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Maj. Gen. Augustine Chukwudi Agundu (rtd) served meritoriously and was the Commander Operation Safe Haven (OPSH), the internal joint security outfit in Jos, now rechristened Operation Enduring Peace. He was exposed to a lot of opportunities in the military, serving in many strategic positions as defence attaché in the Nigerian in Republic of Benin, Togo, Burkina Faso, Cote d’Ivoire, Senegal, and Guinea-Conakry. He later served as director of foreign liaison in a defense intelligence agency, making him a superintendent of the United Nations in charge of all the foreign DAs in the country. He later served at defence headquarters as director of campaign planning, planning and reshaping. As commander of OPSH, he covered security operations in Plateau State, five local governments of southern Kaduna, and two local governments in Bauchi, helping in achieving peace in those areas. In this interview with JUDE OWUAMANAM, he said that Nigeria appeared to have lost opportunities for greatness.
Excerpts:
In your opening speech, you talked about national aspiration being neglected. What aspect of those national aspirations do you think Nigerians have neglected?
First of all, understanding national aspirations is the collective will of a people for a better future. Everybody has a contribution towards that. It’s a broad goal to shape your nation and it cuts across the entirety of the spectrum that is called the nation, either at the economic level, security, and even judicial. If you look at these sectors of the nation they all have their own objectives and vision. So if we are able to harness the totality of this, though we are human, but if we can be able to harness let’s say 80 percent to 90 percent of these collectives towards nation building, we will have a perfect nation. That’s why we’re being fair to say 80 to 90 percent because we are not futuristic. We are not thinking of the next generation, we are thinking of now. I have been privileged in the course of my military career. I studied in Germany and we undertook a study tour in one small town. This town, in our own Nigerian setting we’ll call it like a village and there is often this competition to see which is the cleanest village, which is cleanest town and in this particular town even the potable water supplied to the population is calculated by the local council. Provision of social amenities is calculated to such an extent that even unborn children are taken into consideration. And they will not allow you, for instance, relocate from Jos to Abuja without the authorities in Jos knowing that you’re moving. The authorities in Jos are expected to sign that you’re relocating with your family to Abuja, and you’re expected to submit to authorities. This is how nations grow. And unfortunately we have our leaders who have studied all over the world they have seen things and all kinds of things, yet, we cannot apply same once we come back to our own nation. So the ingredients of nation building are not yet ingrained in our system.
The army you serve is seen as a symbol of this national aspiration, but unfortunately over the years the notion of army as that unifying factor has been eroded. What do you think is responsible for this?
Well, that’s rather a harsh way of describing what the national army is. Nothing has eroded.
What I mean is that the entry of the military into politics appears to have removed or watered down that pride that we should have in the military institution as the uniting factor. For instance, the military incursion in politics is still seen as the reason we have been having political crises. What is your take?
Why do we keep blaming the military experience in political life of this nation that is gone and dead and forgotten. I think it can only be mentioned if you are teaching the next generation of how we got to where we are today. You can say that at a certain period, from this year to that year we had military government, but today, what we now have is a democratic rule. You can help to educate the next generation of Nigerians who do not know that a time in this nation building we had military government but that is gone dead and forgotten. Tell them that they have a role to play and that role is selecting our democratic leaders and that is where elections and electoral process come into play. Then we should be asking our younger generations that they should get to know each other and they should get involved in governance and the first way of getting involved in governance is that you must have your Permanent Voter’s Cards and when elections come, we must go and select the leader you feel that can represent you. Let them know that government is representative and so if you are docile over it, nobody is to be blamed. It’s still a shame in this country that we will have elections and we talk of 30 something per cent participation of voters when we have a population of over 200 million. People sit down in the comfort of their homes during election and we say that Nigeria is not working. Nigeria is not working because we are docile. We did not go out there to vote we did not encourage our family members our community to go there and select our leaders. You get what you want if in a constituency that has 600, 000 voters and at the end of counting the vote, only 100, 000 voted. Who are you going to blame? This is the aspect where we need voter education. The electoral body must encourage young people, every local government, every school everywhere, we must teach and encourage our people to always go out and vote; it is your civic right. It’s one man, one vote. We must encourage agencies of government, ministry of information, the national orientation agency to get much more involved in voter education. We must and we should start making that as part of a school curriculum. At the age of 18, you are entitled to get your PVC now. INEC has released the timetable for the next election and has given ample time for voters. How many people are actually participating in it? But once it’s getting to one week to the end, you’ll see rush and then you start looking for extension when INEC has given us one year or more than a year to do that. How many schools are teaching this, how many institutions are teaching? A nation gets what it desire. So, the time I believe very sincerely has come when we must be able to re-orientate our thinking into these national aspirations we talked about. All of us have a part to play.
When we talk about military values being eroded, we are talking about military involvement into the political governance of this country. We no longer have an apolitical military to the extent that the military cannot take decision without the input from the political leadership. And this has sometimes made the military take wrong decisions. Correct me if I’m wrong?
