The unwinning war? The Parliament invitation to the Nigerian Army

By Jimoh Ibrahim CFR

Professor Matthias Strohn Camberley’s desire of the military discussion opened the unpredicted paranoia ‘black box’ to inside the military and its operational strategy that left nothing to kept of the ethics and the pride of the Army even on the war front. When he said, “to stay within the Military realm, the conceptual component of fighting power can only be enhanced if we engage intellectually with the problems present.” (Matthias himself holds a Doctor of Philosophy degree from the University of Oxford, Germany General and faculty member of the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst) saw that the contemporary military must start to get used to civil society’s open encounters if the military solves civil society’s problems of human insecurity, The Army must now critically be prepared to open its books to non-accountants, including those who study history, law, or geography, once they make a member of the parliament list. Unfortunately, the operational Army is busy with how to bring back human security dearly needed in the Nigerian society given the threatening activities of the Boko Haram now going to the second decades. They may not even know who buy their uniform, machinery, and supply support, but the Parliament invites them to give account. The Chief of Army Staff or the Defence Staff must go to the Parliament to answer questions? A winning or unwinning invitation to war? Not even the Nigerian judiciary is ready for such a battle, much less of the Parliament.

No one knows when the Chief of the Army Staff of the British Army appears in the Parliament. Or that of the United States in the face of the war in Afghanistan or is the fact that nothing in monetary terms is lost that requires investigation in Afghanistan (1979-2001) or Cuba (1961), Czechoslovakia (1968), Granada (1983), Panama (1989), Iraq (2003), and Syria (2011) or close home at least hypothetically the ECOMOG account was balanced! Who can account for money spent on the war front, and who can say that the supply is regular to reflect a market price? Who is looking for justified prices of war pieces of machinery when the producer has options to sell or not to sell to us? How can the Army account for diplomacy funding spent on the stakeholders on war fronts? Even the State Governors who draw billions of Naira on security votes from the federal allocations to their states are excluded from the investigation on how they spend security money. Still, one of the problems that come with Matthias’ statement is the accounting challenges for funds spent on the war fronts, as one presented to us from the convergence of the complexities of war. In Mega Projects like war, money spent is not the priority but completion of the project or bringing the war to an end! The British parliament once asks a CEO how much it will cost to complect the London Crossrail project. The CEO asked for a blank cheque (and I am involved in this project) since already the government has spent £41.3bn or N20 trillion) costs on one project and the project is not near completion! Should the Nigeria Army ask for a blank cheque to end Boko Haram, I hope the parliament will not recommend public execution of all!

It is painful to strongly come out of the Sambisa forest and move to the Parliament to make a statement regarding the Army’s war equipment. Even when you are not involved and more so that you just resume an Army leadership position, all you get is a red security signals plus parliament invitation, as I saw the Army chief’s expression. But the gentleman put on leadership cap when he said my explanation implies apology! Yes, the Army does not ordinarily and when in uniform apologies to anyone for the image it portrays and when they do nothing wrong.

What is the mode of investigation of the Army on the invitation? A structural interview distilling verifiable investigation from the concerned institution’s written responses. A Scientific approach of “logical positivism.” (a philosophical movement inspired by empiricism and verificationism.) Or “logical empiricism.” (a type of theory in epistemology. Where experience has primacy in human knowledge and justified belief). The parliament judgment may lack empiricism and verificationism. Science aims to find the truth and predict the behaviour of the examined systems in “generality.” Once we have successfully described a hydrogen atom, we can make predictions about all hydrogen atoms in the universe. The absence of such empiricism and verificationism put the Parliament in a dilemma of desire to find justice. The Parliament has to find out If any fund is missing, but without the skill of the EFCC, the assignment may be difficult to discharge. We could easily say that scientific evidence is stupid.

What is more, we never argue from facts to theories unless by way of refutation or falsification. We may also need to falsify the falsification. There is an asymmetry between verification and falsification. The demarcation criterion is based on “potential falsifiability” for a theory to be scientific. It needs at least one potential falsifiability; that is, there must exist at least one empirical observation statement that conflicts with it!  The Parliament will win a price if they find such conflicting evidence that the money was stolen contrary to the Army memo that perhaps nothing was lost!  If they base their report on that, then the conjectures and refutation of the process of error elimination of getting closer to the truth.

What we call ‘ad-hoc auxiliary assumption’ latter ‘conventionalist stratagems’ and finally, “immunizing stratagems.” The Parliament may soon change the investigation strategy using the social science interpretivism approach. Yes, social media! It is important here to let do the video of our proceedings, or someone we don’t know will do it and circulate it such that the Army is put in public opinion court even without a trial.  And in the social sciences, there is only interpretation. Nothing speaks for itself. The Parliament will move on and may say… we are confronted with shared data and evidence problems. (error) provide a powerful motivation to employ analytic techniques that use probability theory, especially techniques that address drawing inferences from insufficient evidence. Or that the evidence is sufficient to make the recommendation that……

We should be civilized to now know that the Army remains a pivotal edifice in national security in contemporary society, and proudly the Nigeria Armey has been willing the laurels in the international fronts.

Those gentlemen have come to give their life for the peace of community permanently, and they live far away from us, and not even the human right to freedom of movement is available to them without a pass. We must respond to give them that much respect and invite them to a close door when we carry out our duties of oversight as required by the constitution, for this is what we needed in contemporary time to get that much money that is’ missing’ in the Army. At the same time, we let go of those of the NNPC!

Jimoh Ibrahim CRF is a Ph.D. Candidate of the Modern War Studies and Contemporary Military History of the University of Buckingham UK.