Dear President Muhammadu Buhari,

This open letter was actually intended to be an appeal to the service chiefs to turn up their letters of voluntary retirement after they have served their mandatory two-year tenures, and another two years of extension, which expired last year.

Since their stay in office is at the discretion of the President and Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces, I have rather decided to write this memo, appealing to you in the spirit of fairness, standard procedure and progression in the service, to allow the longest-serving service chiefs go after exceeding their run-out dates (ROD), which is the mandatory 35 years of military service, and the additional discretionary extension, which is generally time-bound.

As you are aware Mr. President, the Chief of Defence Staff (CDS), General Gabriel Abayomi Olonisakin from Ekiti was born on December 2, 1961. He enrolled at the Nigerian Military School, Zaria in 1973 and later joined the Nigerian Defence Academy (NDA) as a member of the 25th Regular Course. He was commissioned as a Second Lieutenant in 1981.

The Chief of Naval Staff (CNS), Vice Admiral Ibok Ete-Ibas from Cross River, was born on September 27, 1960. He enlisted into the NDA as a member of 26th Regular Course on June 20, 1979 and was commissioned a sub-lieutenant on January 1, 1983.

Chief of Air Staff (CAS), Air Marshal Sadique Abubakar from Bauchi was born on April 8, 1960 in Azare, Bauchi State. He joined the Nigerian Air Force as a member of the Cadet Military Training Course (CMTC 5) in November 1979.

The Chief of Army Staff (COAS), Lt. Gen Tukur Buratai from Borno was born on November 24, 1960. In January 1981, he attended the NDA as a member of the 29th Regular Course (29 RC). He was commissioned as a Second Lieutenant on December 17, 1983.

Meanwhile, the most senior military officer, besides the service chiefs, is Lieutenant General Lamidi Adeosun from Osun, who was born on August 22, 1963 and enrolled into the Army on July 4, 1983. He has also clocked 35 years in the service.

As you may be aware Mr. President, apart from attaining the ROD, the tenures of the defence and service chiefs have since expired, going by the revised Armed Forces of Nigeria Harmonised Terms and Conditions of Service (HTACOS) for officers.

In Section 09.08 of the said HTACOS, which is the authoritative and official service order in the military, it is stated that, “An officer appointed to the substantive appointment of the Chief of Defence Staff, Chief of Army Staff, Chief of Naval Staff and the Chief of Air Staff will hold the appointment for a continuous period of two years. The appointment could be extended for another two years from the date of expiration of the initial two-year period.”

The service chiefs were first appointed in July 2015 and their tenures were extended for an additional two years in 2017, which finally expired in 2019. It has always been the standard practice, since the return of democratic governance to Nigeria in 1999, for service chiefs to be in office for a maximum term of two years, except on a few occasions of discretionary extension by Mr. President, after which replacements are made.

The retention of the chiefs stagnates the careers of other senior officers and induces unfair early mature retirements, in the absence of vacancies at the topmost echelons of the services.

As in the practice in the past, the exit of a service chief automatically impels the departure of their course mates from the service, such that officers who are next in seniority, such as the chiefs of various corps and departments at the service headquarters; general officers commanding; commandants; brigade commanders; and directors then experience an upward movement in their careers.

As it is now, at least five sets, and generations of regular course (RC) members, including those in the 27th, 28th, 29th, 30th, 31st, 32nd and 33rd courses, with the exception of Lt. General Adeosun, have left the service without any of them attaining the highest military positions in their various services. There is likelihood that those of the 33rd and 34th courses may also not have the privilege of producing a service chief among them if this trend continues. With limited vacancy, only a few officers can be promoted, while several other brilliant officers would be forced to go on retirement.

Meanwhile, after staying for more than four years, with adequate resources provided to the military chiefs for procurements, recruitments and the training of personnel, they have performed to the best of their abilities, yet recent developments call for more strategic thinking, fresh ideas and a change in the administration and style of managing generations of military talents.

