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In less than six months, Nigeria has lost two generals on the battlefield, cut off from operations against what should, by all conventional calculations, be a ragtag rebel force. Along with them, several colonels, officers and countless other ranks paid the ultimate price.
These are not just victims of war. They are symptoms of a deeper and more worrying reality.
Too often these deaths occur in ambushes, situations that suggest not just tactical misfortune, but systemic failure. In some cases, there are whispers of betrayal from within. In others, of equipment that fails at the critical moment: vehicles that break down under fire, communications systems that fall silent, weapons that malfunction when they are needed most.
When a nation’s generals fall so often, the question must be asked: what exactly is happening?
The answer, however inconvenient, can be summed up in one word: corruption.
I speak not from conjecture, but from experience. As a member of the Senate Defense Committee between 2011 and 2015, I visited the frontlines of the Boko Haram war. What I saw there left an indelible mark on my understanding of the challenges our military faces, not just from the enemy, but from within. Nothing suggests that this trend has changed.
I saw armored tanks that weren’t really armored: machines that seemed unprotected. Body armor that doesn’t test any bullets. I have seen soldiers go into battle in bath slippers, not out of indiscipline, but out of sheer negligence. I met troops surviving on a daily ration of noodles: men who expected to fight a brutal insurgency on an empty stomach.
I have met soldiers who were not removed from combat zones for two or three years. Fatigue had set in. Morale was low. They were men worn down not only by the enemy, but by a system that seemed indifferent to their humanity.
Many did not know when their benefits would be paid. Their families waited at home in uncertainty, while they faced bullets and bombs with silent resignation. When they fall in battle it’s a different story for those they leave behind. Under such conditions, how do you sustain morale? How do you build the fighting spirit needed to face a determined opponent?
Then there is the question of leadership and structure.
In a professional army, promotions should be based on merit, courage and competence. But where ethnicity and religion begin to influence progress, the foundations of professionalism weaken. When loyalty is redirected by the institution toward narrow identities, cohesion suffers.
At the top, troubling priorities persist. There are too many stories – too well known to ignore – of senior officers more invested in private ventures: shopping complexes, apartment complexes and hotels, than in the well-being and operational readiness of their troops. A military leadership distracted by personal accumulation cannot effectively lead men into battle.
The institutional framework doesn’t help much. A Ministry of Defense that allocates more resources to buildings, fences and administrative structures than to weapons, ammunition, intelligence and training sends a dangerous signal about what really matters. The Supervisory Committee itself was and still is a cesspool of corruption and squalor.
What emerges from all this is a model, a system in which corruption is not an aberration, but a defining characteristic.
Corruption in this context is not just about the passing of money. These are compromised procurements that provide substandard equipment. These are logistics chains failing under pressure because funds have been diverted. These are information leaks that expose troops to ambushes. This is abandonment that leaves soldiers underfed, underpaid and overexposed.
In such a system, the insurgent gains an advantage without necessarily being stronger. He takes advantage of our weaknesses. Exploit our failures. He thrives on our dysfunction.
And so the generals fall.
Not only because the enemy is formidable, but because the system designed to support it is fragile.
The tragedy is that this isn’t just about the military. The same disease plagues our education system, where resources vanish as classrooms decay. It is present in the healthcare sector, where hospitals lack basic tools while budgets suggest otherwise. It runs through infrastructure, where projects are conceived with enthusiasm and abandoned with indifference.
Corruption has become the thread that binds our national challenges together.
But in the case of the military, the consequences are immediate and irreversible. A poorly managed class can be rebuilt. A poorly equipped hospital can be upgraded. But a soldier lost through negligence is gone forever. A general cut in his prime is a blow not only to his family, but to the institution and the nation he served.
We must, therefore, face this truth with clarity and urgency.
We cannot win the war against insurgency if we continue to lose the war against corruption. We cannot expect courage from our soldiers while denying them the tools, support and leadership they need. We cannot mourn fallen heroes in public while ignoring the conditions that led to their deaths.
The path ahead is neither mysterious nor easy. It requires accountability at every level: transparent procurement, merit-based promotions, adequate funding for training and equipment, and, above all, a leadership culture that places service above self.
Until then we will continue to count our losses.
And the most painful truth of all will remain this: many of these losses are avoidable.
“Corruption is the rebel within: silent, persistent and deadly.”
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