Do not derail democracy for dictatorship -General IBM Haruna

What motivated you to go to the university to read Law?I was suddenly retired from the Army in March 1977. I became a general at the youthful age of 35 and I retired at 37. I resorted to farming at Kilometer 38 on the Kaduna-Lagos road. I was doing poultry, had a little orchard and […]

What motivated you to go to the university to read Law?
I was suddenly retired from the Army in March 1977. I became a general at the youthful age of 35 and I retired at 37. I resorted to farming at Kilometer 38 on the Kaduna-Lagos road. I was doing poultry, had a little orchard and engaged in quail production. But it was all peasant-scale farming.
At a point, I felt I should go into agriculture properly to acquire the skills and practice to be a knowledgeable farmer. I applied to the Ahmadu Bello University for admission and by September, I was informed I had been admitted to read Law. Perchance, that was God’s choice for me, so I went and read Law, became a lawyer and three years after was called to the bar and started my practice. Luckily, the economy was then buoyant and we had retainership from viable companies as their legal adviser. Then, there was less legal competition and business, and from the retainership, one could maintain his chambers and pay the staff.
But as time went by in the practice, many changes began to take place. Such changes elbowed us out of the practice, in that if you are not a super lawyer, a senior advocate, the present environment doesn’t allow for the luxury of having a firm and staff. Now, lawyers even prefer to set up their own firms. Anyway, with age, I have ceased to be active as a lawyer.
As with my law education, I went into the army also not because I planned for it, but because the leaders, especially the late Sardauna of Sokoto, thought that the army, before Independence, was led by warrant officers but largely manned by Nigerians, and ought to be led by Nigerians.
In 1954, I was recruited into the Nigerian Military School, then called Boys Company, by Colonel Wellington Umoh Bassey. We were mostly children of ex-servicemen whose fathers had served in the First and Second World Wars under the British.
So it was directly not by my labour that I became a soldier or a lawyer, as I will add that it is not my thought or my labour that I am alive today. Of my contemporaries that we were together at the Royal Military Academy, Sandhurst, England for officers’ course in 1961, only four of us are alive today.
Before you retired from active law practice, which cases did you handle as a lawyer?
I won’t say there are any. I was mainly a solicitor and my advocacy was limited. I didn’t have any landmark cases reported in the Supreme Court. Still, my firm did some interesting cases in Kaduna. I remember personally handling a manslaughter case involving two men engaged in a brawl in a bar and one of them died from a broken bottle stab. The aggressor who allegedly did the stabbing was the son of a wealthy carpet manufacturer.
I think I came into the practice very late in my life; it wasn’t primarily my immediate career or profession. Many cases that go up to the Supreme Court can take up to 15, 20 years to decide. I didn’t have that kind of temperament, having come from the military.
In law, can’t justice delayed be in justice denied?           
Not necessarily. It can be circumstantial, depending on the complexity of whatever case. It can also depend on the convenience of the court or the lawyers prosecuting or litigating. But in principle, justice should be dispensed as quickly as possible. But when there are interlocutory motions and appeals, when the process is inevitably prolonged out of necessity to ensure justice is dispensed, then justice is not delayed.
 Do we have constitutional provisions to guide management of the nation’s revenues?  
 We have enough laws for good governance, but that is if the laws are observed at all. If the laws are well implemented, our leaders can be restrained from “eating” too much, or taking for themselves too much reward for themselves, in many cases, for little services. We can restrain them to get, at least, the equitable standard of living due to them, commensurate with the quality of services they render the country and people. They will still be happy and comfortable.
Some are of the opinion that the judiciary is not dealing well with those engaged in illegal proliferation of small arms?
Arms in Nigeria have been coming by various means and arms are being made in Nigeria. And the influxes of the weapons are controlled by license. Others like hunting guns made in the country are lethal. But the growth of arms imported, other than official causes for self-defense, unlicensed, acquired because of the internal situation socially, has made some people who provide for themselves against kidnapping to protect their families. Some import arms under hidden processes or stock them, or stolen from authorised holders like the army and the police for curtailing uprising. This can be settled by proper monitoring by the security operatives like the police and customs at the ports authority and other inroads used by smugglers, These will have mitigated large holding of weapons by people who are not entitled, by people who use it to fuel crises.
  How did you receive the death of your contemporary and late Head of State General Murtala Mohammed?
General Murtala was killed in the street in Ikoyi and I was transiting London at the Churchill Hotel as the Federal Commissioner for Information after I went to Paris for a conference on culture and antiquities. And luckily I heard the sad news from General Shehu Yar’adua who was in the same hotel. We together flew to Nigeria.
How will you assess Obasanjo as a military Head of State with decrees and as a democratic president with the constitution?
Well, I remember when he was in the military he wanted all Northern soldiers to leave the West – Lagos. Luckily we were saved because Gowon and Brigadier Johnson were next. So I think in a way he was not fully supportive of the Nigerian civil war from the army point of view, as far as I am concerned. As a civilian president, he did a good job badly as far as I am concerned.
He did a good job badly, can you explain?
The good job was to retain Nigeria and maintain our polity. But the bad job is the way he went about establishing democracy in a non-sustainable way to me.
What is your take on how you fought in the Civil War to keep Nigeria one, but Obasanjo gave Bakassi Peninsula to the Cameroon?
Bakassi is not Obasanjo’s view but the decision of the international court. But Nigeria’s defence was badly managed by the defence team.
When is internal security threatened?
It is the function of civilian government to ensure that lives and property are protected and the citizenry are secured, employment and the opportunity to live their lives and security is an all-encompassing notion. The military are trained for warfare against external threat. When the sovereignty of the state is threatened internally and it has overpowered the internal system of governance and institutions like the police and others, then the military are invited because the situation to secure the nation has become warfare.
Nigerian military has been in excellent peacekeeping operations in the Congo, Liberia, and Sierra Leone, why has it not contained the crises in Nigeria?
Well the internal crises involve all shades of internal interests, objectives and expectations. It is not the same as going to other countries to restore a status quo. The internal crisis is like boiling water in the pot. The external aid is going there to aid cool the internal temperature.  But here if you have the crisis like the one we have in Nigeria, it is one pot that is boiling against itself. It is not easy to cool the whole pot. Particularly if various pots of interest are involved like we have, there are those that are boiling and there are those that are lukewarm waiting to ignite with collateral excitation.
As a General from the North-east and an elder-statesman, should the Boko Haram sect embrace dialogue?
Boko Haram is receding to history, because they are not religious. They are not in support of modern civilised democratic government. They have their objectives which take us back to the century when jihad was properly fought to expand faith.