Igbo rebuff of today’s Nigerian Army (I), by Ochereome Nnanna

For some years now, youths of the Igbo ethnic group, especially in the five states of the South East geopolitical zone, have been shunning enrolment into the military. In 2025, a Brigadier General, Chima Ekeator, led a team round the geopolitical zone canvassing for Igbo youths to take up their quotas. For instance, he said Kaduna State indigenes, like youths of most other states, oversubscribed their state quota, while Enugu State failed to raise up to 100 recruits to fill its 200 slots. This year, the Brigadier General in charge of the Nigerian Army’s Ohafia Division, A. M. Dikko, lamented that he failed to fill his slot as only a few showed up for recruitment.

The question is: why have Igbo youths lost interest in the same Army they once bestrode like the proverbial colossus? The answer is simple: no sense of belonging. Before Nigeria’s independence and the Biafra War, Igbo and Eastern youths dominated the officer corps of the Nigerian military and security services. The Igbo were at the forefront of the fight for Nigeria’s independence, and they looked forward, alongside their compatriots, to defending its sovereignty. For some of those graduating from colleges, the military offered a prestigious career opportunity.

Pioneers like the billionaire’s son, Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu (who joined the officer corps after obtaining a Master’s degree at Oxford), Okoh Ebitu Ukiwe, Godwin Ndubuisi Kanu, Allison Madueke, Alexander Madiebo, Obi Rapu and so many others joined the Army and Navy in the late 1950s. Madiebo, in his book, Nigerian Revolution and Biafra War, documents how, by 1963, Igbo officers dominated the Nigerian Army. Indeed, the very first full General and first military Head of State of Nigeria was an Igbo man – Johnson Thomas Aguiyi-Ironsi. For whatever it is worth, I need to recall that the first military coup was led by an Igbo man, Major Chukwuma Kaduna Nzeogwu, and Ironsi, as Head of State, led the forces to quell the coup. This says it all: Ndi Igbo once occupied the alpha position in the Armed Forces of the Federal Republic of Nigeria.

Let me also note that the Igbo did not join the lower ranks with the same enthusiasm. This “other ranks” cadre was dominated mainly by Hausa and Northern elements, which were later mobilised to attack their Igbo officers when the first coup occasioned the killing of Northern political leaders. After the Biafra War, many Igbo youths desired to rejoin the Nigerian armed forces, more especially as Gen. Yakubu Gowon proclaimed his fraudulent “No Victor, No Vanquished”, giving the impression that the nation had put the war behind it. What actually happened was that the British-manipulated Federal Military Government sought to hoodwink the ex-Biafrans while the war was continued through hostile government policies. Many Igbo youths who struggled to join the Army, Police, Air Force and other uniformed forces were either stiff-armed or given a ceiling above which they would not be allowed to rise.

They endured decades of marginalisation, early retirement and exclusion from occupying certain ranks and command positions. They kept struggling until just about a decade ago, when Muhammadu Buhari came back to power as an elected president. The only time, since the War, when an Igbo, Lt.-General Azubuike Ihejirika, was appointed Chief of Army Staff, was during the regime of President Goodluck Jonathan. Ihejirika was the last Nigerian Army Chief who fought Boko Haram terrorists like the Nigerian Army we all knew and respected. He was on the verge of defeating the jihadists when, suddenly, Northern politicians and Islamic clerics began accusing him and President Jonathan of “fighting the North” and “killing Northerners”.

The Sultan of Sokoto, Nasir el-Rufai, Muhammadu Buhari and Borno elders were all on this chorus. Indeed, Amnesty International (AI), curiously, joined them, showing more concern for the dirty blows being administered on the terrorists than for the fate of Boko Haram victims in North East communities and refugee camps. President Jonathan, who was fervently seeking Northern support for his second term, panicked and retired Gen. Ihejirika. He handed over his government’s security architecture fully back to the North, thus setting the stage for Buhari’s victory at the 2015 presidential election.

Apart from appointing Ihejirika the first Igbo Chief of Army Staff, President Jonathan, who owed his 2011 election into the presidency mainly to the sacrifice of the Igbo nation in his favour, also “committed” another unpardonable taboo. He used the Nigerian Army to give Ikemba Odumegwu Ojukwu a full military burial with a 21-gun salute on 2nd March, 2012, at Nnewi. This five-star rite was also accorded Nigeria’s leading fighter for independence and first President, Dr Nnamdi Azikiwe, in November 1996. The Sokoto Caliphate and Arewa cabals see Nigeria as the private estate of their ancestors, and the Army as their ultimate instrument of power over Nigeria. Whatever the votes cannot achieve, the Army will achieve for them. We other Nigerians also claim that Nigeria and the Armed Forces belong to us all, as the Constitution says. But in the end, both Nigeria and its Armed Forces dance to the tune of the Sokoto Caliphate and its Arewa cabals.

Indeed, the notion that the Nigerian Army owes more of its allegiance to the Islamic Sokoto Caliphate and Arewa cabals than to the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria is encapsulated in its motto, boldly inscribed in Arabic: “Victory is from Allah alone.” When taken to task, the Army likes to interpret it as “Victory is from God alone” to water down the Islamic overtone. Yet, they vehemently refuse to write it in the Nigerian lingua franca that we all understand, as sanctioned by the Constitution: English. The Army is thus portrayed as a tool of Islam, which is an affront to non-Muslims, particularly Ndi Igbo.