Posted by EMMA AMAIZE on
LIKE a bomb waiting to be detonated, former chief of general staff (CGS), Vice Admiral Mike Okhai Akhigbe, exploded, last week, at Uyo on those calling for the ban of ex-military officers from politics in 2007, saying that such people are 'uncivilized and uninformed".
LIKE a bomb waiting to be detonated, former chief of general staff (CGS), Vice Admiral Mike Okhai Akhigbe, exploded, last week, at Uyo on those calling for the ban of ex-military officers from politics in 2007, saying that such people are 'uncivilized and uninformed".
Akhigbe counseled Nigerians to remove sentiment out of the matter, saying those who have any reason to believe that any former military officer was involved in any crime should voice it out rather than lump all of them together for no justifiable reason.
Speaking to newsmen at Uyo where he attended the reception for South-South delegates to the confab by Governor Victor Attah of Akwa-Ibom, he hollered: 'What is the principle behind banning former military officers. Is it because they were military officers that they should be banned or they have done something wrong for which they should be banned.
'We must distinguish between what is principled and what is legal and what is mere sentiments. For example myself, I do not see anybody in this country banning me from any position in this country.
'My record as a public officer in this country is an open book. Anybody who feels I have done anything wrong, that any civilian administration in this country had done better, he should point it out. Second is ability. I was humble enough to admit there were people who may be much more gifted than myself but if there is any inability on my part relative to the other person, it is not because I have committed any crime. If I have not committed any crime and any military officer for that matter has not committed any crime, what is the basis of everybody talking like that".
He said that 'some of us who have always fought for democratic governance based it on one single principle that as long as you have not done anything wrong and there are prescribed rules that guide every civilian society, every individual is free to pursue anything he wants to do in this country under the law. Anybody who suggests that is an uncivilized and an uninformed person. And I do not think that this country has become all that so cheap that we imbibe such a thing".
He posited that as the country had difficult people in military regimes, so it has also had under civilian regimes, saying if it were not so, 'why do we have the kind of problem we have today than we had in the past". In his words: 'most of the crisis that the military come to treat were created under civilian government". He, however, asserted that it was an aberration for military government to be a permanent feature in any country and that there were many good people under military regimes as there were good people under civilian regime.
Akhigbe who maintained that the decision of the South-South geo-political zone to produce the next President in 2007 was not subject to the selfishly motivated power sharing formula of any political party said Nigeria had no reason to deny the region of its legitimate aspiration to produce the nation's number one citizen.