The General with intriguing names

Major-General Mohammed Chris Alli, who died last week at the age of 88, had a strangely fascinating combination of names. When he was unveiled as the Military Governor of Plateau State in 1985, in the mass naming of state governors by the new helmsman, General Ibrahim Babangida, many were taken aback by the coalescence of great names from the two great religions. It foretold great promise for a state like Plateau. However, he didn’t stay long enough, as he was shuffled to military duties just a year later. In any case, it was a job that he never enjoyed, partly because Plateau State had many of its indigenes who were influential generals in the Armed Forces Ruling Council, and Chris Alli presumably had difficulties in meeting their divergent expectations.

An egghead in the army, Chris Alli, authored a book, The Federal Republic of Nigerian Army: The Siege of a Nation, partly autobiographical and partly setting out his belief on the role of the army in a federation such as ours. It was from the book that I was able to unravel the puzzle surrounding his unique name. Both his mother and father were from Lokoja, where he was born. Whereas his father was a Muslim, his mother was a born-again Christian. At birth, his father had named him Mohammed Baba Alli. In due course, when the family moved to settle in Onitsha young Chris Alli and all his six siblings were raised by their mother as Christians.

Chris Alli went to a missionary school in Onitsha and while there was baptized as Christopher. After leaving school he moved up North to Kaduna to find work. It was while working in Kaduna that he joined the Nigerian Air Force and later transferred to the Nigerian Army. After a short service course, he was drafted to the war front to engage in the ongoing civil war. As a battalion commander, he fought in one of the most bruised sections of the civil war – the stretch from Benin to Onitsha. In the book, he gave a detailed account of the fight and, in particular, the debacle attendant to the many attempts to capture Onitsha that led to the tragic loss of lives of officers and men of the Nigerian Army.

After the war Chris Alli went back to the barracks, so to say, holding command posts, here and there, and attending promotion courses where he performed brilliantly. He stood out as one of those officers that one could not pigeonhole easily. He was born a Muslim, raised as a Christian, lived his formative life in Onitsha, attended a mission school, fought the civil war and married from the East. He spoke many Nigerian languages including Ebira, Yoruba, Igbo and Hausa. The many courses he attended in countries abroad and the command posts he occupied in various parts of the country produced in him an urbane and cosmopolitan outlook.

He was recognised as exceptionally brilliant, and superior officers always sought to keep him under their wings. From the mid-1960s to the end of that century, when the military held political power, upcoming officers within the ranks had to tread gingerly in between superior officers to avoid career pitfalls. Even though Chris Alli was recognised as independent-minded and outspoken he survived and held many important positions within and outside the country. Besides being the military governor of Plateau State, Chris Alli was GOC One Mechanised Division, Kaduna and later Director of Military Intelligence.

It was while he was at the DMI in November 1993 that he became the chairman of the group that worked furtively behind the scenes to oust the Shonekan government. The group, which named itself the Caucus, included Brigadiers A. A. Abdullahi, Bamaiyi, Magashi, Porbeni, Aziza, Johnson and their secretary, Col. Gwadabe. It was the Caucus that made all the initial top appointments of that regime.

Abacha became Head of State, Diya his deputy and Chris Alli took on the post of Chief of Army Staff. It was the crowning glory of his career, but he was destined not to stay long as subsequent events were to prove. The Caucus was meant to be a monitoring room for the regime, but soon their views ran counter to the wishes of the Head of State. One by one they were decimated. Chris Alli the maverick who could not keep his views to himself lost out early. He was let out to pasture in August 1994, bringing a brilliant career to a close.

But Chris Alli was not done yet. A decade later he was sought out by President Obasanjo and sent back to Jos, now in mufti, as an Interim Administrator of restive Plateau State. Obasanjo had clamped a state of emergency on the state after a bloody sectarian riot. It was Chris Alli’s last command and he performed brilliantly by developing the Plateau Peace Programme that involved dialogue between ethnic, religious and community leaders. It helped a great deal to restore some measure of calm to the state.

Chris Alli had declared in the aforementioned book: “I have affirmed to a few friends that if Nigeria were to be attacked by external forces, so long as there is breath in my body, I would re-enlist for war service – -”.

The nation will miss your service, General. Rest in peace.