Col. McBen Nwaka, a former brigade-commander and lecturer at the Nigerian Defence Academy, Zaria, shares his experiences with ADEOLA BALOGUN
Were you afraid of redundancy by the time you wanted to retire?
I wouldn’t say there was no caution, but there was no fear because as at that time, I preferred retiring to remaining in the service. I took the decision to leave because of certain circumstances. In fact, I begged the authorities to let me go.
Tell us about the circumstances.
Democracy is a very beautiful thing and I bet you, a good number of military officers prefer democracy to military government. Democracy allows you to express your feelings freely. It was not that we didn’t express our feelings in the military, but you must be the master’s voice. In the military, before you say something, you must have found out about what the man in charge is thinking. But in democracy, I can say what is in my mind freely, as long as I don’t call the president names. One of the circumstances is about the promotion thing. When your colleagues are promoted and you are not, you begin to think otherwise. It is bad when you are denied promotion not because you failed your examinations. There are other hidden criteria. But as long as the boss does not want you to be promoted, you are not going to be promoted. Apart from that, there are other factors, such as the nature of the job. If a coup d’etat takes place and your actions are perceived not to be in support, you are on your way out.
How many military coups did you participate in?
I was in the Armoured Corps of the Nigerian Army. If 10 military coups were staged in the country, nine of them were actually plotted and executed by the armoured corps. In those days, if you made an announcement in Lagos, people living in Sokoto would obey you. You would seek the cooperation of the armoured corps, if you wanted to plan a coup because they are the ones who would roll out the tanks. Remember what happened with Gideon Okar. He was an armoured corps officer.
But his coup failed. Why?
He was popular. But his undoing was his inability to strike at the right time. Apart from that, his decision to excise some states from the federation was wrong. It was not even necessary. If you want to sack a bad military regime, do that and leave the people alone.
What was the last position you held before you left the army?
I was commander of the Third Brigade in Kano. The substantive commander, a brigadier-general, was away on a course, and I was asked to take over in his absence. During the process of preparing my retirement letter, I was sent to the Corps of Engineers.
Did you find it easy adjusting to civilian life?
The answer is yes and no. Even when I was still in the military, I had a lot of civilian friends. But when it comes to politics, I’m surprised at the attitude of many civilians towards retired military officers. Most of them see you as an interloper. In their opinion, you have stolen money while in military service, so what else do you want in politics? Second, they are not straight forward. Hold a meeting with them in the evening and decide where you want to go, by the time you want to act on the decision, many of them will come to you to say other things. That was not my style at all.
Does that mean you have been involved in politics?
Yes, I’m still there.
Did you want to be governor of a state?
No, if you come out and say you want to be governor, they will deal with you severely and suck you dry. I didn’t come out to struggle for anything. All what I did was to study the ground; to know what and where to explore. But I discovered that the guys we were dealing with were both contestants and referees at the same time. How can you play in a football match and keep the whistle in your pocket? I have withdrawn temporarily but I bet you, good people will enter politics in future. It is when we have good people in politics that Nigeria will become a better country.
Why did you join the army?
I did not plan my enlistment in the Army. I was admitted into the Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria and while there, I was opportune to visit Kaduna for a ceremony. I noticed that some cadets from the Nigeria Defence Academy were in attendance. I saw young, smart officers in their well ironed uniforms and I observed the dignified manner in which they carried themselves. When I asked who they were, they said they were from the NDA. I was fascinated. The next thing I did was to ask how I could get admitted into the academy. Fortunately, I met this officer who was a fine hockey player. He was Col. Shelle. He took interest in me because I played hockey very well. When I approached him to express my interest in the army, he was very happy and said he was going to get a form for me. Of course, he did, but not without a warning that I must pass the entrance examination. I passed the exam and was invited for the interview and I was admitted.
Didn’t your parents try to stop you?
There is a line in the form and if you read it as a parent, you will never allow your son to go for that interview. It said, ‘During the interview, in the event of your ward losing his life or breaking his bone, you are not entitled to any compensation.’ So, how did you expect me to give my father that kind of thing to append his signature? I did not give him the form.
When he learnt that you joined the Army, what was his reaction?
It was late. He was aware that I had business with ABU. So each time I was travelling to the North, he thought I was going to the university. After a year, I came home. Although it was the period when cadets liked to visit home in their uniforms just to show off, I didn’t come in my uniform. After awhile, I wore my uniform and surprisingly, he liked it. I told him that it was the same thing as going to the university. I said the difference was that there would be no more fees and pocket money and all that. That made him happier and he prayed for me.
