AIr Marshal Jonah Wuyep, a former Chief of Air Staff under President Olusegun Obansanjo in this interview speaks on sundry issues ranging from his life in service, security situation, terrorism, and politics amongst others. Excerpts:

By Marie-Therese Nanlong

What do you think is missing in the training of military men in your days compared to now?

The Air Force is a dynamic service, there have been changes since I left, and there have been new developments on equipment used by the Air Force in terms of combat platform like the aircraft.

The Air Force has also grown because it was not as big as it is today. There was high professionalism but somehow, the military incursion into politics affected not only the Air Force but the other two services professionally.

What is your take on the issues that led to the disruption of the training agreement between Nigeria and the United States?

Wuyep

The standard of the Air Force has not dropped; it is just that America has refused to sell some of these equipment to the Nigerian government. It is an issue of their own policy and there is a lot of international politics involved.

Recently, America was talking about the military maltreating prisoners of war; if I may put it that way because we are now at war. I am talking about their claims that the Nigerian military abuse of human rights; because of that, they may not want to deal with any issue involving the military.

That is government to government issue, I do not have the actual details of what might have caused have caused the refusal of the US to sell the equipments that the Nigerian government is asking for.

President Obasanjo unexpectedly removed you as the Chief of Air Staff in 2006, what was the feeling then and now, do you think he was justified taking such action?

Yes, I think President Obasanjo was very fair to us. You will remember that in his second coming as President of Nigeria; as a civilian not in uniform he came out with a policy that service chiefs should serve for a period of four years but if there is any reason why he will have to retain any of them or all of them; it should not be more than a year.

So, I served for four years, he gave me an extra year and I served for five years, he was very fair to almost all the Service Chiefs then, none served for less than four years. He tried to keep to the policy and I have no regret that he asked me to leave, we left at the right time.

Why do you think that the Nigeria military despite being acclaimed abroad has failed to crush the Boko Haram insurgency?

Nigeria is well recognised for peace keeping operations in the world generally. I personally participated in peace keeping operations in other parts of the world and we did exploit but what we have now in this Boko Haram saga is a terrorist type of operation which Nigeria never prepared for. Even when we served outside, it was not to contain terrorism but to contain broken down peace politically, but not that terrorism was the problem.

Correct policy

We found ourselves not really prepared on this kind of operation but they are working hard now to readjust and contain it today. It is not that the military cannot but we have to get the correct weapon, we have to get the correct policy, we have to get the correct intelligence network.

It is a localized issue and terrorism is just hit and run, they hit and run into the people and hide there. You can’t just keep firing anyhow because the colossal damage will not be accepted by the world.

I was telling you something about America blaming our military in the treatment of the Boko Haram prisoners of war.

It is something that we have to be very careful about it so you don’t just go about bringing down every place simply because there is one or two Boko Haram elements inside such a place.