The disaster at Nigeria’s Ikeja military base in Lagos, where a cookhouse fire set off a blaze which ignited an ammunition store, is almost certainly the result of unthinking behavior by military personnel who didn’t care, who didn’t have enough pride in themselves nor strong enough sense of duty, to take elementary precautions. It appears that when the conflagration began to take hold and ordinance started to detonate, only a few brave soldiers stayed to try and douse the flames. Most fled and added to the panic and chaos which saw as many as 2,000 people, the majority of them civilians, (and many of them young children), killed in the frantic stampede for safety.
The Nigerian Army has enjoyed periods of prosperity, especially when its generals have been running the government. But unfortunately, like so much else in Nigeria, systems and structures are often poorly maintained. While it is absurd to compare the army of an African nation with that of the United States, it is instructive to look at just one figure: to back the White House war on international terrorism, this year alone, no less than $48 billion more will be spent on the US military, bringing total defense spending to almost $340 billion.
The Nigerian Army has not had $48 billion spent on it in its entire existence. And this despite the flow of wealth from the country’s oil fields. Soldiers have gone unpaid, weapons systems have become unusable for lack of maintenance and cash for spare parts. Simply to survive, the army has all too often had to join in with the endemic corruption that has scarred what ought to be black Africa’s largest and most prosperous nation.
Dedicated officers who seek to maintain centers of excellence can only work with the resources that they are given. This includes the recruits who come from an often cynical and disillusioned civilian world. The result has been a slackening of discipline, which in turn leads to unruly and foolish behavior.
Among the locals there has been considerable anger that an army base should have been so close to an urban settlement. However, for this the army is not to blame. When the Ikeja facility was originally established, there was no concentration of civilian housing around it, merely accommodation for soldiers and their families. The blame for the urban sprawl that has grown up around the base lies party with the municipal authorities who permitted it, and partly with people who very often chose to build their homes nearby without proper permits.
Whether or not the army should have reviewed the wisdom of keeping large stores of ordinance on site is another matter. However, in fairness to the military, ammunition needs to be kept somewhere and where better than at a military facility where it is easily guarded and is readily to hand?
The desperate state of the military was, however, demonstrated when hundreds of protesting soldiers, whose homes were also destroyed in the blast, pelted the official car of Vice President Atiku Abubakar with stones and bottles. The army itself appears unable to help its own soldiers. Nor does it have the authority to control them. This is unfortunately symptomatic of a country where forty years of corruption and ineptitude have robbed society of so many fundamental values.
