Soldiers’ descent into lawlessness in Lagos

FIFTEEN years after ceding power to civilians, the Nigerian military continues to act above the laws of the land. In its latest show of brutality, Army personnel went on the rampage in Lagos last week. They destroyed and burnt about seven Bus Rapid Transit buses. They beat up commuters and violated their rights. On the excuse that a soldier was killed on his motorcycle by a BRT bus, the soldiers attacked Lagos commuters, causing a six-hour traffic delay in the city’s main artery.

This is a most irresponsible act of lawlessness by men who are supposed to keep the law. The Nigerian Army high command must investigate this matter and punish the soldiers involved, particularly the officer who might have authorised the operation. And it must work to re-build the trust of the Nigerian people, which has broken down because of the military’s unending brutality, including that of July 4. The people who are sustained by taxpayers do not deserve to be paid back by soldiers with such highhandedness. This brigandage has no place in a democracy.

The defence put up by the Army that it was street urchins that destroyed the BRT buses is puerile. It stands against reason and eyewitness accounts. The mayhem bears all the imprint of a military “gone mad again,” according to Wole Soyinka, the Nobel laureate.

As unfortunate as the incident was, the soldier who was riding on the dedicated BRT lane was committing an unlawful act. The practice of violating extant laws is rife among military personnel in Lagos. In 2012, Governor Babatunde Fashola arrested a Colonel – K. I. Yusuf – on the BRT lane. Because the military did not adequately sanction Yusuf and other lawbreakers like him, such impunity grows.

Fashola, in condemning the July 4 action, said, “I do not know how damaging public property is the restitution for any injury that may have come.” Fashola should see the issue to its logical conclusion, especially by ensuring that the Nigerian Army punishes the errant soldiers and their commander.

Soldiering is a serious profession. It is only in a failing state that the military fail to subordinate themselves to civil authority. The military, accustomed to intimidating and harassing civilians when they were in power, must free themselves from this hangover. They must be subject to civilian authority and respect the rule of law whenever they feel that the rights of their personnel have been violated.

Invading police stations and brutalising civilians belong to the past, and it must stop. When a British soldier, Lee Rigby, was mercilessly hacked to death by two thugs near his barracks in Woolwich, London, in May 2013, the military did not rush out to invade the surrounding area. In fact, it was policemen that took charge of proceedings and prosecuted the two felons who were eventually convicted in court.

But it is a different ball game here: a show of savagery by the Nigerian military. Some soldiers abuse their uniform, aiding and abetting crime, and driving motorists off the road with sirens without justification. Other examples of cruelty by military personnel in the past 15 years of civil rule bear testimony to the reign of terror by security men who should ordinarily be sobered by the great challenge currently posed by the Boko Haram insurgency.

In 2006, following a harmless argument between a soldier and a policeman at a bus station, soldiers from Abalti Barracks invaded the nearby Area C Police Command in Surulere, Lagos. They burnt down part of the barracks, freed detained suspects, resulting in some injuries and death. The government has just finished re-constructing the barracks. It was a similar story of barbarism in July 2005 when a commercial motorcyclist, Peter Edeh, hit the car of a Nigerian Navy officer, Felix Odunlami, at a traffic light stop in Lagos. Although Edeh begged for mercy, Odunlami shot him dead.

In 2008, Miss Uzoma Okere was shamefully treated by Harry Arogundade, a rear admiral, who watched gleefully as his guards stripped and beat the young lady in the public for allegedly not making way for his convoy to pass. The court rightly awarded N100 million as damages against Arogundade and the Nigerian Navy. It was a similar story in 2011 in Badagry, Lagos, when soldiers from the 242 Recce Battalion invaded the police station in Iberepo over the death of their colleague. They maimed every policeman they sighted, burnt down two squad vehicles, and killed the Divisional Police Officer, CSP Saliu Samson, and the Divisional Crime Officer, both of whom were returning from a meeting with military officials to ensure that calm was restored to the area. As usual, none of the soldiers was prosecuted.

But the military must reform themselves, first, by punishing their personnel that violate the law. At present, the silence of military authorities suggests that they condone the atrocities of their men. Instead of fighting terror and the ineptitude in their ranks, the military have become a byword for kowtowing to illegal duties.

Last May, soldiers intercepted, confiscated and destroyed newspapers in an unprecedented assault on free speech. Obeying a questionable “order from above,” soldiers stopped Governors Rotimi Amaechi and Adams Oshiomhole of Rivers and Edo states respectively, from entering Ado-Ekiti to campaign for their party’s governorship candidate in the June 21 ballot in Ekiti State. Soldiers are currently on illegal duty in Adamawa State, in a purely civil matter between the governor and state House of Assembly.

Nigerians have suffered from the actions of deviant soldiers for too long. Things must change. The top hierarchy of the military must be quick to investigate and punish errant soldiers who take the laws into their hands. The military must wean themselves of this needless air of superiority, which makes them to see other citizens as “bloody civilians.”

Defining its role in national life, the United States National Military Strategy, in 2011, aptly said, “We will remain an apolitical institution and sustain this position at all costs.” The Nigerian military should take a cue from this well constructed response.