Onyi Nwagbara: A Poorly Equipped Soldier Cannot Be Patriotic
DIASPORA
Onyi Nwagbara, a former Visiting Professor of Military Science at the Nigerian Defence Academy and currently Professor of Toxicology at the Nile University Abuja, where he started its Medical School, shares his experience as a US combat Major, his years in Gulf One War, Iraq, Okinawa Japan and Bosnia. Nwagbara, who also taught at the American University Yola after 16 years of professorship at the University of Florida, speaks on the rising state of insecurity in the country and why Nigerian soldiers are fighting with a low morale. Nduka Nwosu reports. Excerpts:
Dagvin Anderson Commander of the US Special Operations Command, Africa, just asked the Southern part of the country to stay on alert because terror groups including Al Qaeda and ISIS are establishing a presence in this part of the country. What’s your take?
There are intelligent reports regarding the infiltration of ISIS and Al Qaeda in Nigeria. The reports suggest these terrorist groups have established cells in some parts of the Southeast, the Southwest and the South south of the country.
What the Federal Government and the armed forces should do now is to establish control and command centres within its counter-terrorism unit. It should also be willing to share information with such countries as the US that is supplying the Nigerian Intelligence network with relevant information. Unfortunately, Nigeria has very few intelligence analysts who are presently overwhelmed with the activities of terrorist organisations in our midst.
There is need to be vigilant. The local vigilante groups in each community should be actively involved in staying awake to all the issues under discussion with a state coordination centre in each of these Southern states.
What is your take on Nigeria’s prevailing state of insecurity?
It is very disheartening. This is a country that I used to know before I went to the US. When I returned as an expatriate between 2008 and 2012 when I was at the American University in Yola, you can leave Yola and go anywhere. All that has changed.
Everybody should be security conscious. We cannot continue like this with this state of insecurity pervading the entire country. Security is everybody’s business. If a place is not secure, it cannot attract investors. One of the most important needs of investment is security. The implication is to borrow from the US which places a high premium on men and women of the armed forces who defend and protect the country. That is the spirit of patriotism in every American. That is something that has been inculcated in me that I will cherish all the days of my life.
We keep accusing our men and women in the armed forces that they are not defending the country enough. If you know today that when you go to war and you don’t come back and your family would not be taken care of, where then will come the spirit of patriotism to defend the country? I hear all manner of stories that a fallen colleague’s widow who comes for her husband’s entitlements went into negotiation with officer in-charge on how much of that entitlement should be shared with her with such question as how much is my percentage from this entitlement? This is wrong. It is evil. There is nowhere in the world that such a thing happens.
Nationhood propels patriotism that would want the citizen to die defending the Nigerian green white green flag of nationhood but that spirit of patriotism is not there. This is unlike every citizen of the United States, Republican, Democrat or Independent; it does not matter. Everyone is patriotic; it takes you to a lot of places in life and that’s why when Americans go to war in any part of the world, they do their best because they know that they are fighting for a cause. They have taken that oath to defend the sovereignty of the nation. That is the spirit the US Army impacted in me. Any one that doesn’t have that even as a four star general cannot deliver. You have to have that spirit of patriotism; until that spirit of patriotism is introduced or re-awakened in us, in the minds of our men and women in uniform, we cannot fight insurgency and other vices tearing our country apart. I cannot trade my US military experience with anything in the world.
Can you give to your country when it has given nothing to you?
The country was not always like this. It had something to give to its citizens. When you draft the Nigerian Police for Peace Keeping assignments, they excel. The Nigerian Police performs exceedingly during international assignments where their entitlements are delivered by the UN Peace Keeping Mission. They deliver when the right equipment to work with is there. Here we are talking about AK47. Russia that manufactured AK47 does not use it any more. It was manufactured in the 1940s and was known as Madison or its equivalent in Biafra. We have to be serious.
When I visited India as a Visiting Professor of the Nigerian Defence Academy where I was a professor of military science teaching Regular Course 61, 62 and 63, the cadets I thought were confronted on the issue of gas mask. I asked them: how can you go to battle without your gas mask? I did chemical and biological warfare which I thought at the Defence Academy. Your enemy can decide to use gas,-serene gas and you don’t have gas mask to defend yourself. Look at what happened during the Iran and Iraq war where Saddam Hussein gassed the citizens. It happened in Syria.
The situation on ground is that Nigerian soldiers do not have gas masks. It is part of your gear as a military person in the US. You need night vision goggles; you can maneuver with it; your movement is not restricted because you can see; it is part of your gear. You have your weapon, you have your armour; you have your night vision goggles, you have your binoculars and you have your gas mask. This is part of you. You have your armoured vest and you are ready to go. Here you see our military men wearing a pair of tennis shoes. How are you going to do that? They call our military and police force rag tag. This type of scenario does not lift the morale, it makes the average person in the force un-patriotic.
The first day I arrived at my cadet school at Fort Benning Georgia, we call it the reception, I was given six pairs of Battle Dress Uniforms (BDUs), three for winter, and three for summer. I was given four pairs of boots, 12 pairs of stockings, 10 pairs of under shirts, and 12 pairs of under wears, 12 towels and after this I am expected to use one towel a day. These were the things given to us with a dougha bag and a rucksack where you put all your operational food rations (MREs) and you are good to go.
