The Nigerian soldiers’ wives mutiny

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November and December of 1929 saw thousands of women stampeding the Native Administration outposts in Calabar and Owerri to protest both the imposition of taxes on women and the appointment of warrant chiefs by the colonial administration. The protest, to be later described as the Aba Women’s War, saw employment of both guerrilla strategies and traditional acts such as “sitting on a man” – the practice of ridiculing men through song and dance performances carried out all night long.
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Some 20 years later, a similar policy of arbitrary taxation led to the Abeokuta Women’s Revolt. Led by Funmilayo Ransome-Kuti, the women gained victory in January 1949 when the Alake of Egbaland abdicated his throne and forced colonial authorities to listen to their demands. In both instances, the women -despite suffering various harassments – insisted to the institutions of their day that they were casualties of the defective policies of the state. And, quite importantly, this fact would not be obscured simply because they were women.

In August 2014, wives of Nigerian soldiers in Giwa Barracks, Maiduguri, Borno State are protesting against the institutional lapses of the subsisting government by literally sitting on the men who head the Nigerian Army. Their grievance stems from the uncomfortable reality that their husbands are regularly overpowered by Boko Haram insurgents, a rag-tag collective of fundamentalist bigots. They have not said anything new. Borno State Governor, Kassim Shettima, too had mentioned this in the past.

What’s new is that the soldiers’ wives are adding that their husbands will not be sent into battle to suffer the handicaps of jamming guns, misfiring mortars and preventable deaths.

Cardinal to the women’s apprehension over their husbands’ ill-equipped battles with Boko Haram terrorists is the observation, in various press reports, that the Nigerian Army does not provide for them -and their children- adequately when their husbands are either killed or injured in battle. I can understand the dilemma of these women who, due to the peripatetic life soldiers tend to live, probably have no stable career to ensure the family stability if their breadwinners gets killed in battle.

Their laments are not totally strange if the stories of abandoned soldiers of the Nigerian Civil War and those Nigerians who went with ECOMOG to fight in Liberia and Sierra Leone are revisited. Men and women who have given their lives, literally, for the country, have suffered the post-mortem indignities of having their families thrown out of official abodes. In some cases, the benefits of the deceased are not even paid.

More shameful is the abandonment of the living. With injuries so grotesque that the imagination is stretched as to how the soldier survived the attack, some survivors of ECOMOG have a permanent residence in the Nigerian Army Base Hospital, Yaba. Their place of piecemeal death is ironically named ECOMOG Ward. The soldiers in these wards, in a bid to embarrass a neglectful government, once threatened mass suicide.

The Giwa Barracks wives’ protest is therefore a sensible strategy to force the Army administration to higher responsibilities without suffering the punitive measures that is consequent upon such a behaviour. When the soldiers launch a similar protest by themselves, they are accused of mutiny – a serious offence in the Army- and are subject to serious punishment. In the past year alone, soldiers have mutinied against their superiors and have earned a court-martial for it. This in-house mechanism of resolving indiscipline in the Army can also stifle the opportunity to institute proper reforms.

In May, some soldiers in the same Maiduguri, protested the death of their colleagues in the hands of Boko Haram insurgents through what they termed “acts of deceit and betrayal” by their superiors. This is a rather grievous accusation that should compel authorities outside the Army ranks to intervene in the operations of the Nigerian Army.

There have been other tense situations reported that could have degenerated into a mutiny but were quashed. If the Nigerian Army would not listen to the men because, well, joining the Army anywhere in the world is tantamount to signing your own death warrant ahead, they can at least listen to their wives who can protest without being punished with institutional machinery.

That is why I suspect the soldiers are somehow in cooperation with their wives. Somehow, it is hard to believe Mrs. Soldier can lock Mr. Soldier at home and insist he would not go to work without his consent.

So, while these women are making a valid point, can the Nigerian Army take a break from harassing them and listen to them? And can the Executive and the Legislature intervene as well? Can they question how and why we got to the point where these women have to revolt because their husbands are poorly equipped for war?

This year alone, the budgetary allocation for defence is almost a trillion naira and forms some 20 per cent of the entire budget of the country. (Between 2011 and now, defence allocation has swallowed some N3.6tn). The justification for this year’s figure was that the long drawn war with Boko Haram was draining the nation’s resources. Even while one is still wondering about that haul, the government made another request for an external loan of $1bn to supplement its fighting force. These are whopping sums of money if considered cumulatively. So, how come these soldiers and their wives still complain that they are poorly equipped?

The Army can of course argue that joining the force is not an invitation to a tea party; that being in the Army means that one day you could be called upon to lay down your life for your country. The Chief of Army Staff, Lt. Gen. Kenneth Minimah, insinuated that recently when he said being a soldier is a calling and not just a job for those who want to eat. He is entirely correct. No Army in the world gives a guarantee on your life. The best they can do is to provide you with resources to remain alive as long as possible.

History is replete with accounts of warfronts soldiers who kept fighting for God and for country even when they had only their bare hands to keep going on.

So, why are the protesting Nigerian soldiers different? The answer could be because they know that their deprivation is not an issue of the nation’s operating on a shoestring budget and requiring of everybody to make sacrifices. Rather, this is a case of Nigeria’s regular malady – corruption. That makes it hard to blame the soldiers and even harder to fault their wives. Nigerian soldiers have their faults but they are human too. You do not ask people to lay down their lives for the state for nothing.