Finally, finally, finally, President Muhammadu Buhari has sacked the Service Chiefs, who, for over two years, had passed their retirement age. More importantly, they had outlived their usefulness to the country and its security challenges.
I had wondered again and again, why Buhari was still retaining Service Chiefs who had completely lost track of their primary assignment of enthroning a secured country, having exhausted all they learnt in their military training.
Livy once told us, “Potius sero quam minquam” (Better late than never). But I prefer Drake’s version, which is, “Better late than never, but never late is better”. Why was President Buhari retaining Service Chiefs under whom Nigeria literally, not metaphorically, became a crimson theatre of war, a large field of daily spilled blood, gruesome slaughter, hourly butchery, savagery attacks by audacious insurgents, deadly armed bandits, unrelenting and unrepentant Boko Haram terrorists and blood-thirsty kidnappers?
A Senior Advocate of Nigeria (SAN), Dr Mike Ozekhome has faulted President Muhammadu Buhari for congratulating recently ‘resigned’ service chiefs for their ‘overwhelming achievements’.
Ozekhome, a fierce critic of the Buhari administration, also considered their purported resignation, instead of outright sack, as mere soft landing provided for the service chiefs, who many Nigerians have for long clamoured to be sacked for their inability to proffer solutions to the spate of insecurity in the country.
Ripples Nigeria reported on Tuesday that the service chiefs, General Gabriel Olonishakin, Chief of Defense Staff, Lt. Gen Tukur Baurati, Chief of Army Staff, Vice Admiral Ekwe Ibas Ibok (CONS), and Air Marshall Sadique Abubakar (Chief of Air Staff) resigned their appointments, with President Buhari accepting same and their immediate retirement from service.