African securityBuhari replaces Nigeria’s top military leaders as fight against Boko Haram intensifies
Nigeria’s president, Muhammadu Buhari, made defeating the Islamist Boko Haram insurgents his top priority, and earlier this week he took the first decisive step toward achieving this goal: He sacked the defense minister; the commanders of the army, navy, and air force; the head of the defense intelligence service, and the national security adviser. The Boko Haram insurgency, which began in 2009, has killed as many as 15,000 and displaced 1.5 million people.
Nigeria’s president, Muhammadu Buhari, made defeating the Islamist Boko Haram insurgents his top priority, and earlier this week he took the first decisive step toward achieving this goal: He sacked the defense minister; the commanders of the army, navy, and air force; the head of the defense intelligence service, and the national security adviser.
The spokesman named the sacked officers as Air Marshal Alex Badeh, Maj Gen Kenneth Minimah, Rear Admiral Usman Jibrin, and Air Vice Marshal Adesola Amosu.
The four commanders and two civilians were appointed to their posts in January 2014 by Buhari’s predecessor, Goodluck Jonathan, who announced then that he was replacing his national security and military team because of the failures in the war against Boko Haram.
Jonathan lost the March presidential election to Buhari.
The Christian Science Monitor notes that Jonathan had been accused of being partisan in naming Christians to all but one of the positions in the armed forces, which traditionally have been dominated by Muslims. Slightly more than half of Nigeria’s population is Muslim, who predominate in the north, while Christians are the majority in the south.
Buhari’s new appointees show his intention to be more even-handed. Both the new army chief of staff, Maj. Gen. Tukur Yusuf Buratai, and the national security adviser, Maj. Gen. Babagana Monguno, are from northeastern Borno state which is the birthplace of Boko Haram.
Defense chief Maj. Gen. Abayomi Gabriel Olonisakin and navy chief Rear Admiral Ibok-Ete Ekwe Ibas are from the south. The chief of defense intelligence, Air Vice Marshal Morgan Monday Riku, is from the Middle Belt and the chief of air staff, Air Vice Marshal Sadique Abubakar, is from northeastern Bauchi state.
Addressing his new hires right after their appointments, Buhari told them that they had earned their positions based on merit and charged them to help him rebuild the Nigerian Army’s reputation.
“Your records gave you the job,” he said, adding that: “Save for the new chief of staff whom I briefly met at his Command at the Multi-National Joint Task Force, in Chad, I don’t know any of you
Buhari was sworn in in May, and one of his first official act was to move Nigeria’s defense command center to Maiduguri, the birthplace of Boko Haram. Buhari has also ordered the Nigerian military to help set up the headquarters for a multinational joint taskforce in Chad’s capital, N’Djamena. The task force includes troops from Nigeria, Cameroon, Chad, and Niger.
The Nigerian military, weakened by corruption and incompetence, was no match for Boko haram, and the group extended its control to large swath of territory in Nigeria’s north-east. Emboldened by their success in Nigeria, the Islamist militants began to attack targets in neighboring Chad, Cameroon, and Niger. Jonathan had refused to allow the armies of these three countries to operate inside Nigeria in pursuit of the militants, but in January the leaders of the three countries informed Jonathan that their armies and air forces will attack Boko Haram targets inside Nigeria whether or not Nigeria approved.
Jonathan, who was facing a tough re-election battle, agreed, and the tide has turned. The competent ground forces of Niger and Cameroon, and the Chadian air force – regarded a among the best in Africa – managed to do in two months what the Nigerian army has failed to do in four years: inflict heavy defeats on Boko Haram and push the militants back from much of the territory they had acquired since 2012.
The Nigerian military may have failed in fighting Boko Haram, but its heavy-handed approach has cost the lives of many Nigerian civilians. In June, Amnesty International accused Nigeria’s military of systematic human rights abuses and the deaths of 8,000 prisoners, and called for an investigation into many top military officials, including the army and air force chiefs (see “Nigerian army should be investigated for war crimes against civilians: Amnesty,” HSNW, 5 June 2015).
The Boko Haram insurgency, which began in 2009, has killed as many as 15,000 and displaced 1.5 million people.
