The Man in the Arena

The Man in the Arena

By admin

On May 12, 2012, Lieutenant General TY Danjuma and Major General Muhammadu Buhari both long retired were seated next to each other at the 50th birthday anniversary lecture of Sam Nda-Isaiah, a pharmacist turned ace columnist with Daily Trust now  publisher of Leadership Nigeria. 

By the time Danjuma took over the podium he thundered; "As far as Nigeria is concerned, I am an optimist. I tell myself each time we seem to stumble as a nation that we shall muddle through. But, in the last few months, I have begun to wonder why our house is on fire,” lamented Danjuma, who chaired the event, and spent long minutes drawing the attention of political leaders to a number of socio-economic problems in the North that could turn the country to another Somalia if unattended to" The former army chief went on; "The Somalialisation of Nigeria is taking place right now. We need to sit down and get to the root of the problem and find a solution to it,” he charged.He concluded; “Let us not deceive ourselves, the chief security officer of a state is the governor. Where are our northern governors? Borno is a failed state. Jigawa is almost a failed state. Kano is threatening to be a failed state. Where on earth are we going? You hear talks about multimillion naira fences around government houses, but what about the people?”

That was vintage Danjuma; The Man in the Arena. Stoic, taciturn and firing from all cylinders unequivocally. In 1756, Edmund Burke author of A Vindication of Natural  Society: A View of the Miseries and Evils Arising to Mankind put it that "The only thing neccesary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing" To paraphrase Elbert Hubbard in Little Journeys to the Homes of American Statesmen(1898) "Those that do nothing often say nothing. Such men become nothing and court obscurity. For them only in obscurity does safety lie."

The Man in the Arena at Nda Isaiah's "A Morning for Reflections" almost a decade ago is however the very antithesis of that. The epithet; The Man in the Arena originated from page 7 of a 35 page speech entitled; Citizenship in a Republic given by the former President of the United States, Theodore Roosevelt, at the Sorbonne in Paris, France on April 23, 1910. It is used to describe; "Someone who is heavily involved in a situation that requires courage, skill, or tenacity as opposed to someone sitting on the sidelines and watching."

Danjuma did not sit on the fence when Nigeria was on prolonged autopilot in 2010. Olusegun Adeniyi recounts in his memoirs Power, Politics & Death: A Front Row Account of Nigeria under the late President Yar'adua; "On Monday, January 8, Mark (then senate president) received in audience a group of prominent citizens, among them Lt. General T.Y. Danjuma and former chief justice of the federation, Belgore. It was agreed at the meeting that Yar'adua would never have allowed the kind of crisis the nation was going through if he was in a position to intervene, so the conclusion was that he was oblivious to what was happening in the country. It was also resolved that the National Assembly had to intervene to save the situation. In the course of discussion, Mark had casually asked Belgore, "Your Lordship, the logical thing to do is to make Jonathan the acting president. How do you think we should navigate this situation legally?" Belgore had said the constitution recognized the Doctrine of Neccesity, which he said the Senate could apply." See page 219 - 220

The situation at the International Conference Centre, University of Ibadan, on Friday, December 20, 2019, was no different during a book launch by the Nigerian Tribune where Danjuma declared; "In Yorubaland, everybody seems to have lost their voice. People appear not to care about what is happening. If I tell you what I know that is happening in Nigeria today, you will no longer sleep. If you want details, I will give it to you privately. We are in a big hole as a nation. And people who put us in this hole have continued today. So, we have to wake up. We are the ones who can save ourselves. The fifth columnist activities going on among your people are not helping matters" Danjuma concluded “May Almighty God continue to bless this country. But only we can save ourselves from ourselves.”

Characteristically President Buhari has never in the public domain joined issues with his former boss and consistent major financial pillar in all his previous presidential bids before 2019, Danjuma. January 26, 2020 was however an exception when Azu Ishiekwene asked Mr President if he was concerned about the vote of low confidence expressed by Mr Danjuma during a recent book launch in Ibadan, Mr Buhari said, “And what is the vote of confidence of Nigerians in me, as expressed in the polls last year? That is what matters more, not the opinion of one man.” President Buhari did not overstretch the matter for obvious reasons as Dwight D Eisenhower, another general and later American president put it; "You do not lead by hitting people over the head - that is assault, not leadership"
The epithet; The Man in the Arena originated from page 7 of a 35 page speech entitled; Citizenship in a Republic given by the former President of the United States, Theodore Roosevelt, at the Sorbonne in Paris, France on April 23, 1910. It is used to describe someone who is heavily involved in a situation that requires courage, skill, or tenacity (as opposed to someone sitting on the sidelines and watching).