I was at the gulf War fighting for injustice. That’s what Americans do. Yes, America is not perfect but I don’t think there is any country in the world that compares with them when it comes to human rights. They can fight for human rights; we went to Bosnia because the ethnic minority Moslems were being killed. The first thing happened in the Gulf One war. Saddam Hussein marched across and took over Kuwait. That was unfair.
Basically the two wars I found myself fighting were meant to save the Muslims. So it is not about religious affiliation, it is all about saving humanity, love, equity and justice. That’s what I believe in my life, which is what an average American believes in. It is not a perfect system because no system is perfect however on a scale of one to 10, I will give the US system 8.5, probably nine. There is racism but when it comes to patriotism, an average American is very patriotic.
The belief is that no one’s human rights should be infringed upon. That is why you see US armed Forces all over the world. Look at what is happening now in the Baltics between the NATO and US forces on the one hand and the Russian forces on the other hand. The US military is there to deter Russia from taking over Ukraine. They stand for justice. There is the popular American expression: I gat your back or America gat your back. It is something that every American believes in. So the US Armed Forces-the army, the navy, the marine, the air force, the coast guards get the same training. We believe in being patriotic and that takes you a long way in life.
What’s your take on Boko Haram?
The issue of Boko Haram insurgency in Nigeria is unfortunate. In the US they are known as a rag tag army and here is a rag tag army trying to overrun our Nigerian Armed Forces. You cannot go to war unprepared, without the right weaponry. Even in the Bible in the New Testament, we are advised to put on the armour of God and fight powers and principalities. In the Old Testament during the battle between David and Goliath, David was being dressed in the garb of war and he said no. Ideally that was what it was supposed to be. We cannot send our officers and men to the frontline without the accompanying weaponry they need to fight with. I hear such stories as running out of arms and ammunitions. How? There is the story of our men overwhelmed by the superior fire power of Boko Haram. No, no, it must not be so. We are supposed to equip our armed forces. Whether Boko Haram is in Sambisa or in Niger State, all we need are three or four AH-64 Apache helicopters with gunships mounted on them, flying at a low range.
Did you hear Boko Haram’s claims of our aircraft brought down with the pilots yet to be seen?
You cannot hear that with a US apache helicopter. I mean what are we talking about? You know where these people are located. They are here. This is an era of technology where drones can go on a mission of aerial reconnaissance and take pictures of where these people are and give you real time where they are located. The US does not send foot soldiers to war; they don’t put boots on the ground any more. They stay in the warship and just press buttons. Even in the US buttons get pressed for far reaching consequences.
Look at how Osama Bin Laden was taken out. It was a real time operation. The old methods of fighting battles and wars are over. We need to get on with technology and science as they evolve. You can send 10 drones to Sambisa forest and launch rockets. If you lose a drone so be it. How much is a drone? We are simply not serious. We are not serious at all; to me we are not honest to ourselves and that is why we are losing our men and women who have sacrificed to defend our sovereignty. We must equip our men at the frontline with all the weaponry they need to fight the war and defend the sovereignty of this nation.
I left for the US at the age of 17 after secondary education at Williams Memorial Secondary School in Afuguri, Ohuhu Umuahia, Abia State. I graduated in 1981 and I am presently the national president of the Old Students Association. General Ihejirika former Chief of Army Staff is an ex-student of the institution. William Memorial was a great institution built by Dr. Michael Iheonukara Okpara, a great guy and former Premier of Eastern Nigeria. Whatever I know about science started from Williams Memorial.
You left very early for the US, Why?
I wanted to study Medicine. In those days there was just one medical school, the University of Nigeria Medical School or Teaching Hospital (UNTH) at Enugu Campus. The University of Port Harcourt just came up and because it was relatively new and inexperienced, it was not an optionMy elder brother went to the US in 1980. He did not for one day desired to study in Nigeria. So upon graduating from High School in 1977, he did his HSC and shortly after that he left for the US. Then when I wrote the first JAMB exam, I scored 284.
I couldn’t get admission to study Medicine. That was how tough it was those days. I wrote the second one and scored about 301. Nsukka placed me on the supplementary list. At the end of the day I didn’t get admission. My elder brother was already in the US asked my parents I should come over to the US rather than wait in vain for JAMB. I went to the US with an intention to study Medicine but before you can study Medicine in the US you need to have a first degree. So I went ahead to study Microbiology. It was during the period I did some internship with some hospitals and I was not pleased with what I saw.
I said no, I don’t want to study Medicine anymore. On my graduation, I went ahead to obtain a Master’s degree in Micro. I then joined the US Army and was commissioned in 1988 as a Second Lieutenant. I was deployed overseas and I fought at the First Gulf War. I was in Bosnia and did some joint force training in Belize, the Central America Guatemala; I was in Okinawa Japan. It was a wonderful experience and I cannot trade my US experience for anything in this world. If I have to do it again, I will do it over and over again.
I was commissioned in the US, with the best military establishment in the world. The day I was commissioned, my brother was present. Out of 128 cadets that were admitted to the school, only 94 were commissioned and five of us were blacks. I was posted to the largest military base in the world Fort Hood, San Antonio Texas; from Fort Hood I got overseas deployment. I left the military in 1998 as a Major and moved into the academia. I did my Masters in Microbiology and a PhD in Toxicology from the University of Florida.
It has been a very wonderful experience for 27 years running with 25 years full time. I was at Louisiana before I moved to Florida IM College of Pharmacy where 16 years ago I became a full professor; from there I came back to Nigeria as an expatriate. I taught in one of the universities in the north, the American University.
