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| Gen. JTU Aguiyi-Ironsi (middle) |
In 1957 a local Federal Defence Council
(FDC) was established which comprised representatives of federal and regional
governments chaired by the British Governor General (GG). In November,
this largely indigenous civilian council made the first set of formal defence
policy decisions regarding the Nigerian regiment and future independent Army
when it decided to accelerate Nigerianization, disband the Artillery regiment
and set up a Recce unit in its place to better patrol the open lands of the
north, open a new Officer Cadet Preliminary Training School at Kaduna (NMTC) to
replace Teshie in Ghana, add one infantry battalion to the existing five,
increase pay for other ranks in the Army to level with existing scales in the
Police and grant car advances and base allowance to Nigerian officers.
In
addition, entry qualifications were reduced and plans made to accelerate
promotions. Significantly, in reaction to the long standing British
practice of selective ethnic recruitment, the FDC decided to base recruitment
to the "rank and file" of the Army (but not the officer corps) on a
quota system in which 50% came from the North, 25% from the East and 25% from
the West. It also specified that soldiers in various units be mixed up
regionally right down to section level. The gradual replacement of
expatriates was made a priority. Based on relative costs it was decided
to hire retired British officers rather than second active duty personnel from
the British Army. Many of these issues had previously been raised in
parliament for a number of years and were crucial in enhancing the prestige of the
military across the board and making a career in the Army attractive to school
leavers. Thereafter, the annual budget for the Army increased
significantly - and happily too.
But one sign that the Nigerian Political
class was not totally united in its support of the Nigerian military in utero
came at the Calabar Conference of the Action Group in 1958. Chief Awolowo
declared his opposition to the establishment of a Navy and Air Force while
Chiefs Akintola and Rotimi Williams opposed him. Other pro-military
voices included those of Chike Obi, Fani-Kayode, Jereton Mariere, Ayo Rosiji
and Eneh. Over the next one to two years, those in favor of expanding the
military cited ceremonial purposes, "national dignity", terrorism in
western Cameroon, the Sawaba crisis in Niger republic and rivalry with Ghana as
justification.
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| Comm. Akinwale Edet Wey |
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| Brig. Babafemi Ogundipe |
However, acrimony in the political class
after the controversial December 1959 federal elections between Chief Obafemi
Awolowo (Awo) of the Action Group on one hand and Alhaji Tafawa Balewa of the
Northern Peoples Congress, Nnamdi Azikiwe of the NCNC and the British Governor
General on the other, led Awo, in April/May 1960, to publicly reveal the
confidential understanding as the first phase of a campaign to scuttle it.
A few months earlier, in February 1960, Alhaji Tafawa Balewa of the NPC,
already slated to be Nigeria's first post-independence Prime Minister, had
become Nigeria's first indigenous Police and Defence Minister - 8 months before
independence, a coincidence that Awo found hard to ignore. The
controversial Kano Base component was then dropped and Balewa later sent the
watered down treaty to Parliament for approval in November 1960. However,
in December 1961, Balewa abrogated it by executive fiat in deference to
external African diplomatic pressure after consultation with Britain, without
reference to parliament. The day after abrogation and two weeks before the
annual congress of the AG in Jos, however, Balewa invited the AG to join him in
government. Nevertheless, Chief Awolowo (Awo) refused, leading to a split in
the Action Group.
In his memoirs published many years later
in 1974, the former British Governor General, Sir James Robertson, states that
he "unofficially and unconstitutionally" assigned defence, police and
foreign affairs before independence to Sir Abubakar Balewa. This act, in
addition to Robertson's earlier decision to call Balewa to form a government
before the 1959 election results had even been announced, caused a rupture in
the precariously balanced Nigerian Political class, the civil-military
consequences of which were to later play out in a disastrous manner after
independence.
From October 1959 to 1960 units of the
QONR were deployed to Southern Cameroon to help secure border security and deny
safe haven to cross-border guerillas during the Bamileke uprising led by Felix
Moumie of the UPC against the French. In December 1959 they conducted flag
marches just prior to the federal elections and 15 companies were placed on
standby. The QONR briefly served in Tiv land in 1960 and returned
to Southern Cameroon again in 1961 for security duties during the plebiscite.
In the run up to the December 1959
federal elections, competing political parties presented various defence
policies. As of this time the NPC was the only one that promised an expansion
of the military, citing border problems and fears of spill over of insurgencies
in neighboring countries as its rationale. The NCNC viewed the Army as an
internal and external protector of the country and emphasized improved
conditions of service. The Action Group on the other hand proposed only to
enhance Veterans' welfare for the existing Nigeria Regiment. Instead of
expanding the Army, it proposed establishing a new type of Police organization
separate from the Nigerian Police "to deal with any large scale unrest or
revolutionary situation". It also proposed establishing a Frontier
Protection Force. In the absence of a desire to project force
internationally, the establishment of these two proposed new security
organizations would likely have led to the disbandment of the Nigerian Army by
Chief Awolowo.