The international community has been raising concerns about disturbing trends from the end of last year into the beginning of the new year (2020) pertaining to the steady reversal in the fortunes of our troops in the hands of terrorists.

The European Parliament, the legislative branch of the European Union (EU), observed that there has not been any significant progress in the fight against the Boko Haram and ISWAP terrorists. The Parliament, in its resolution of January 16, 2020, remarked that the security situation in Nigeria has deteriorated significantly, with insurgents turning the Maiduguri-Damaturu and surrounding routes into an extended death zone.

In the same vein, the United Nations (UN) had expressed outrage over the scale and intensity of the attacks carried out by the suspected insurgents against its facilities and other targets in parts of North-East Nigeria. The UN Humanitarian Coordinator in Nigeria, Mr. Edward Kallon strongly condemned attacks on its humanitarian hub.

There is also the alarming Global Terrorism Index of the Institute for Economics and Peace (IEP), which ranked Nigeria as the third country with the highest level of terrorist activity in 2019, after Iran and Afghanistan.

Some of these reports are not only distressing in terms of the upsurge in the insurgency but have been very embarrassing, as terrorists are not only going for soft targets but staging ambushes against our gallant troops while attacking military facilities. In some instances, civilians, as well as soldiers, have been either abducted or killed by the cowardly but deadly terrorists.

In other climes, including Mali, Burkina Faso, Chad and the Niger Republic, such incidents usually necessitate the replacement of service chiefs under whose leadership there are repeat assaults and losses of lives of troops in the hands of terrorists.

While I believe the service chiefs have good intentions and have done their best, I suggest they leave when the ovations are loudest and in order to allow fresh ideas to come into the management of our national security, whilst encouraging progression and the promotion of deserving officers in the armed forces. This will also inspire in a coming generation of officers, the hope of their finding ultimate career fulfilment in the armed forces, after decades of sacrifice.

The President can even promote any one of the military chiefs to the position of Chief of Defence Staff since the current CDS has remained the most senior and older officer in the military in the last four years.

Yushau A. Shuaib
Founder PRNigeria and Author “An Encounter with the Spymaster”
yashuaib@yahoo.com

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Dasuki-Buhari

Spymaster: A Memo to President Buhari on Sambo Dasuki
By Yushau A. Shuaib

Your Excellency, Mr. President, permit me to use this open letter as an appropriate channel to convey this message to you for the obvious reason of reliability. For fear of being misunderstood, I should state from the onset that I have been your hardened fan since the 80-90s while I was a student and contributing articles featuring the famed incorruptibility and discipline of you and your former lieutenant, the late General Tunde Idiagbon. (Link: https://yashuaib.com/1991/11/haba-governor-madaki/)

It may interest you to note that immediately after your election, I was approached by well-wishers requesting my services on communication strategies for your wife, Mrs Aisha Buhari. While I recognised the fact that such request to work with the first family is a great honour, I nevertheless politely declined for fear of conflict of interest because I had served the Office of the National Security Adviser (ONSA) during the tenure of Sambo Dasuki which is being probed by your government.

I wish to therefore implore you to read this memo with open-mind as coming from an admirer who means well for you and the nation because of some disclosure I would make here for the record.

Immediately after I was prematurely retired from the public service for writing against a serving powerful minister during the previous administration, Sambo Dasuki invited me to serve the same government as a consultant on crisis communication and a major intermediary between the media and the critical stakeholders i.e. the military, security, intelligence and response agencies in Nigeria. The assignment was designed to counter terrorists’ propaganda and other campaigns on security consciousness which we successfully executed in the last three years. (Link: https://yashuaib.com/2014/03/sambo-dasuki-on-security-media-relations/)

