Last week our military underwent what would be described as a period of tumultuous mixed emotions. They had just endured a day of horror when they announced the decimation of their officers and men sent on a peace mission to Ughelli communities in the creeks of the Niger Delta. The military had also enjoyed one of their best days fulfilling a promise not only to their Commander-in-Chief but to all Nigerians when they brought back the abducted children from school at Kuriga and Sokoto to their parents.
For the military, ‘it was the best of times, it was the worst of times’. The quote, as many of my readers would notice, is from Charles Dickens’s A Tale of Two Cities, a great novel that we were privileged to read as a set book in the early 1970s, in the university, describing the paradox bedeviling France before, and during, the French Revolution of the late-18th Century.
A few days after the abductions of the school kids, the whole country was in uproar, urging the military to get back the students in good time. President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, the Commander-in-Chief, gave specific instructions to the military but many remained cynical that anything positive would materialise out of the efforts of the military as these in the recent past circumstances have not met with immediate success. Nevertheless, the pressure mounted on the military and we were all pleasantly surprised at the outcome of events.
After the abducted school children had spent two weeks in captivity, we were all settling down for a long-drawn engagement with the bandits, when suddenly we were awakened to the news that the military had gotten the kids back. It was an exhilarating moment that was celebrated widely. The applause was loud and clear and we all acknowledged that, at last, our military had gotten its groove back.
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A few days earlier when the military was still focused on retrieving the school kids from their merciless abductors, the institution was beset with a monumental tragedy. It was reported that troops of 181 Amphibious Battalion while on a peace mission to Okuama community in Bomadi LGA of Delta State were surrounded by some community youths and killed. The troops including four officers and 13 soldiers were responding to a distress call to intercede in a communal crisis between Okuama and Okoluba communities both in Delta State.
The loss of officers and men in the military is always treated with the deserved attention. There was a national uproar condemning the killings and urging the authorities to apprehend and prosecute the killers. While the hunt for the killers was still on, the bodies of the murdered soldiers were laid to rest in an impressive ceremony, with the attendant proper decorum. The ceremony was attended by state governors, members of the national assembly and all the top hierarchy in the Ministry of Defence, superintended by President Bola Tinubu himself.
During the ceremony, the President assured the families of the slain soldiers, left behind, of maximum support. For starters, the President awarded posthumous national honours to the gallant slain officers and soldiers. He also approved scholarships for all their children, including those in the womb. The President further approved houses for families of the deceased military personnel to be built in their preferred part of the country. It was a deeply moving ceremony and as a whole also a reassuring gesture to the serving officers and men, that the country would be there for them in case of any untoward events affecting them.
Maybe this week of mixed emotions would allow the opportunity to once again reevaluate the role of the military in internal defence. It is worth repeating that we are overburdening our military. They are everywhere in the country attending to one civil insurrection or the other. They are in the North East battling Boko Haram terrorists, in the Niger Delta combating illegal oil bunkerers, in the South East fighting IPOB separatists, in the North West dealing with bandits and in the North Central, communal clashes. Nonetheless, the military have proved their mettle against the Boko Haram terrorists having fought them for over 10 years and succeeded in degrading and pushing them to the fringes of Lake Chad.
And now with what the military had achieved in Kuriga and Sokoto, we can be assured that they have started chalking up some successes against the bandits engaged in the unwholesome kidnapping activities in the North West. Yet, we must admit that the burden is becoming overwhelming on the military. There may be a time when we would need the military for the task of defending the nation against external aggression and when they are so stretched with internal defences they might not be in the best condition. We must put in more resources to revitalise the police force to enable them to take a proper grip on their constitutional duties of internal defence.
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