Military must be modernised, say top officials

Senior military officials have called on the incoming civilian administration in Nigeria to ensure that the armed forces are modernised and powerful enough to carry out their constitutional duties, local media have reported. The chief of air staff, Air Marshall Nsikak Eduok, told reporters at an air force reunion in Port Harcourt that "it could be suicidal to say scrap the military", the `Post Express Wired' newspaper reported. The newspaper also quoted outgoing military ruler General Abdulsalami Abubakar as saying that "no serious minded nation can underplay the need for a strong, well equipped and highly professional military". These reactions come amid proposals by some politicians that the military be disbanded as an antidote to incessant coups. Nigeria, which has been ruled by the military for most of its 39 years of independence, also plays the key role in the West African peace monitoring group, ECOMOG. A political analyst in Nigeria told IRIN on Tuesday that coups had little to do with whether the military was weak or strong. The analyst, Mimi Walson-Jack, director of the Centre for Responsive Politics, cited the example of The Gambia which, he recalled, had no army when the first attempted coup took place there in the mid-1980s. Keeping the military out of politics, he said, depended on the maintenance of a strong society and a civilian administration should cultivate this. "The people can resist the military whether or not the military is strong. This depends on a strong society," Walson-Jack told IRIN. "So (a civilian) government should not hinder civil society." Although Nigeria needs a strong military, he said, its mission must now go beyond traditional military frontiers and incorporate "humanitarian and social activities". They must, he added, help in disaster situations such as in floods, set up camps and provide food, "something they don't do here." As to Nigeria's subregional military's dominant role in ECOMOG Walson-Jack said: "I do not believe that Nigeria has a duty to olice West Africa. We have a responsibility at home." However, he said, should others in a subregional or global situation provide more equitably in providing financial, military and human resources to quell a situation, then Nigeria "must play its part."