In the course of my assignment not only did I relate closely with the ONSA and other security agencies, I also enjoyed interaction on valuable information about your past relationship with Sambo Dasuki. Your Excellency, you may recall my first article on his travail which I titled ‘An Encounter with the Spymaster’ in July 2015. In that article, I narrated his visit with other officers to you in Jos while you were GOC over the coup that ousted President Shehu Shagari which you later emerged as the Head of State. I also stated his denial of ever arresting you or detaining you after the Babangida coup that ousted you. In fact, few weeks after my publication, your town man, retired Colonel Abdulmumini Aminu corroborated the same story by insisting that it was him (AbdulMumini and two other officers –John Madaki and Lawan Gwadabe) and not Dasuki that arrested you (Link: http://www.premiumtimesng.com/news/top-news/188069-how-we-arrested-buhari-during-1985-coup-abdulmumini-aminu.html or http://bit.ly/2fK4jQv

In the same article, Dasuki whom I learnt is your in-law, narrated his brotherly supports for your candidacy for the Presidency in 2003, 2007 and 2011 before he was later appointed the NSA by Goodluck Jonathan. Apart from mentioning names of people privy to those efforts in that article who are still alive, he also mentioned how he pleaded with Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu and Chief Bisi Akande on your behalf to allow you fly the joint ticket of the Presidential candidate of the then CPC and ACN in 2011. (Link: https://yashuaib.com/2015/07/sambo-dasuki-an-encounter-with-spymaster/)

Your excellency, from the foregoing, I can say that Sambo Dasuki is an honourable man who respected you and can do no harm. In fact, he confided in me when he was acting as your NSA that many people were asking him to run away because you would deal with him. He said “I can never be a fugitive after past Abacha’s attempt on my life in the 90s. I will remain in Nigeria and face any consequences.”

While serving as the consultant to ONSA and other security agencies, we created a most cohesive and organised platform for top security spokespersons under the platform of Forum of Spokespersons of Security and Response Agencies (FOSSRA) to counter the narratives and propaganada machinery of the insurgents and their sympathizers. We succeeded in establishing and sustaining mutual understanding and synergy among all the agencies, especially in coherent and coordinated interface with the media. We also eliminated inter-agency rivalry and dichotomy as we also checked and controlled embarrassing information leakages that might be injurious to national security. (Link: https://prnigeria.com/2014/08/fossra-foster-interagency-security-collaboration/)

It should be stated here that during the critical period of the war on terror, the western powers deliberately refused to sell required weapons and armaments to Nigeria to prosecute the war on flimsy excuses of human right abuses. When they embargoed the supply, the then government had to resort to Eastern Block for required arms and ammunition. Though the arrival of the equipment were late which necessitated the postponement of the 2015 election, the subsequent operations were successful. In fact, Your Excellency, some of the acquisitions arrived after you came into office. (Link: https://prnigeria.com/2015/04/military-to-liberate-sambisa-forest-may-29-nsa/)

Dasuki also confirmed the acquisitions of Alpha jets, Armoured Personnel Carriers (APCs), Mine-Resistant Ambush Protected (MRAP) vehicles, advanced artillery pieces, assorted arms and ammunition, sophisticated surveillance drones, T72 Battle Tanks and modification of F7 supersonic jet fighters. (Link: https://prnigeria.com/2015/08/we-acquire-sophisticated-weapons-against-terrorism-ex-nsa-sambo-dasuki/)

Your Excellency, you may be aware that the military during Jonathan’s administration also secured the cooperation of reluctant neighboring countries to confront terrorists after funding the Multi-National Joint Task Force (MNJTF). You may also be aware about other strategies that were deployed to tackle the Boko Haram menace when Special Technical Advisers from friendly countries intelligently assisted our air powers to clear the occupied territories from the sky while the ground troops moved in to consolidate the clearance of the remnant of terrorists. (Link: https://prnigeria.com/2015/03/so-called-mercenaries-are-technical-advisers/)

