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President Goodluck Jonathan terminated the appointments of three service chiefs and the Inspector-General of Police last week. In one fell swoop, the army chief, Lt. General Abdulrahaman Dambazau; chief of defence staff, Air Marshal Paul Dike; chief of the Naval Staff; the Inspector- General of Police (IGP) Ogbonna Onovo; and Afarkiya Gadzama, the State Security Services director-general were all removed. Since then, a lot has been written or said by all manner of commentators and analysts while Nigeria’s vibrant cyber-citizens and online ‘guerrilla’ news agencies have had a field day scrutinizing this decision.
Most of the debates have focused on the apparent or ostensible political undertones of this action. What has received scant attention is the humiliating ‘militocratic’ culture of terminating the nation’s top public officials over the radio, television or press conferences without the courtesy of alerting them of the impending action, especially if the government has not charged them with any crime or misconduct. The practice is pervasive at all levels of government, and it stinks. The president has the authority to hire and fire political appointees, including service chiefs. But, does that mean these officials must be humiliated publicly? Lt. Gen. Dambazau, for instance, was reportedly on official trip and in a meeting with United Nations headquarters in New York City when he was notified of his dismissal. That’s not how to thank service chiefs ‘for their loyalty and dedication to service’. Thoroughly embarrassed, the general quickly left the meeting and skipped the dinner party previously arranged in his honour.
Some have (rightly) argued that these disgraced men deserve their fate; after all, they are part of the problem we face. Every human resource manager knows, however, that terminating an employee is never easy. Every case is difficult, emotional and stressful. While difficult for the manager; it is obviously more difficult for the individual losing their job. Loss of job is high on the list of tragedies in a person’s life that results in extremely high levels of stress. Supervisors thus have an obligation to ensure the termination is done with a high degree of professionalism, and most importantly, with as high a degree of compassion as possible.
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The presidency claims the changes became necessary as the tenure of the service chiefs lapsed in August, but few Nigerians believe it. The new Chief of Army staff, Major-General Ihejirika may the first Igbo man to occupy that office since the end of the civil war in 1970, but Jonathan has not proposed any new defence policy, and probably never seriously assessed whether Ihejirika and all the other replacements are good fit for their new jobs, let alone whether they even want the jobs at all. Like their predecessors, they probably learned of their appointments through the media. Hence, they will also be removed through the media, some day. Officers, trained at great expense to the country, are routinely moved up the ranks and tossed out, military style. Being the next in (often rigged) rank does not make you the right person for the job. This dance of deceit is the chief source of state capacity failure in Nigeria, but we keep repeating the same thing over and over again and expect a different result.
Take the case of the new IGP, Hafiz Ringim now charged with reforming the rotten police force that created him. His pedigree includes being former president Olusegun Obasanjo’s hatchet man. In that capacity, he raped our constitution by forcibly removing the then Bayelsa State governor, Chief Diepriye Alamieyeseigha, thereby elevating Jonathan, then Alamieyeseigha’s deputy to the governorship position. In decent societies, including some in our neighbourhood, perpetrators of the culture of impunity like Ringim would be in jail; or at least, barred from public office. Oh, by the way, he is due for retirement in the next 18 months, and that’s sufficient time to reform the world’s worst police force!
There is an alternative to this banality of ‘militocratic’ masochism bequeathed to us by military dictators. Necessary steps and precautions must be taken to ensure termination of high state officials—and, indeed, all employees—is done in such a manner as to ensure their best interests, the decision-maker’s best interests and the country’s best interests are maintained. We must turn every case of warranted disengagement of state officials into an opportunity to re-brand our nation, i.e., re-state those values that ought to define who we are, but which our rulers have notoriously debased.
As painstakingly articulated in the fundamental objectives and directive principles of state policy in our constitution, these values inform the relationship between the government and the people; the political, economic, social, educational, foreign policy and environmental objectives of the Nigerian state; as well as the obligations of the media, national culture and ethics, and duties of the citizen. Above all, these values explain why ‘The Federal Republic of Nigeria shall be a State based on the principles of democracy and social justice.’
This alternative could result in a re-branded country where little boys and girls dream about devoting their lives to a public service that will reward their contributions and acknowledge their humanity, despite their human foibles. Humiliating public officials begets those who only dream of robbing the treasury blind and abusing our rights at the slightest opportunity.
