregnant wives of soldiers would be delivering their children into uncertainty as a result of his poor midwifing of the military. The survivors who questioned their commanders for sending them to war without the weapons to fight were rounded up and brought before kangaroo courts that sentenced them to death and jail terms. While they may not have been executed before last Thursday they are languishing in jail. These are some of the reasons we must revisit the military under Badeh’s in line with his confessions. We must re-evaluate the logic of his celebrated pullout.
It would have been forgivable if Badeh had crept back home with his tail in-between his legs. To have donned the uniform, a symbol of gallantry and staged a pullout is definitely a slap on the integrity of the military as an institution and a spit on the graves of the soldiers who died under his watch.
Under Badeh soldiers committed gross crimes of war, shamelessly filmed it and posted it on social media as acts of gallantry. This prompted US Senator Patrick Leahy to task President Buhari to prosecute the rapists and violators of gross human rights if he needed American arms. Foot soldiers cannot be tried and convicted while their culpable commanders recycle themselves back to reckoning.
We must start the tedious journey of reforming the army with pot-bellied generals who do not value their uniform enough to resign their commission when professionalism is threatened. This is the ultimate test of loyalty. There should be neither garland for Badeh or cheers for Olukolade until after a public enquiry. As the scriptures say, there is no rest for the wicked!
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