•NDA should ensure that the two sets of cadets brutalising civilians are caught and punished
IT was a tale from two cities, Abuja and Lagos. But the central theme is the same: uniformed cadets, undergoing training to become officers and gentlemen, pressing their divine right to be beastly! That must be condemned by all.
The first was a December 31, 2014 incident in Abuja, which video recording nevertheless didn’t go viral until 2016, in which a female cadet battered a defenceless male civilian, Sunday Amari, 25, for virtually nothing. From the provocative video, the female cadet and her lawless ensemble hit, humiliated and dragged Amari on the ground, for daring to complement the female cadet as “beautiful”.
Even the “beautiful” compliment emerged not originally from the luckless man but from a rigged dialogue, in which the cadets practically planted the word in the mouth of the victim, to earn sadistic reasons to kick, maul and brutalise him. At the apex of his odyssey, the luckless fellow was stripped to his under wears.
But for Channels TV that fished the victim from his Abuja base, any supposition that the man actually lost his life would not have sounded far-fetched. Thanks to Channels, however, Amari is not only alive, the location of the crime was established as the Jabi Lake Park, Abuja. The traumatised Amari, then an employee of Sure-P, has since relocated to Lagos, but still lives in dread of uniformed savages.
The second incident was in Lagos, at the ever bustling Mile 12 market. A young man had inadvertently cracked the windscreen of a car belonging to two naval cadets. He naturally fled and was dutifully pursued and nabbed. But the brutal instinct in the cadets thought nothing of throwing the victim in their car boot and slamming the cover!
Luckily however, Governor Akinwunmi Ambode of lagos State was passing by, and his security details, following the governor’s orders, set the victim free. But for that divine intervention, only God knows what could have happened to the victim — and that in a 21st century democracy!
Besides, the pair were only cadets, mere trainees. What would happen when they become commissioned officers — kill and maim at whims, for the most tenuous of reasons?
These cadets’ disgraceful conduct may well underscore the yet-to-be-shed militarisation of the Nigerian psyche, even 16 years after military rule. That is rather unfortunate. But even more unfortunate, it would appear, is the Nigerian military’s training curriculum. What sort of training of future officers would elicit such savagery at the slightest provocation?
Fela, the late Afrobeat king, waxed many albums — Beasts of No Nation (BONN), Zombie andSorrow, Tears and Blood — just to mention a few, to protest military brutality. That was at the height of military misrule. Major Debo Bashorun (rtd), according to the account in his book, Honour for Sale, joined the army in reaction to a soldier that gate crashed a romantic tryst with his girlfriend at a Lagos hotel, and also tried to snatch the girl. When Basorun resisted, the soldier mobilised a mob from a nearby barracks, stormed the hotel and sacked everyone.
Even everyday in Lagos, at the Cappa junction of Fatai Atere Way, Matori, Lagos, uniformed soldiers routinely drive against traffic to connect the near-by barracks. The uniformed gods always press their martial rights to do and undo!
This pattern of lawless behaviours has been the lot of misguided soldiers: pouncing on innocent citizens and wilfully breaking the law simply because they bear legal arms. That behaviour cannot — and should not — be tolerated by any civilised society. That is why the Nigerian Defence Academy (NDA) and allied military training centres should radically revise their curriculum to place great emphasis on civil and polite behaviour by service men and women.
Meanwhile, the NDA has pledged to investigate these latest cases of cadet abuse. It should do so fast and make the punishment of the culprits known to all. That should serve as warning to other future malcontents-in-uniform. We just cannot continue to tolerate swashbuckling beasts in uniform.
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