Armed Forces: What happens when a Nigerian soldier dies at war?

Although soldiers go to war knowing they may never return, nobody ever prepares for what happens when a Nigerian soldier dies at war. Most especially their wives and families.

When a soldier goes to war, Nigerian or otherwise, death is usually treated as a foregone conclusion.

The idea is to stay alive as long as possible and return home, unscathed with stories to match the intensity of their experience. It explains the equipment, the Kevlar, the helmet and armoured vehicles.

But when a soldier dies at war, the pain is usually one of something that may have been avoided, not one that should never have happened.

Since it was renamed from the Nigerian Military Forces in 1960, thousands of soldiers in the Nigerian armed forces have passed in combat.

 

The first batch of massive casualties came between 1967 to 1970. Over the course of Nigerian Civil War, the Nigerian Armed forces split in two and fought each other. Thousands of lives were lost in the process.

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Many of them have been immortalised. Many, young men from towns who were spurred by emotion only to die in open fields, will never be known.

A bloody legacy

Not that many Nigerians cared for the fate of the soldiers at the time.

While the official narrative is that the civil war was fought to maintain Nigeria’s integrity, unspeakable atrocities were committed in the course of achieving that goal.

Till today, the people of Delta’s capital city hold a bloody grudge over the Asaba Massacre where most of the town’s men were executed by officers of the Nigerian Army.

It is true that war is not fair. But over the course of the war, civilians on both sides came to see the soldiers as the enemy. While soldiers advanced into towns, their inhabitants escaped into forests and struggled for survival.

It was their war, after all. And commanders like General Olusegun Obasanjo and Benjamin Adekunle led highly successful campaigns that had heavy civilian and military casualties.

Over the years after the first coup, Nigerian soldiers used their position of power to enforce a higher-among-equals mentality.

It persists to this day, in how we see a Nigerian soldier and immediately feel a sense of dread and a need to look as non-threatening as possible.

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It persists in how power is perhaps the country’s most commanding currency and every confrontation is basically a show of might.

It also explains why the death of a Nigerian soldier was treated as a sort of elitist matter in those days. Not much of it was made public and save for a few family and friends, it was an ode to the institution they gave their lives for.

Since then, a lot of things have changed.

The several peacekeeping missions of the 1990s to the 2000s did a lot to warm the image of the Nigerian soldier. Conflicts in Sierra Leone, Ivory Coast, Liberia required the presence of the ECOMOG.

Led by Nigerian troops in rank and number, they restored peace, to the end that Nigerian soldiers still enjoy the love of locals whenever time and chance cross their paths.

 

Many Nigerian soldiers died in those wars. And with every occasional bulletin, the Nigerian army would present their names. Families and loved ones would be notified. Their remains, when found, would be transported home for a proper burial.

Dead and forgotten

Today, when a Nigerian soldier dies, the procedure is mostly still the same. The problem is that, as with most thing Nigerian, procedure counts for little.

Sometimes the army doesn’t even know if a soldier is missing or dead. Take Hajia Ibrahim, for instance.

After her husband was declared missing in combat in 2013, she had a long phone conversation with him.

“Till today, the military authorities are still saying that he is missing, but a friend of his called me after some time to inform me that he was dead. He was drafted into the mission in 2013."

"I spoke with him in August 2014 before the information came that he is dead. When we spoke, he told me that the situation over there wasn’t easy and that he wasn’t feeling okay.”, she continues.

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Her husband died not long after, even though the Army still deems him “missing”.

In all of this, it is nearly impossible to avoid pointing fingers at the Nigerian Army.

There is a reason why the official procedure for what should happen when a Nigerian soldier dies at war hardly matters in this context… because it hardly ever comes into practice.

Apart from the soldiers who are declared missing in combat for lack of better information, many are lost as prisoners of war in the hands of the enemy, others suffer such mental trauma that they never really recover.

 The same size fits all of them: they are usually declared missing.

 

In 2015, reports by The International Centre for Investigative Reporting claimed that, contrary to claims by the military authorities, scores of Nigerian soldiers were killed by Boko Haram insurgents in Gudumbali in Borno State on Wednesday, November 18, 2015.

