Retention of Service Chiefs an embarrassment

Apex Igbo cultural organisation, Ohanaeze Ndigbo, said on Thursday that it supports the call by the National Assembly for the removal of the current service chiefs, “whose continued retention was becoming a national and international embarrassment to the nation.”

In a press statement, Ohanaeze Ndigbo said that the response by the Senior Special Adviser to the President on Media and Publicity, Femi Adesina, to the call was unacceptable and an insult to Nigerians who are receiving the brunt of the attacks and killings.

According to the statement signed by his Special Adviser on Media and Publicity, Chief Emeka Attamah, President General of Ohanaeze Ndigbo, Chief John Nnia Nwodo, wondered “why the Federal Government has remained intransigent on the service chiefs and refused to save the nation from undeserved calamity.”

Reacting to the recent killing of Nigerian Army officers and soldiers by bandits in Katsina and five aid workers by Boko Haram, the Ohanaeze President General regretted that innocent lives of young Nigerian men and women and even foreigners were being wasted daily due to the refusal of the Federal Government to do the needful.

Ohanaeze asked what was special about the current service chiefs that made them indispensable, adding that it was unconstitutional to keep a worker in service long after he is due for retirement.

Nwodo observed that the continued retention of the service chiefs went against the grain of military service which he said breeds bad blood among the officers whose careers are stunted by the action.

He said that it was not surprising that there are overt dissensions in the military with soldiers resigning in their numbers due to dissatisfaction and disaffection coupled with the alleged corruption in the force.

Nwodo remarked that the situation now suggests that there is more to their retention than the interest of the country which the Federal government needs to explain to Nigerians.