It could be recalled that before Ibadan there was Jalingo where on March 24, 2019 Danjuma revisted Somalia; "The ethnic cleansing must stop in Taraba State and other parts of Nigeria. otherwise, Somalia will be a child’s place. I urge all of you to be at alert and defend your country. defend your territory, defend your state" Adding "You have no where else to go" Danjuma spoke at the maiden convocation of the Taraba State University from where his speech was broadcast live to the world that heard him say "The armed forces are not neutral. They collude with the armed bandits to kill people, kill Nigerians,” The onetime army chief (1975-1979) and Minister of Defense (1999-2003) did not mince words when he said the security forces, rather than protect the people, “facilitate” the movement of armed attackers and often provide cover for them, emphasising “If you wait for the armed force to stop the killing, you all die one-by-one." 

The full impact of Danjuma's tirade was not intended for the army he had once led but their Commander in Chief under whose watch they are currently under.

As already noted, President Buhari maintained a dignified calm until his response through Mr Ishiekwene, editor of The Interview magazine a month or so later. It is therefore not surprising that Mr Danjuma's next intervention was a closed door meeting with Mr Buhari where they reportedly sat again - side by side 8 years after Nda-Isaiah's golden jubilee. Obviously, Danjuma, our Man in the Arena could no longer ignore the fact that parts of Nigeria have currently despite the Covid-19 pandemic lockdown become killing fields over and beyond what happened (and indeed still happening in Taraba state) Having previously traduced his former subordinate in public the warlord from Takum had strategically changed approach. 

As Napoleon Bonaparte would say; "The first quality for a commander-in-chief is a cool head to receive a correct impression of things" Who better than your former boss to elucidate such?

The increasing density of pervasive darkness of anarchy is slowly enveloping our nation through banditry and other acts of criminality are too numerous to recount in detail here. But more worrisome are the highly disturbing claims made variously by Hon. Mustapha Yusuf Jibiya and Senator Ibrahim Gobir at plenary in the Katsina State House of Assembly and the Red Chamber of the National Assembly that troops from Niger Republic were more responsive to emergency calls than their Nigerian counterparts in Katsina and Sokoto states respectively. For any Nigerian to get an idea of the avalanche of insecurity in Nigeria the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) has developed a Nigeria Security Tracker (NST) which "is an effort to catalog and map political violence based on a weekly survey of Nigerian and international press. The data presented includes violent incidents related to political, economic, and social grievances directed at the state or other affiliative groups (or conversely the state employing violence to respond to those incidents.)" 

How is a former army chief of the caliber of Danjuma is supposed to react to all these untold happenings of perennial insecurity? The Prussian general, military theorist and author of the seminal Vom Kriege; On War,  Carl von Clausewitz (1780 -1831) in his dialectic approach to military analysis puts it that "The commander of an army must know and be able to judge correctly of tendencies, interests at stake, the immediate questions at issue and the characters of leading persons" 

Though Danjuma left office 41 years ago as they say "Old soldiers never die" In 1976, Danjuma stated Buhari then a Lieutenant Colonel would make a brilliant army chief one day. On what basis did Danjuma make that prognosis? No doubt it was using the General Freiherr von Hammerstein-Equord template. The then German army chief and devoted student of von Clausewitz explains in his own words; "I divide my officers into four classes as follows: The clever, the industrious, the lazy, and the stupid. Each officer always possesses two of these qualities. Those who are clever and industrious I appoint to the General Staff. Use can under certain circumstances be made of those who are stupid and lazy. The man who is clever and lazy qualifies for the highest leadership posts. He has the requisite nerves and the mental clarity for difficult decisions. But whoever is stupid and industrious must be got rid of, for he is too dangerous.” Let us just say Danjuma like von Hammerstein also knows his onions. In 2012, Danjuma with President Buhari bagged the Silverbird Lifetime Achievement Award. Their friendship has spanned 6 decades. If there is anyone that can discern the mood of the nation and intervene it is Danjuma - The Man in the Arena.