Using a video clip recovered of the aftermath of the Gudumbali attack, the ICIR reported that only 147 of 330 soldiers had been accounted for by the Nigerian Army, with the others either missing, killed or fleeing without re-joining the battalion.

The military, however, denied that any soldier was killed or unaccounted for after the attack, insisting that some of them who initially got missing had re-joined their battalion.

The Director of Army Public Relations at the Defence Headquarters (DHQ) in Abuja, Col. Sani Usman, described the report as a smear campaign against the Nigerian military.

Later, however, a report in ThisDay Newspaper would note that the bodies of the 105 soldiers were quietly buried at the military cemetery in Maiduguri.

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While there is a clear problem with burying the demise of soldiers killed in combat, it is troubling that there are no considerations or schemes targeted at the mental health of Nigerian soldiers and the toll their work takes on them and their dependents in situations like these.

It goes without saying that the human and emotional casualties go beyond the soldiers themselves, and they outweigh anything else.

Although soldiers go to war knowing they may never return, nobody ever prepares for what happens when a Nigerian soldier dies at war. Most especially their wives and families.

Most soldiers who die in combat are young men. By necessary implication, they leave young wives too and young children behind.

Who are the real casualties of war?

The strain of losing their spouse and a young marriage is sometimes too hard on them and many never really get over the trauma.

 

The mental toll is one thing, but getting back on their feet is a primary concern for the widows and families of these soldiers who are left behind.

Most wives are, very quickly, faced with the necessary decision of detaching themselves and young families from a relatively secure past and starting life anew. It is a life you never really get prepared for.

The families of soldiers often have to go through a process that combines long bureaucracy with the need to make public pleas before they are given any form of financial assistance.

Despite her loss, Hajiya Ibrahim, for instance, is determined to make the best of whatever opportunity comes her way. She works as a cleaner, but her eyes are firmly set on advancing her education.

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“I am a cleaner in a school, but I am presently pursuing further studies to improve my life and that of my children. I have two children and not finding it easy taking care of the family my husband left behind.”, she says.

“Nobody cares to help. Nobody gives any support. It has only been by the grace of God that we have been carrying on.”

Other stories do not reflect the same resilience.

Take Mrs Mary Johnson whose husband died fighting Boko Haram in Monguno.

“When I went to the military headquarters for his benefits, they told me that I must go to Monguno in Borno State and obtain some papers from the Commander.”, she says.

“On getting to Maiduguri, I was warned that I cannot go to Monguno except with military escort. Since then, I have been starving with my children.”

Those who should take responsibility

Last year, Pulse’s Fu’ad Lawal spoke with Bunmi, a soldier who supposedly lost her husband fighting Boko Haram.

She told him, how, in Nigeria, what you’ll get at the death of a husband at war is most likely a call from your late husband’s colleague, who’s talking over a very bad phone signal.

There are no official statements. No explanations. Maybe a few courtesy calls if he is extra important. Just the same M.I.A.

“The Barracks is filled with widows,” she told him, “I have a lot of friends here whose husbands never returned. This woman who just got news of her husband is pregnant. Her child will never meet daddy.”

When he asked her about entitlements due to the wives of slain soldiers, she said.

“Ah, that one,” she sighed. “There are entitlements. If you’re lucky and have people high up who can help you, you can get it in good time. If not, the wait is not very short.”

To be fair, the Nigerian army and many supporting groups claim to be working towards fixing this.

 

In 2016, Mrs Amelia Edet, President of the Nigerian Army Officers Wives Association (NAOWA) 81 Division Chapter and wife of the General Officer Commanding (GOC) 81 Division made claims that the group would provide seed funding to help the widows and their families start businesses and get back on their feet.

DEPOWA, short for the Defence and Police Officers Wives Association, a non-governmental association, does their bit at rehabilitating the widows of soldiers lost to Boko Haram.

But the vocational training they offer can only present so many options and one finds that the real-life applications do not offer much succour.

Whether or not the Army gets the massive reform it needs, we need to appreciate more the young men and women who give their lives to maintain our security.

The most important sacrifice a Nigerian soldier makes is not when he dies at war, it comes when he puts on the army fatigues and decides to fight for his country.