Your Excellency, as you may probably know, average Nigerians can be forgetful. Before the handover to you as the President of Federal Republic of Nigeria on May 29, 2015, when Sambo Dasuki was still the NSA under the Jonathan administration, Nigerian military had successfully liberated dozens of towns and cities from terrorists in Adamawa, Borno and Yobe State. Some of the liberated towns including these 24 towns: Abadam, Askira, Baga, Bama, Bara, Buni Yadi, Damboa, Dikwa, Gamboru-Ngala, Goniri, Gujba, Gulag, Gulani, Gwoza, Hong, Kala Balge, Konduga, Kukawa, Marte, Madagali, Michika, Monguno, Mubi, Vimtim among other communities with pictorial and video evidences provided by the Defence Headquarters. In one day alone April 30, 2015, at least 234 abductees (Women and Children) were rescued by the military who had stormed sections of the Sambisa Forest. (Link: https://prnigeria.com/2015/05/another-set-of-234-women-and-children-freed/)

Some of the finest and courageous military commanders who led our troops to recover those territories are still in active service and can bear witness to those great moment of the military’s accomplishments. I must commend your Excellency for assigning some of them to higher responsibility and for providing the nation with the current courageous Service Chiefs who have performed exceeding well in the mopping and clearance exercise.

You may also be aware that it was Sambo Dasuki as the NSA who introduced the Soft-Approach programme that gave birth to Presidential Initiative on North-East (PINE), which later metamorphosed into Presidential Committee on North-East (PCNI) which you recently inaugurated. In fact Dasuki also launched and implemented the National Counter Terrorism Strategy (NACTEST) which your Vice President Osinbajo and current humble NSA Mohammed Monguno relaunched recently too. These are obvious facts your excellency. (Link: https://yashuaib.com/2016/09/nactest-osinbajo-and-the-revised-counter-insurgency-campaign/)

Mr. President, I raised some of these issues to let you know that there are a lot of alarming and toxic misleading information in the public domain. You may recall my alarm over the AVM Jon Ode Panel on arms procurement and advise I gave you to always conduct thorough and due diligence search on those to be appointed into any organisation, committee or panel to ensure their incorruptibility in line with the change mantra of your administration. I warned that wrong people in sensitive positions may capitalise on your sincerity to engage in proxy wars without your knowledge. I mean this sir. (Link: https://prnigeria.com/2016/03/yashuaib-resigns-fossra-say-jon-ode-panel-misleading-president-buhari/)

May I appeal to Your Excellency to simply review the fact that Sambo Dasuki has been granted bails by three High Courts in Nigeria and that even the ECOWAS Court has also ordered his release yet he has remained in custody. I know you can do it because you single-handedly intervened in saving careers of some senior military officers when you refused to be misled by some reports. Surprisingly, the public are not even aware of your magnanimous gesture but some of us are, as the saved security officers remain grateful to your kindness and fatherly role. (Link: https://prnigeria.com/2016/10/ecowas-court-orders-immediate-release-dasuki/)

The obvious disobedience to court order on Dasuki’s bail is quite disturbing. Since his arrest and detention on December 1, 2015, Dasuki has observed Christmas, New Year, Islamic Festivities of Ramadan, EidKabir and Moulud in captivity. In less than a month time, he will have clocked one year in detention against the law.

With consolidation of some of the charges against Dasuki, the judiciary should also be encouraged to ensure that the Court Trial is open to the public rather than through Secret Trial. Open trial may provide factual realities of stewardship against occasional imaginary fictions of media trials.

Your Excellency, as an admirer of your discipline and incorruptibility, I pray you lead the country to the path of political stability and economic recovery. I also pray that at the end of your tenure, your aides and loyalists would have the same courage to stand by you without being hypocritical ingrates as we have seen today.

I wish you success sir. Long live Federal Republic of Nigeria.

Yushau A. Shuaib
Blogger: www.YAShuaib.com
Founder: www.PRNigeria.com (The Press Release Platform)
yashuaib@yahoo.com

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