You’re not correct. Like I said earlier, what we have today is democratic governance, and there is that civil authority over every aspect of our national security life. Military does not act independently; we derive our powers from the constitution. We have a military that subordinates itself to civil rule. Section 217 of the constitution and all the subparagraphs of it, gives us the authority of how we carry out your responsibility over the nation. There is nothing that we will do outside the constitution. The military itself has its own rules of engagement; it has its own organisational structure. It has its own several things that make it the military. And that’s why I said we derive our powers from the provisions of the constitution, nobody goes outside the constitution. Do not use individualism to now start thinking that you can subordinate the military as an individual. You cannot. Whatever that is, it is an institution, and do not forget that part of the components that make up a nation is the military and how to rate the power the powers of a nation is the economy, the vibrancy of the media, the foreign policy of a nation and the military. And the vibrancy of a nation is also part of that civil society. That is how to rate how strong a nation is. I don’t know where you are coming from with this line of questioning. So make it direct.
Ok. Recently there was a change in the command structure of the military and such change we know is expected to increase efficiency. But what do we have? Few weeks after this change, there is a spike in the level of insecurity. Just few days ago, more than 300 students were abducted from a school in Niger State and this came after the same thing happened in Kebbi State and we have the military that has taken control of internal security operations. What do you make of that?
No, no. Whatever that we do today relating to internal security is an aberration. All the civil, other paramilitary institutions of government, they are in charge of internal security, but the constitution also empowers the military to come out in aid of civil authority. So, the military involvement in internal security has nothing to do with our primary responsibility. The change that you are talking about within the military leadership, for goodness sake, is the prerogative of Mr. President as commander-in-chief to appoint his leaders, the military leaders. It is not at the behest of anybody. But what I said earlier on this, is that it is often the devil that is worrying us in this country. Once anything happens, we start looking at it from that myopic point of view of ethnicity, of, in fact, who is saying what. And do not forget, the military is one of the best trained institutions of this country. We are well trained. We know our turfs; we know what we are supposed to be doing. Every general is out there to succeed. And it is both for institutional memories and also for your own personal capacity. While I was a general in this army, I was in charge of this and I did this and I did that. So, the military knows its onions. It knows exactly what it’s going to do at every point in time. But it cannot do it individually. Every sector of this nation has a contribution to that. That there is a spike in insecurity that we are witnessing now does not mean it’s any fault from the military. There is no nation that has complete number of the military that it requires. Are you telling me that there are no violence in the United States on the streets? In the schools, even within families? But the point is that where we are in this country is that once anything happens, it’s military. Look at how the present administration of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu has decided to make every state to be almost like independent as far as funding and your responsibilities are concerned. Do we not have local governments? Within the local government, there are councillors. There is a local legislative assembly where councillors are all represented and every community is represented in that arrangement. Are they actually carrying out their responsibilities? When funds are released, are they accountable? Because when you are talking about all these, if you go to some schools, you will be appalled at the state of the schools. Okay, let’s even take an instance of energy. Today, everybody is providing solar light within his immediate household. Are you telling me that a local government chairman cannot lighten up the school, how much is a solar light that’s all over the place? There are responsibilities but we are not accountable to anybody. That’s why when something happens, that’s when you remember that there is the military. A lot is required to maintain the military, both in manpower and in equipment. You see, it’s often been misunderstood, the requirements, the equipment capacity that a military is supposed to have. If we are to, as a nation, equip the Army, the Navy, the Air Force, your budget cannot withstand it. Do you know the equipment level of a battalion?
What I’m asking is when you make a change, do you sacrifice efficiency on the altar of political expediency?
You are coming from a position of some limited ignorance. Like you said correctly, it is the prerogative of Mr. President to appoint whoever he wants to appoint. And one thing that the society does not understand is that there is the career progression in the military. There are so many ingredients. The military is the only institution whereby for you to move from a lieutenant to a captain, there are prerequisites. The military is the only institution whereby, it is not like the banking sector, where if you are employed today and you come with somebody that has five billion Naira, you will just rise above the people who have been there 20 years ago. The military is strategic. The processes are there. The procedures are there and they are known. We have our terms and conditions of service. It’s like our own Bible. The military is the only institution in this country that is governed by the constitution and by its terms and conditions of service. And if the military is operating outside this country, it is governed by the laws of this land, Nigeria, it is governed by the terms and conditions of service of the military, and you are governed by the laws of that country. The military is a complete package.
I know you are being economical with your choice of words, and I will work on it. Nothing is sacrificed, because every general is a future service chief. The day you attain that rank, you’re a consideration for service chief. And it is that rank of a major general, that is the only professional rank, which is the highest rank, whether in the Army, Navy or Air Force.
What of lieutenant general and general?