What fond memories of life at the NDA would you like to share with us?
If a quarter of all our so-called politicians passed through the NDA, Nigeria would be a better place. I’m from Southern Nigeria and most of my friends are from the North. By virtue of our training, if I am walking with you and you fall, it is my duty to look after you, whether dead or alive. And we were expected to carry on this tradition, even after leaving the academy. Once I asked a minister if he could suggest a joint training of the police, Customs, Road Safety Corps, Immigration Service and the military for two years to the President, now that the NDA had moved to its permanent site. After two years, everybody could go to their different departments. Some French-speaking countries practise the method and they are likely to carry the esprit de corps even outside the institution and into civil life. Today, if I go to Kano, I don’t look for where to stay. I just have to make a telephone call to my friend, who is a Muslim, and tell him that I’m in town. The same thing happens when he visits my part of the country. Why should I be comfortable while my friend Bako from Kano is in town without a place to stay? No way. I suggested that to the minister and I don’t know whether he did anything about it. So, that was the kind of training we had at the NDA. That time, there was no church or mosque within the premises of the NDA. The same bus would carry Christians and Muslims to town and drop everyone at either the church or mosque and when we have finished, the same bus would take everybody back to the academy. That tells you the kind of training we had in that place.
At the time it was fashionable for young officers to dream of becoming military governors or ministers. What was your own ambition?
I must tell you that I wasn’t dreaming of becoming a military governor in that context. It wasn’t as if all those military governors had always wanted to be in such positions. They were working with bosses who probably were in the right place to pull the strings for them. It wasn’t my ambition to join the military and become a governor. However, everything is luck. Two times, I knew I was to be appointed governor, but something happened on each occasion. Somehow, those guys sponsoring me fell out of favour. That is why sometimes, it is not good to have a godfather in the military because when he crashes, you crash with him.
Did you have any close shave with death as a military officer?
Anybody who joined the military and tells you he didn’t have close shave with death probably didn’t do his training properly. Even before I joined the Army, during the war, one captain in the Biafran Army came home and people gathered around him to listen to ‘war reports’ and I was there as a boy. He had his AK47 with him and in the process of demonstrating how to use it, he mistakenly pulled the trigger. The bullet passed between my legs and blasted the wall behind me. The sound of the gun alone threw me up and word had reached my father that I had been shot and killed. As a cadet, I had another one during a grenade-throwing exercise. We were given instructions on how to go about it. You were not required to throw a grenade, but to lob it the way it is done during a game of cricket. A cadet threw his grenade carelessly and we were just lucky that the thing did not blow off the rest of us. Part of the instruction was that if you lobbed your own wrongly and it refused to blow up, you must accompany the detonator. This cadet started weeping and we were afraid for him, but as luck would have it, one guy called Mobility went without the boy and blew it up at a safe distance. By sheer luck, I escaped the C130 Hercules plane crash in Ejigbo, Lagos, where a lot of military officers perished.
How did you escape the crash?
I had finished my staff course three years earlier, but I had something to do in Lagos. That was when we got the brand new Peugeot cars. I drove to Abuja with a friend and stayed at Agura Hotel. Then I contacted a senior officer who said there was a small plane, a Dornier, flying to Lagos and I joined the plane. But I had a bumpy ride that I didn’t like. When I finished what I was doing and went back to the airport, I saw the giant C130 Hercules that was about to take military officers who came for a naval tour back to Kaduna. Although I learnt that the plane had remained on the ground for about two days because some engine repairs had to be carried out, I preferred to follow it to Kaduna because many of my friends and colleagues were there. I said I would arrange to get my car in Abuja later. But I was not comfortable with the situation inside the plane. More people were standing than those sitting down and several bags littered the place that were not secured. Despite this, I still preferred the plane because I had enjoyed so many rides in it before. There was a time it took us on a trip round the African continent. We had visited Congo, Mozambique, Egypt, Burkina Faso, Ghana and Niger. I would still have waited, but the repair of the plane was taking too much time. I decided to go out when I sighted the smaller plane which brought me to Lagos earlier. Before leaving the plane finally to join the Dornier, let me tell you something that happened. I had already come down when the flight sergeant almost pushed one NDA civilian lecturer down, telling him there was no place for him inside the plane. But the same sergeant admitted the assistant registrar inside the plane together with his two sons. When I arrived Abuja, an intelligence officer, who was a colleague of mine, phoned me and said, ‘Did you hear what happened, C130 plane missing?’ I started narrating my encounter with the plane and he said, ‘Boy, you are just lucky.’