On October 1st, 1960, when Nigeria became
independent, parades and flag marches were held all over Nigeria by the
Army. This helped to stoke up national feelings, pride and
prestige. The flag of Sultan Attahiru of Sokoto captured in 1903 was
handed back to the reigning Sultan. The QONR became the Royal Nigerian
Army and Alhaji Muhammadu Ribadu took over the Defence Portfolio from Alhaji
Tafawa Balewa. Nnamdi Azikiwe became President of the Senate, while Lord
Robertson remained behind as Governor General for two more years before Azikiwe
left the Senate to become Governor General. Finally, in 1963, it became
known simply as the Nigerian Army - when Nigeria became a republic and Nnamdi
Azikiwe became President. An act of parliament codified this
change. Uniforms and Insignia changed after independence to reflect
sovereignty. It is important to point out that much of the impetus
for this came from civilians like Azikiwe in parliament eager to rightly
"claim" the Nigerian Army as their own.
AFTER INDEPENDENCE - THE EARLY YEARS
Shortly after independence, however, a
conspiracy was unmasked among some Nigerian officers and soldiers in the 1QONR (1st Queens Own Nigeria Regiment) at Enugu. Those involved were quickly
rounded up and detained by British officers. The exact motive for this
planned coup has never been clarified, although some feel it may have been
motivated by a desire for more rapid Nigerianization, perhaps encouraged by the
mutiny of African soldiers against Belgian Officers in the Force Publique of Congo on July 4th and 5th 1960. But
such tensions were not limited to merely getting rid of British officers.
Precisely which Nigerians got into the Officer Corps increasingly became an
issue as interest in military careers, particularly in eastern Nigeria and
parts of the West gained momentum in the late fifties. Some legislators
had begun asking for an "equalization" of the ethnic and regional
distribution of the officer corps. Provinces of Nigeria that had hitherto
enjoyed selective recruitment to the "rank and file" for many years
under the British "martial tribe" policy felt shortchanged by the
quota system introduced for other ranks by the FDC in 1957/58 and wanted a
corresponding "balance" in the officer corps.
Following the departure of Maj-Gen. K.G.
Exham, the first GOC of the Royal Nigerian Army was British Major-General
Foster. When his term ended in March 1962, a Nigerian delegation led by
Jacob Obande who was then Minister of State (Army), was sent to London by the
Minister, Muhammadu Ribadu, to interview British officers for a
successor. This action prompted angry editorials in a number of Nigerian
newspapers miffed that Ribadu preferred a British GOC to a Nigerian one.
The undercurrent of the criticism was ethnic since the two most senior Nigerian
officers; Ironsi and Ademulegun were not from Ribadu's home region.
Editorialists in newspapers based in the south were perhaps not unmindful of
the fact that politicians from the predominantly moslem North opposed the
initial motion for self-rule brought before the central legislature in March
1953 and subsequently asked Britain to permit the North to secede and form a
separate colony. But on August 7, 1953 northern delegates to constitutional
talks agreed to a loose federal system, removing one of the obstacles to
eventual independence. However, on August 25, 1956 the Sardauna of Sokoto
again publicly expressed reservations about self-rule in 1959 citing
insufficient numbers of trained northern Nigerians.
Ribadu on the other hand, reasoned that
available Nigerian officers were too junior and opined that Nigeria did not
need "another Mobutu". Major-General Sir Christopher Welby-Everard
was thus selected. Ironsi and Ademulegun were double promoted from Lt.
Col. to Brigadier while Shodiende, Ogundipe, Adebayo and Maimalari were
promoted to Lt. Col as a gesture to public critics. Ribadu made a public
commitment that Nigerianization would be complete by March 1965. Thus,
Welby-Everard held the position until February 1965 when the first indigenous
Nigerian GOC was finally appointed.
He was Major General Johnson Thomas
Umunakwe Aguiyi-Ironsi. Ribadu had kept his word.
Perhaps reflective, not only of the need
for more Nigerian officers in deference to domestic pressures to Nigerianize
and foreign policy tensions with the Casablanca bloc which had led to
allegations of conservatism, efforts began to take shape in 1961 to wean the
Army away from British tutelage. Sources of military assistance and
venues for training were diversified. Defence training agreements were
reached with the USA, Ethiopia, India, Pakistan, Canada and Australia, to
supplement Britain. In that same year Ribadu formally introduced quota
system into officer recruitments, responding to legislative pressure to make
the Army officer corps reflect the competitive multi-ethnic political geometry
of the country. When in 1963, the Midwest was created, the quota was
revised thus: North 50%, West 21%, East 25% and Midwest 4%.
