Blitzkrieg into military ranks

President Olusegun Obasanjo’s blitzkrieg to rid in ridding the military of all officers who have held political appointments during the last 15 years will most likely be well received in the services and by the public, political analysts have said. “The professionals (within the military) want a clean break with the past,” Nimi Walson-Jack, executive director for the Port Harcourt based Centre for Responsive Politics, told IRIN on Friday. Younger officers who have been concentrating on their military duties, he said, now had a chance to grow within the military and were unlikely to be tempted to organise coups. The public also appears to have little patience for an interventionist military, another analyst told Reuters. “The military is not only morally disadvantaged on account of the abysmal failure of past political adventures, public opinion is decidedly against the soldiers,” Anthony Maja, writer and analyst, told Reuters. Obasanjo has, so far, purged the armed forces of 149 ranking officers. However, Walson-Jack said his crusade to professionalise and subordinate the military to civilian authority calls for even more forced retirements. “Any member of the armed forces who has been on any task force should leave the services.” Walson-Jack said. These task forces were committees set up in the country’s states which performed the work of civil servants, even within the customs service. Following the clean up, Walson-Jack said, the president could go about building the kind of military that would make Nigeria proud. “We want an armed forces that can be respected on the continent,” he said.