How did you feel when you learnt that the plane you missed had crashed?
It shook me, but I guess it was my destiny. The plane had ferried officers of the rank of majors and equivalent with their directing staff from the Staff College, Kaduna to Lagos on a Naval study tour. They were returning to Kaduna. The very thought of that incident gives me goose pimples. I lost many of my junior colleagues and two of my finest course mates. I can never forget the date, 26 September 1992. Do you know what, I did not tell my wife that I would be in Lagos? I came to see someone in Abuja and had to come to Lagos when I learnt he had left for the city. It’s like hitching a ride. My name would not have come out in the manifest of either of the two planes. It was a terrible experience. I lost some of my friends and colleagues.
So many things have been said about the air crash. What do you think actually happened?
It was an accident. If you will recall, the Nigerian Air Force suffered negligence because of the allegation that its planes were used to spy on armoured units during military coups. That prompted the authorities not to give proper allocation for the maintenance of the planes. It was obvious that they wanted to make the Air Force useless so that their planes could not be used to lift soldiers to counter coups. That was a rugged plane with four engines and you ask yourself how four engines failed one after the other, if not bad maintenance. We learnt that upon take-off, the four engines started failing one after the other. So, the brave pilot turned back to Lagos and reportedly made an attempt to ditch-land or belly-land in the nearby canal. This came to light because after recovery, it was discovered that the water landing gear was deployed. I guess the total loss of the engines resulted to the plane nose-diving into the swamp with the passenger compartment and the fuselage totally submerged. I was informed that only the tail was left on the surface of the swamp. I guess if there was a serious rescue operation, even within an hour after the crash, many lives would have been saved. I went for the burial and later came back to Lagos. We were told that some of the victims had no shirts on their bodies, while some used their singlet to tie up their wounds, probably to avoid serious loss of blood. This shows that the victims made some attempt to survive the crash.
What does this tell us about rescue operations?
Let me tell you a story, when I was returning from Canada, I was inside a British Airways flight via London to Lagos. We took off from Gatwick Airport and after flying for four hours, there was a bang on the left wing of the plane. For a long time, the crew refused to tell us what happened. Eventually, the pilot told us that he had to return to London. The reaction inside the plane was something else. The wind blew up a portion of the wing and left a gaping hole that almost rendered the side ineffective. After offloading fuel by the sea, the plane could not gain height and the pilot made up his mind to return to London. By the time we landed in Heathrow Airport, more than 50 fire fighting trucks were already waiting, ready with their hoses and spraying water. Meanwhile, the airline had contacted the relatives of some of us who lived in London and they were all at the airport waiting for us. When I asked the pilot why he chose to take us to London, which was four hours away, instead of Lagos that was just two hours, he said there was no guarantee that we could get the kind of preparation for landing in Lagos. The man was right.
I’m sure that anybody with this kind of experience would want to draw closer to God.
Any where you are, you have to be close to God. But, if you say that getting closer to God means you must sleep in the church, I will say no. I pray anywhere I am and that is why many people misunderstand me. I don’t want to be seen as a religious zealot because of the rubbish the so-called men of God do these days. Everybody wants to be a pastor and I don’t know why. You can be moderate and do unto others the way you want yourself to be treated.
When did you decide to get married?
I was a lieutenant when my father came to visit me and his message was go get married. In those days, a lieutenant could occupy a whole floor in a building. I was living in Ikorodu, Lagos at the time. In my compound, I had two parking lots and I was using one garage to keep empty cartoons and a lot of things. I didn’t know that each time I went to work, my father would take a walk and inspect everywhere. So, one night he woke me up and said my son, ‘I want you to settle down with a woman.’ My salary was about N300 and I told my dad that the money was not enough to bring someone’s daughter home to suffer. The old man took me to my garage and said, ‘All these things here could get you two wives.’ After two years, I became a captain and got married and that was the happiest moment I ever had. Even though I had another person in mind to marry, the lady that ended up as my wife was the same girl that attracted my mother because of her manners at a ceremony she attended. And when on my own I was looking for the person to marry, it was the same girl that a cousin of mine led me to and I can say I have no regrets.
Is any of your children in the Army?
No. I would have loved my son to replace me, but he didn’t show interest in time. By the time he did, I had left Kaduna where I lectured for many years.
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