Tinubu’s new defence minister: Not yet uhuru

“A people that values its privileges above its principles soon loses both” —Dwight D. Eisenhower

The Y2025 is approaching its end. In precisely five months’ time, the government of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu would be clocking three years in the saddle. Today’s not a time for passing a verdict on the president’s administration. That’ll come later, but today’s a day to look at the president’s most recent appointment of a new minister of defence in view of the exacerbating insecurity in the land. Also, the need to look at how to forestall or deescalate foreign intrusion in the nation’s internal affairs.

Tinubu, as governor of Lagos State, was known more by the catchphrase: ‘Talent Hunter.’ And as president and commander-in-chief of the armed forces of the federal republic of Nigeria with several federal appointments in his kitty, many believe the jury is still out on that catchphrase.

So far, the president has made appointments that have elicited mixed reactions from the Nigerian public since August 2023, when the first set of ministerial appointments of his administration were announced. However, never in the almost three years of this administration’s existence has any of the president’s appointments been widely celebrated as the president’s recent appointment of General Christopher Musa (rtd), as the country’s new Minister of Defence. Why this is so may not be unconnected with the ineptitude with which Alhaji Badaru Abubakar, minister of defence until few weeks back and his currently serving junior minister, Bello Matawalle, mishandled the recent spate of insecurity in the country. Clearly, these two appointments put to task the catchphrase of the president as a talent hunter.

No wonder that Nigerians, almost in unison, applauded the appointment of General Musa, whom the president, weeks ago sent on compulsory retirement from his erstwhile post of Chief of Defence Staff, alongside other Service Chiefs of his epoch.

Musa truly possesses a salutary profile. But despite this, he has an Herculean task ahead of him as the country’s man-of-the-moment because Nigerians truly look up to him to rescue them from amongst others, the pangs of banditry, the criminality of kidnappers and also the barbarity of armed miscreants disturbing ceaselessly, the spirit of Nigerians.

Questions: Can the retired but obviously not tired General Musa deliver Nigeria from the menace of insecurity that has become a routine recurrence in the country? Won’t the burden of expectations from Nigerians be too deafening for the new Defence Minister to bear? Being a significant part of our rotten system that created and nursed him to hierarchical recognition, will he be able to muster the requisite political will to quash our systemic monsters that might stand between him and his plans for ridding the country of insecurity? Can he stop the endemic corruption and systemic compromise that the unnamed architects of the ongoing insecurity have been inflicting on the country?

How’s Musa going to deal with the unimpressive military hardware on ground and the debilitating welfare of our military personnel, especially those on the battlefields that did not positively speak to the billions of dollars officially claimed to have over several decades allegedly spent in tackling insecurity in the country?

This military general, being a creation of this system, presumably knows what he wants to do and how. During his screening appearance before the National Assembly, he spoke smoothly and with confidence. But there is a clear distinction between talk, considered to be cheap, and implementation of the desired action necessary to bring about expected results to quell ongoing insecurity in the country.

Now is the time for Musa to walk his talk. Franz Kafka once stated that a wise man “starts with what is right than what is acceptable.” This statement should be Musa’s watchword if he intends to achieve anything meaningful as the country’s Defence Minister. Those currently responsible for the rotten state of affairs in the country will surely want him to do what is acceptable to them but to achieve anything tangible for self and country, he needs to depart from acceptable norms and take a detour to the pathways of what is right.

Yours sincerely can vividly recollect that while he was still in active military service, one or two of his video clips surfaced on the social media where he was seen lecturing his audience on what the country needs to do to win its current intractable insecurity conundrum. He should not detract from his position in those videos but stick to what he thinks should be done to effectively tackle insecurity in the country.

He was shown, in one of the videos, strongly advocating for the building of comprehensive border perimeter fences with neighbours like Niger Republic, Cameroon, Chad and Benin Republic so as to curb the infiltration and illegal crossings of insurgents into the country. He made comparative allusions to countries with similar issues that largely resolved their insecurity problems through perimeter fencing of their borders. He alluded to Pakistan that walled its borders with Afghanistan while Saudi Arabia equally walled its borders with Iraq. Musa wondered why the country was delaying in embracing this option months ago. But now that he’s now the country’s defence minister, he should make the achievement of this good idea one of his main critical priorities.

General Musa also advocated for the deployment of drones, cameras, and transponders, which he considered necessary security tools for effective border surveillance and intelligence gathering. It is sad that our country is yet to fully key into daily deployments of modern technology in combating its insecurity despite the vast resources at its firm disposal. Yet, it is still not too late if, as our new defence minister, Musa can forthwith make this happen.

The new defence minister should be focused and not be deterred by hypocritical commentators that see everything from the prisms of costs in a resource-endowed country like ours while downplaying such projects’ benefits to the security wellbeing of Nigerians. This geographical entity must be secure before there can be a government in place and even a country called Nigeria.

Musa should always ask himself about the desirability or otherwise of any project that comes to his mind. Once he is convinced that such project is really necessary for national security, he should pursue them no matter the cost outlay because a country that was recently reported to have spent a huge amount of N17.5trillion on pipelines monitoring in twelve months should be willing and ready to construct perimeter fence to protect its territory from infiltration by rampaging, mostly, Fulani herdsmen aggressors and Boko Haram/ISWAP criminal elements.

Another important battle General Musa must be prepared to wage and possibly win is that of the federal bureaucracy. Generally, bureaucracy creates a structure of rules/regulations deliberately designed to control governmental decisions. But these rules/regulations have grown to become avoidable bottlenecks of suffocating red tapism, loss of freedom to initiate, inefficiency, and sadly detachment from contemporary societal reality.

For Musa to meet up with the expectations of Nigerians, he must immediately commence how he truly plans to waltz through this government contraption called bureaucracy that is renowned for its frustrating procedures that stifle individual action and prompt problem-solving techniques. This new defence minister, that is once used to a ‘command and obey’ structure as a military general, needs a survival technique to manoeuvre the country’s bureaucracy.

More importantly, the president has removed Badaru from the defence ministry. Matawalle should also go for Musa to succeed? The allegations of insecurity misgivings heaped on Matawalle’s head by his successor as Zamfara state governor deserves the president’s revisit.

Musa truly projects an image of a fine gentleman but whether he’s President Tinubu’s best ministerial appointment so far stands to be seen in view of his also being a creation of the rotten system that spends trillions of naira on insecurity without commensurate results to show for such budgetary spendings. Time shall tell if he possesses the political will to stop the ongoing bleeding insecurity by weeding out dead woods on his paths to restoring Nigeria’s lost peace. He no doubts will need an unimpeded presidential support to deal with the unnamed power-bloc behind the country’s insecurity quagmire.

Again, time shall tell if Musa is indeed the president’s best ministerial appointee. He needs courage, confidence, undiluted determination, and presidential support to do and succeed in this insecurity extermination assignment of his.

Musa’s greatest challenge lies more in the fact that our society, as it stands today, values its privileges more than its principles. And in Dwight D. Eisenhower’s observation, any society like ours that “values its privileges above its principles soon loses both.” Yours sincerely pray for Musa to survive this rotten system within which most Nigerians expect him to perform wonders.

Sanusi, former MD/CEO of Lagos State Signage & Advertisement Agency, is currently the managing partner at AMS Reliable Solicitors.