However, actual implementation of this
system was impacted by differences in attraction to military careers across the
country. Yorubas of the western region, for example, still looked down on
a career in the military. By 1966, out of 10,500 soldiers, Yorubas numbered
about 700 instead of a projected 2205 based on quota. In the north, lack
of interest among the Hausa-Fulani meant that minority areas that had
traditionally viewed the Army as a credible career could fill up those
vacancies. In the Midwest, interest was particularly high in the Anioma
areas. In the east, recruitment from the COR (Calabar-Ogoja-Rivers)
provinces which had been a source of many soldiers during the second world war
declined as economic opportunities there increased. On the other hand interest
in the core Igbo areas increased. Quite apart from the vigor of
recruitment efforts and certain cultural imperatives, these intra-regional
disparities reflected economic opportunities in various communities. But
no matter how well intentioned and perhaps inevitable, the overt use of quotas
politicized military recruitments. Once quota became an administrative tool
within the military, it coloured the way security and defence issues were
viewed within the army as well in the larger society and took center stage in
the civil-military discourse. But perhaps even worse, it amplified
internal organizational tensions and undermined esprit d'Corps as the external civilian institutions and the
political elite descended into conflict.
After independence, civil society was
very interested in how, why and where the army was used. Disagreement
over matters affecting the military spilled over to the streets several times
particularly in the south. First was the controversy over the
Anglo-Nigerian Defence Pact, which has previously been discussed.
Although this was not the key factor in persuading Balewa to abrogate the pact,
it had the unintended consequence of making the government and Army suspicious
of University graduates as reliable apolitical material for direct combat
commissions. Thus, in 1962, after previously commissioning Ojukwu in 1958
followed by Rotimi and Ifeajuna in 1961, Adewale Ademoyega was the last
University graduate to be granted direct short service combat commission into
the Army by the Balewa government. Cadet Units at the
University of Ibadan and Zaria College of Technology were shut
down. The government's suspicions were not misplaced because
Ademoyega and Ifeajuna, for example, were indeed destined to play a key role in
the January 15, 1966 coup that ended Nigeria's first civilian
administration. Ojukwu on the other hand allegedly tried to recruit some
of his colleagues (Banjo, Ejoor and Gowon) for a coup during the 1964/65
constitutional crisis and later played a complex role in putting down the
mutiny of January 15, 1966, only to emerge as the Military Governor of the East
when General Ironsi finally took over. He went on to lead the attempt at
Biafran secession in 1967.
The second opportunity for direct popular
opposition to military and foreign policy came during the deployment of
Nigerian troops to the Congo which began in December 1960 and lasted until
1964. In 1961, a mutiny occurred in the 5th battalion under Lt. Col
Ironsi at Bukavu when Nigerian soldiers had been ordered to rescue an Austrian
ambulance unit under hostile fire. Seven soldiers were dismissed while
ten NCOs were demoted. This well publicized incident brought tensions
between Nigerian officers (supported by sections of the Press) and British
officers serving in the Nigerian Army to the fore.
In a minor rebuke for the handling of
this affair, it also led to Ironsi's subsequent deployment to London for a
couple of years as a military attaché (until he returned to command the entire
UN Force) and was one reason he was not initially favoured to become the GOC
when Major General Everard left in 1965. Following the assassination of
Patrice Lumumba, Nigerian activists wrote editorials, stormed parliament and
took to the streets in February 1961 and accused the Nigerian contingent under
the political control of the allegedly "conservative pro-western"
Nigerian government of not doing enough to protect him. The government
came under tremendous pressure to withdraw from the Congo after Casablanca bloc
countries like Ghana pulled out.
However, Ribadu and Balewa stood their
grounds. Subsequent exploits of the Army in Congo as well as the role of
the military in constructing Bailey bridges during the 1963 floods in Lagos
significantly enhanced its image in the eyes of the Nigerian civilian
public. Rural roads were also built in the difficult terrain of the
Mambilla plateau. Upon return from Congo the pay of other ranks was increased
by 25% just in time to secure its loyalty during the general strike of
1964. Indeed, in the national euphoria that resulted from the Army's new
found prestige, even opposition politicians had proposed making the Army tax
free.
It was under these circumstances that the
3rd Battalion of the Army was airlifted to Tanzania in April 1964 in a
politically popular move to help President Nyerere train a new Army following
the dissolution of the Tanzanian Army after the mutiny in February. The arrival
of Nigerians allowed British troops who had originally intervened in February
to depart.
However, acrimonious civil-military
relations were gaining momentum enabled by the sequential use by civilian
federal authorities of the Army in increasingly controversial domestic Internal
Security roles, mobilization of irregular forces by the Opposition led by Chief
Awolowo for subversive purposes and perceived political interference in certain
purely Army prerogatives.
© Nowa Omoigui,
MD, MPH, FACC
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