More reactions keep trailing the list of alleged terrorism financiers released by the Nigerian Financial Intelligence Unit (NFIU) as well as the tragic murder of 17 military personnel in Delta State on March 14, 2024.  While the military says investigations are ongoing, a former Commander of Operation Safe Haven in Plateau State, Major General Henry Ayoola (retd), described it as an assault on the Nigerian state. He was a guest on Channels Television’s Politics Today programme during the week.

Excerpts:

Give us a sense of what happened in Okuama community and within the security circle. There are a lot of talk about the implications, what could have led to the attack and the dynamics of this. For someone like you who has led troops in similar terrain, what came to your mind when you heard the story?

Thank you very much. I will start by commiserating with the families of these gallant officers and soldiers who were gruesomely murdered in a very unusual way in a tragedy. It’s anathema. It’s a terrible thing that shouldn’t have happened at all. I just joined all members of the Armed Forces of Nigeria and including those of us who are outside the service to commiserate with the families of the deceased personnel. We pray and trust that God will comfort the bereaved ones and that this kind of thing should never happen to us as a nation again.

READ ALSO: List Of Persons, BDCs Named As Terrorism Financiers By FG

I also like to correct the numbers that are being bandied around. The actual number is 17 in total – the commanding officer who is a lieutenant colonel, two majors, one captain and 13 soldiers, making 17. The issue of human lives cannot be something we will be approximating so we need to be correct about it; it is 17 precious lives.

What comes readily to my mind is: it is a sad load for me, for us, for our country to be in this state. I mean, as somebody who has seen the nation and been around the military sector for over 50 years, I asked myself: How did we get here? You know, how did we get here as a nation? When I was commanding Operation Safe Haven, we have had near such disasters before because what has happened over time is that our nation has lost touch with values, with ethics, with character. What we are seeing is a harvest of long-time failure of parental responsibilities, societal responsibility, of nurturing and upbringing. It’s a case that has gone through a cycle where you had parents who perhaps were not properly brought up and now become parents themselves. It’s sure to happen that way because the law of sowing and reaping applies in all situations, nobody beats it. What is done more greatly in one generation will be done in excess in the next. That’s how it works and that’s what we’re seeing. It’s a sorry state for us to be but I think it’s a clarion call for all of us to wake up and begin to address the real issues.

We’ve done a lot of palliatives, dodging the issues and tolerating things that should have been decisively dealt with over the years. It’s not just something that is happening. What we’ve seen is a habit of several years of negligence, several years of padding things that should have been frontally dealt with. And that’s what we’re seeing now, where you have a situation that the level of civil disobedience has escalated to news not even being deterred by the fact that these are uniformed men and should be respected. It’s an assault on the state, it’s an assault on our collective psyche. It’s something that should outrage everyone of us and nobody should make any attempt to play down on it at all. It’s a wakeup call, we should all wake up and smell the coffee and say: ‘This cycle should end here.’ This cycle of bloodletting, this vicious circle of lawlessness at its peak should come to an end here and everybody should come into this fight.

It is so sad, the brazen attack and the killing of men in uniform. The situation, according to those who know, says it’s a matter of a land dispute and you wonder the role of the military in this kind of situation. Has this been the procedure for the military to be called into this kind of civil engagement or what do you think could have been? Is it a normal procedure for the officers to be involved in this kind of situation at night? What could have gone wrong with this?

Let’s look at it realistically, the truth of it is that our nation is not in the normal state. I mean, the fact that virtually every state in the country today has one military operation or the other tells you that we are not in a normal state. If not, then, why do we have operation this, operation that in all the states? It means we have crossed that threshold of what the normal civil enforcement agencies can handle. That’s what it means. We have been the same people putting so much pressure on the Armed Forces and say, even for non-kinetic measures, the soft-power options and all of that.

Of course, the commanding officer would have thought to nip an obviously boiling issue before it escalates. There can be a thousand and one argument as to whether there was a tactical error or not. It doesn’t matter if a mistake was made. That a set of youths somewhere will have the audacity and the recklessness not to even spare people in uniform who have laid down their lives for the benefit of the rest of us? That level of temerity should not be tolerated. That’s my take on it.

One can only imagine if this is not properly managed, a kind of aggression and a kind of reaction that could have come naturally if it’s not well–managed from the military.

When I was on Operation Safe Haven, we held peace palace almost every week because it was clear that this was not just purely a security challenge. And so there was a need to engage different groups of people, different age groups, different ethnic groups, and different religious groups, all in an attempt to find a solution. In Yoruba, there is a proverb that when something is lost, you search for it anyhow. When you are trying to find a solution to very abnormal situations, you cross several lines, you bend backwards, you lower yourself to even, more or less becoming a preacher even though you are in uniform, you do everything because you want a solution. And if the solution is going to come by the softpower method, by the peace approach, why not? we have been too long in this state as a nation. If you imagine the amount of money that have been spent for the various operations that have been on in the country for over 20 years, those kinds of money will have been used to develop our infrastructure. So the military officers are aware of these things. They are not happy being out there doing what ordinarily should have been police work, nobody is happy with that. That’s the reality on the ground.

Let me take you to the terrorism financiers’ list that was released by the authorities which listed about 15 persons and firms alleged to be involved in terror financing and are being listed for sanctions. What do you make of this?

Nigeria has been battling to kill terrorism for over 20 years now from the northeast region. And now we’re seeing some active roles of these terror gangs within the northwest region of the country in the name of banditry.

Now, one of those persons is facing a trial over alleged link to the train attack in Kaduna. Tukur Mamu in this particular situation. What comes to mind when you heard that the Buhari government had said it would release the list of terror financiers but for eight years that never happened.

I think this is one place that we should give a pat on the back to the current government (the Bola Tinubu administration). I was on the edge severally during the last regime. There was lack of national will to deal with this situation at the time. It is good to see a government that is showing a stronger will to deal with these situations. I have said it again and again, that what we have is a political strategic problem masquerading as security challenges. I’ve said that 1001 times. In my analysis of insurgency and terrorism, I’ve talked about eight essays and indeed, one of the essays is what is coming out now –  sponsors – because out of the eight essays, all the approaches we have applied in trying to solve the insurgency and terrorism in the country are just about two components of those eight. So adding this third one to it will go a long way because it’s like we’ve been dodging the issue. It’s like we’ve been dodging naming the enemy, naming the adversaries behind this problem. Are we saying that the gates of hell were open suddenly and Nigeria is just having these all-around security challenges coming? Is it that aliens were sent from some abyss to come and attack Nigeria all at the same time?