The immediate past Chief of Defence Staff, Air Chief Marshal Alex Badeh (retd.), has said that the Army he headed was one that was ill-equipped and poorly motivated to battle the Boko Haram insurgency.
The former Chief of Defence Staff made the statement while delivering a valedictory speech at a pulling out parade organised in his honour at the Mogadishu Cantonment, Abuja, on Thursday.
He described the period he was head of the military as the most challenging in his 38 years of service, accusing the local and foreign media of portraying Nigerian military in a bad light.
Badeh also blamed the fifth columnists in the military for frustrating efforts to combat the Boko Haram terrorists by leaking intelligence reports to the enemies.
According to him, some members of the political class did not also help matters as they exploited serious national security issues to gain political mileage.
Reflecting on his time in the military, Badeh said, “Like the saying goes, “whatever has a beginning must surely have an end”.
“My journey in the Service of my fatherland as a member of the Armed Forces of Nigeria which began on the 3rd of January 1977 in the Nigerian Defence Academy has finally come to an end. Accordingly as I bow out today, I look forward to a deserved and happy retirement.
“Notwithstanding the modest successes we recorded in the fight against terror, I must say that the task of co-coordinating the military and other security agencies in the fight against the insurgents is perhaps the most complex and challenging assignment I have had in my over 38 years in Service.
“For the first time, I was head of a military that lacked the relevant equipment and motivation to fight an enemy that was invisible and embedded with the local populace.
“Added to this, was the exploitation of a serious national security issue by a section of the press and the political class to gain political mileage.
“Furthermore, the activities of fifth columnists in the military and other security agencies who leaked operational plans and other sensitive military information to the terrorist, combined to make the fight against the insurgents particularly difficult.
“The activities of these unpatriotic members of the military not only blunted the effectiveness of the fight, but also led to the needless deaths of numerous officers and men who unwittingly fell into ambushes prepared by terrorists who had advance warnings of the approach of such troops.
“The decision by certain countries to deny us weapons to prosecute the war also added to the challenges we faced. Despite these challenges, I am glad to note that a lot was achieved during our time in the fight against terror,” he said.
“Over the years, the military was neglected and under-equipped to ensure the survival of certain regimes, while other regimes, based on advice from some foreign nations, deliberately reduced the size of the military and underfunded it.
“Unfortunately, our past leaders accepted such recommendations without appreciating our peculiarities as a third world military, which does not have the technological advantage that could serve as force multipliers and compensate for reduced strength.
“Accordingly, when faced with the crises in the North-East and other parts of the country, the military was overstretched and had to embark on emergency recruitments and trainings, which were not adequate to prepare troops for the kind of situation we found ourselves in.”
He also said some previous leaders took deliberate decisions to weaken the military just for the survival of their regimes.
Bedeh said that some of the regimes acceded to the demands of foreign countries to reduce the size of the military and deprived the nation’s defence forces of the requisite funding and size.
He lamented that such leaders accepted the advice of such foreign countries without considering the nation’s peculiar characteristics as a third world country which lacked the advantages of modern technology to compensate for the costly reduction in size and strength.
Bade said that the military was overstretched to such a point that it had to resort to emergency recruitments and trainings to fight the insurgents, which he said was inadequate in the face of the level of security challenge facing the country at the time.
Badeh noted that no nation can achieve its full security potentials by totally depending on other nations for its defence needs.
According to him, the lessons of the civil war and the ongoing war against terror where certain countries frustrated our attempts to procure much needed weapons are very instructive.
He therefore, appealed to the relevant agencies of government “to mobilise the huge human and material resources we have in this country towards the development of a vibrant Defence Industrial Complex that would contribute to meeting our critical arms and equipment needs.
“This is crucial if we must reduce our total dependence on foreign sources of supply for critically needed arms. That is the only way we can retain our dignity as a nation in order to have freedom of action in international affairs”.
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