A former spokesman for the Nigerian Air Force, Group Captain Sadeeq Shehu (retd.), has decried the way the Nigerian military promotes senior officers to the rank of general.
According to Shehu, Nigeria has many army generals because of the way promotion is handled by the military, noting that the army is top-heavy with senior officers while the number of field troops remains low.
Shehu said this while speaking as a guest on Arise TV on Friday.
He said that while in service he had observed that many senior officers were being promoted to the rank of general.
He said, “Those of us that studied these things as far back as 2012 noticed this tendency of promoting too many generals. There are too many generals. I know the times are not like when I joined the military, but I remember in 1984 when I joined the military in Kaduna, you could hardly see a Brigadier around. But what do we have now? We have too many generals.
“We need to listen to our elders. General Ishola Williams, as far back as 2020 warned that we are having too many generals and too few field troops,” he said.
Speaking further on the ideal template to follow in promoting military officers, Shehu said, “When you join the military, they will tell you that the military is a pyramid. Now to maintain that pyramid, the lower bottom of the military should be higher than the next higher level. You are supposed to have a large base of Second Lieutenants who came out of the Nigerian Defence Academy in the Navy, Air Force, and Army and as they progress into their second rank, which is full Lieutenant, it is almost automatic unless someone dies.
“But from the Lieutenant rank, when you are moving to the captain that is when the process of filtering starts coming in such a way that you have like 80 per cent, and from Captain to Major, you have like 70 per cent. Towards the end, at the top which is the General, the ideal is that you have like two per cent and a maximum of three or five per cent. But what do we have in Nigeria?”
Shehu also noted that it is not right for any nation to retire about 100 army generals at the same time.
Recall that President Bola Tinubu, on June 19, retired all Service Chiefs from the nation’s military architecture.
Such forceful retirement is a tradition of the military. Once a junior officer is appointed as a service chief, all senior officers, above the appointed service chief are asked to proceed on retirement.
This is because, in military tradition, senior military officers are unlikely to take orders from their juniors.
This was the reason the military high command gave officers who are senior to the newly appointed services till July 3, 2023, to voluntarily retire from service
Shehu, however, kicked against the retirement of about 100 generals at the same time.
He said, “It is important to note that it is not normal for the military anywhere in the world to retire about 100 generals, and by my own estimate, we have close to 133 Major Generals in the Army, Rear Admirals in the Navy and Air Vice Marshals in the Air Force leaving.
“We also have to remember that this is not the first time. When the last set of service chiefs retired in 2022, we had another batch of about 100 who left.
“On the individual level, I must put the premise that our President and Commander-in-Chief, according to the constitutional requirement in Section 217, has the right to appoint service chiefs and the constitution does not tie his hands that in appointing service chiefs, he must pick either the most senior or the middle senior or the most junior. It is completely within his right to do that.”
Shehu stated that the Nigerian government has spent so much money on the training of military officers.
He lamented that the nation is losing a lot of people with invaluable military experience by retiring many generals at the same time.
“The issue here is when you look at the money that is spent on training these people, whether it is foreign courses or the ones here, the experience we are losing and the money we are wasting on these people and then telling them to go is not good for the national economy,” Shehu said.
had reported that about 100 top officers, including generals, brigadiers-general, air vice marshals, and admirals in the Nigerian Army, Air Force, and Nigerian Navy may proceed on compulsory retirement following the appointment of new service chiefs by the President, Bola Tinubu.
