Is It Nigerian Army’s Job To Settle Communal Clashes? – Major-General Questions Military Visit To Okuama
Major-General Cecil Esekhaigbe (retd.) has raised the alarm over the military operations in Okuama Community in Delta State that led to the killing of some Nigerian Army personnel.
Featuring on Channels TV programme, Esekhaigbe said that internal security was primarily the responsibility of the police, while raising the question of why the military was deployed to the community in the first place.
Questioning the intelligence prior to the operation, said, “What was the intelligence surrounding this operation? Is it the job of the Nigerian Army to go settle communal clashes? When you have decided to go intervene; what was the clear mission, was it defined?”
He explained that “You don’t send an officer and three men to go to a place where you have not got adequate intelligence of the happenings in that place, adding that “this comes to mind the need to go down to the basics of infantry tactics.”
Continuing, he blamed poor rescue operation of the officers and soldiers that led to the bloodbath. “The commanding officer of a unit is the last hope of that unit. Why should the commanding officer leave his unit and go for such a mission?
“There are questions here, what happened? Is the Nigerian Army supposed to come in there? Where are the police? The police are the lead agency in internal security.
“The time has come for us to withdraw our soldiers from this responsibility that is not supposed to be their own in the first line,” he maintained.
“There are basic tactics, doctrines and training in the military and other security agencies. At what point did the military come in? Have the police gone there and were not able to do it and they called for the Nigerian Army’s help?
“Even the process of calling for the Nigerian Army’s help has a procedure. We must redefine our professional ethics, we must go back to the basics.”