I’m coming to that. That rank of a major general is the one you earn with your professional capacity. Nobody can deny you of that as long as you meet all the conditions that will accrue to you attaining that rank. So, once you get to that rank of a major general, you have reached the highest rank in the military, other ranks are…
Political?
I don’t want to use the word political so that you don’t now start thinking about whether it’s your brother or this or that kind of thing. The others are a necessity. It’s not a right. If you become a lieutenant general; a three-star general, four-star general, they are incidentals. That there will only be one to head that arm of service. And it is also there because the military thrives on professionalism, regimentation, discipline. You cannot keep somebody who is one day senior to the person who has been appointed. . Then the other aspect where you are going to is also an aspect where we are missing as a nation. Because when you have this pool of retired generals, our national institutions are expected to collect these wealth of expertise and it is written, but nobody observes that. We often forget that we are trained with taxpayers’ money. And it is not that the military is wasting these expertise that we have grown over the years. And that is how it is done all over the world.
Are you talking about pooling them together as reserve list?
Not having a reserve, because all of us will retire to a reserve, but other national institutions are supposed to tap from their experiences. We can say, ministry of defence, we understood that a certain number of generals have been retired. We need expertise on communication, this, or that and we are plugged this time as consultants into these other national bodies to serve for a specific period of time because we have wealth of knowledge. So, they now push us to all the other ministries, but because every person is protecting his own territory, they wouldn’t want to engage them. These are men and women who have dedicated their life. And do not forget, it’s only the military that the ultimate goal might be to lose your life. There is no other profession. When you know you are serving under this condition, the probability of you losing your life is there. So the society does not even want to take ownership. I give you an instance, I was coming in from Tampa, Florida I went on a course. And inside the aircraft, I was reading one of these religious books and one the air hostess came to me. Are you a pastor? I looked at her. I was wondering what she wanted to know. She said ‘please, if you are, we have some servicemen who have just boarded the aircraft. They are going for an operation. Can you please pray for them?’ This is an air hostess and the airline is a private airline. But look at that national passion that that lady had to approach me to say there are service personnel on board this aircraft and I should please pray for them. But what do we have here? So we do not know actually whether we need a military or we don’t because the person outside look at everything in respect of the fault lines. Look at how even civilians confront policemen on the streets. Can you imagine, look at the charade that happened in PDP headquarters where even police were fighting fellow police because it’s what the civilian population want. Or look at the embarrassment that happened between the honorable minister and a young officer. You forget that the uniform I’m wearing is a national uniform. It’s a representation of the nation.
For 25 years the military has been involved in internal operations both in the Plateau and in the north-east and north-west and you happen to have headed that of the north -central that is Operation Safe Heaven. Why is it that after this many years the objectives for which the military has been on the streets have not been achieved?
Again it’s a misplacement of choice of words. It’s not that the objectives have not been achieved or seem not to have been achieved. Even if it has not been achieved or seem not to have been achieved, we will not be here today. You know there is no where that it is 100 per cent secured. No part of this world, not even in Iceland. But the point that we are having here is that we need to change our national consciousness, our security situation as a nation. The security situation is not worse than what is going on in Egypt. I have been trained in Egypt. You cannot even walk the streets freely in South Africa once it is 6pm. There are certain areas you cannot walk in Pretoria, but here by 12 midnight, people are walking freely. Here we don’t take our security seriously to the extent that we don’t even know our neighbors, our communities. The army is for the protection of territorial integrity, the Air Force is the entire air space of the nation, the navy is the maritime domain. We create insecurity because of that ethnic biases that has been in our bloodstream over the centuries. It’s not today that it started. Look at Plateau. They say there are 54 ethnic nationalities in this one state. Yet, there is no two that agree on any particular item of discussion. Every street you pass, you see several churches; you have Christian Association of Nigeria, yet, Catholic is not talking to protestant, protestant is not talking to Methodist, Methodist is not talking to an Anglican. Who caused that? We go to traditional institutions. You tell me that this one is chief of Berom people. This one is for Ngas. There are no coordinating points. The only thing we have here in the Plateau is this free weather that God gave us. I have seen a 25 year old boy, a girl, that has not known peace probably all their lives. And you are sitting down here and say you are an elder. So, what is the cause of the division that we cannot say, let us draw a line today and put a stop to it.
Will the military ever leave internal security?
Today ask the military to go back to the barracks, quickly everyone will go. Like I said, the main function of the military is not internal security, but we are subordinated to civil authorities and come in to help in terms of national emergency. The military is the best profession in this world.
Finally, you have traversed this whole world and you have served in one of the best institutions as you described it, what do you think we can do to achieve this national cohesion?
Sincerely, we can achieve national cohesion through true and sincere political governance. The national assembly is a representative house but those who are there are they actually representing you in your hamlet? We can talk from now till tomorrow, we know the right thing to do because that national cohesion, if we agree to it, as long as it is not the case of the end justifying the means which is what is practiced today, if we can agree and start from the family how do you rule your family, we can achieve it.
