By Wola Adeyemo, Fola Adekeye and Bob MajiriOghene, on the occasion OF General Adebayo’s 80^th birthday celebrations, in Lagos Nigeria.

How would you assess the military of your days with the military we have now?

There’s a great difference. One, the army of my time was very small, not as large as the army we have today. The army of today began ‘enlarging’ as from the time we got independence in 1960. That very year, there was problem in the Congo and we had to send troops from Nigeria to the Congo. Major General Ironsi was the first Nigerian to command Nigerian troops in the Congo, and we used to change positions every six months.  Very much later however, I became a staff officer in the United Nations in the Congo. So to answer your question directly, the country took more responsibility than our own time. And they felt that the army should be expanded. The first expansion was a new battalion in the cantonment here in Ikeja to make six battalions. And since then, when other countries realised what we did in the Congo, they started asking for Nigeria troops.

So this expansion came as a result of peace keeping missions?

Yes, yes.  Then, the army now actually enlarged during the civil war in Nigeria. We had to send a battalion to the war front, headed by Benjamin Adekunle, Black Scorpion. He did very well, but towards the end, when the war was about to end, we felt that he was getting tired and we sent Olusegun Obasanjo to take over from him. Unfortunately for Obasanjo, the war ended about six weeks after he took over. So he was the one that took the surrendering certificate from Philip Effiong who was number two to Odumegwu Ojukwu, when he ran away more or less.  Because of that civil war, we felt that the army should expand more, and because of the large expansion of Nigeria, we felt that we should surround our country with our own troops, to define  what they should stand for – that is, to defend the territorial integrity of the country.

By the time General Obasanjo came to office as president in 1999, he attempted to professionalize the army. Do you think he succeeded?  

The army was professionalized before the end of the civil war. It was only the enlargement of the army he did. And he was left, as I said, to end the war. You see, he was a military engineer, not a civil engineer. He was an engineer within the army.

Did that make some kind of an emergency engineer?

No. He was a trained military engineer. For instance, if we were going to a place and the bridges were spoilt or there were no bridges at all, Obasanjo was trained to handle that sort of thing. So because of the duty he performed during the civil war, he became a first class Nigerian army officer. I was in the West then. When he came back, he went back to his engineering unit which is an offshoot of his immediate job as a soldier. So he became well known. So for him to say that professionalism took place was recent, with all due respect, that was very wrong.

No sir, we wanted to know whether he achieved his objective to re-professionalize the army after he came back to power in 1999.

Well, let’s start from when he finished the war.  We realized that we needed more troops to enlarge the army. So we were working on that, when in 1999 he won the election and became the president. Naturally everyone expected that he would use his experience when he was in the military and compare what he had in 1999. He took the advice of the professional heads in the military, to enlarge the army, which he did: because he was the president, and because of the demand from foreign countries asking for professional military help from Nigeria.

So would you now say that the Nigerian armed forces are combat ready?

Of course they are, mostly because they have been helping other countries. And they are trained physically and properly to maintain the prescribed duties of the armed forces. So they are combat ready, any time.

What happened between them was unfortunate and what I would term  a good example of disloyalty on the part of General Danjuma. Obasanjo was the president and Danjuma was minister of defense and they both  knew each other when they were in the army, they were more or less of the same grade when they were in the army, and if he wasn’t good, I see no reason why Obasanjo would invite him to become a minister of defense. There must have been some misunderstanding when he was minister of defense under Obasanjo, during his first term. And they both swallowed the disagreement without letting the public know. And suddenly, Danjuma said that he was not going to do a second time with Obasanjo as defense minister. We thought that he was tired and he wanted somebody to take his place. We didn’t know that there was some underneath disagreement between him and Obasanjo. But the whole thing blew out when Danjuma had his 70^th birthday about three months ago. As a senior retired military officer, I was distressed and disappointed that they both broke the discipline of the hierarchy of the army.  And Obasanjo as usual, doesn’t usually say much after a disagreement with his friends or people that work with him. Even if he was the guilty party, he wouldn’t make any statement. And even if he was the innocent one, again he would make any statements. But the statements credited to Danjuma have embarrassed the whole nation. Having known that they were friends who worked with each other while they were in the army, and had confidence in each other before Obasanjo made him his chief of defense.

As a fellow retired General, why didn’t you make some efforts to ask what happened between them?

I have not concerned myself with the military since I retired. Socially yes, but professionally, no. So it would be a stupid idea for me as a very senior retired officer in the Nigerian army, to start calling them to discuss the military aspect of the country. No, it’s not a good thing

But Danjuma kept insisting that Obasanjo was not listening to him while in power and if he had shown up at his birthday, he could have thrown him out.

That could have been foolish, stupid if he did that. Some officers still visit me in such a manner that even if I disagree with them, I still bring them around. Therefore, it would be unfair of me to interfere with these kinds of situations in the military because I was senior to all of them. They all respected me and they still do.

I guess that confers on you to broker peace between them.

Well, I think it would be unkind to do that too. Obasanjo was the president of the country. Danjuma was his minister of defense. It would be unwise of somebody like me to interfere on what happened between them. But if they had come to me, possibly I would have taken the opportunity to call them to order.

You mean that if they decide to indulge in a long-drawn altercation, you would not interfere?

It is most likely that I would not interfere. It would be unmilitary. That is why we keep having these problems today. People, even among civilians, interfere in things that hardly concern them. Why should you interfere in things that do not concern you? It is a government problem and they should resolve the problem, but I insist that if either one had brought the problem to me, I probably may have been able to get the other one, to discussion with him.

When Obasanjo was president, would you say in your capacity as leader of the Yoruba Council of Elders that he hardly listened to advice?

Obasanjo was the president of the country. I am still the president of the Yoruba Council of Elders. We went to him on one or two occasions to discuss generally on the state of the nation as it affects the Yoruba. He listened to us, he agreed with us but when he gets to his kitchen cabinet, things are likely to change. My advice has been that we see anything going wrong in the country; we go to him and try to give him solutions we think can solve those problems. It is often up to him to take or do otherwise.

Nevertheless, would you say that he is generally receptive to counsel?

I would not say yes or no. This is because I knew Obasanjo very well from when he was one pip in the army. He was a good, determined and intelligent officer, who won the civil war, took over after Murtala Mohammed was assassinated. He conformed with Murtala’s idea of handing over to a democratically elected civilian government in 1979, which he did, to Shehu Shagari. So from all angles, everybody was happy that he handed over, even us in the military then. I had left the military then, but I thought they were still interested in staying long in government.  There was no need for the army to have been in government. You know, I was the first chief of staff in army headquarters in Nigeria until I went to England on 15^th November 1965, to do a course after having handed over to somebody else. I was there when I heard that a coup had taken place on January 15, 1966. I was thankful that I was not at home, because nobody was really thinking about a coup at all. I would say jokingly, that we did not know what a coup was during our time. There was spirit of togetherness among us all in the army.