How Ghanaian Ecomog Commander Betrayed SGT. Doe

by: Benjamin Njoku

The story of the Liberian civil war cannot be complete without references to Nigeria’s Major Gen. C.C. Iweze(rtd). Currently, a director with Multimesh Group, (a digital cable satellite pay-TV service provider, based in Port-Harcourt), Major-Gen. Iweze served as Chief of Staff of the West African Peace Monitoring Group (ECOMOG) in 1990.

He also led a two-man delegation of the then Military Government of Nigeria to retrieve corpses of the eight Nigerian soldiers killed in a clash with supporters of the late Somali warlord, Mohammed Farah Aidid during the United Nations Peace Keeping mission in Somalia. For his gallantry at the ECOMOG in Liberia, Iweze earned the respect of many officers in the Nigerian Army.

Despite his military accomplishments, Major-Gen. Iweze bears a grudge against the military high command . He said he was retired from service because of "greed, back-bitting and inordinate ambition of younger officers."

Thirteen years after his retirement, Major-Gen. Iweze finally breaks his silence in his Hilton Hotel room in Nairobi, Kenya. Enjoy it.

Since your retirement from service, you have remained silent. Does that suggest you are not happy with your retirement?

As a Major-General in the Nigerian Army, I was expected to have gotten at least six months retirement notice.

But in my own case, it was a sudden retirement. I was out of the country where I was representing my nation in a conference abroad, only for me to be retired unnoticed. My retirement was something I did not plan for when it happened.

I cannot understand a system that would prefer to flush out its generals overnight. When I signed to become an army officer, I did not sign to take things unexpectedly. But it happened to me and nobody was ready to give me any excuse for my retirement. To be precise, I didn’t like the way I was retired from service. But after 13 years of retirement, I have moved on with my life.

The most important thing is that where I am at present, I appear to be much more comfortable than when I was in the army. While I was in service, I devoted all my life doing what I knew how to do best. And then, my retirement came as a blow. But like I said, it’s behind me now and I have moved on.

Can you briefly let us into your various exploits while in service?

No matter how one would want to hide himself or herself, you cannot deny your identity. First and foremost, I am an Igbo man from Delta State. I passed out from the Defence Academy, only for me to face the civil war. Here was I, an Igboman fighting against my brothers.

But at that time, I didn’t see the war as Igbos versus other ethnic groups or a kind of tribal affair. Rather, I saw the civil war as a national issue to keep Nigeria as one nation.

In that process, I fought on two fronts: one, I fought against the Biafrans and secondly, I fought to keep my sanity considering my rank in the Nigerian army at that time.

Suspicion

I was viewed with suspicion that I might sell out the Nigerian troops under my command to the Biafrans. However, I thank God that He saw me through to the end of the civil war. That was one of my military exploits I consider very remarkable .

The next exploit I must remember was during the Liberian war. Before then, I was a Brigade-Commander in Calabar. One day, I was listening to BBC news and the correspondent was praising the Nigerian Army, saying that they remained the most equipped institution within the sub-region to bring the situation in Liberia under control.

After listening to that news, I expressed my reservation to one of my brothers who paid me a visit. And true to my prediction, when I got back to my house, I was confronted with a signal that I should proceed to Lagos; informing that I ha been appointed the Chief of Staff of the Peace- Keeping Operation in Liberia(ECOMOG). Immediately the news was relayed to me, I burst into laughter.

The next day, I hurriedly handed over to my successor and left for Lagos. But when I got to Lagos where the Defence Head Quarters was situated then, the brief I got there was quite different from what I met on ground when I arrived Free Port of Monrovia. Monrovia served as the headquartres of ECOMOG at that time. And General Arnold Quainoo, a Ghanaian was the Commander of the Peace Keeping Operation.

Given the directive from my home country and because of my personal relationship with most senior army officers then, I made arrangements on my own to proceed to Sierra-Leone to take up the command of the sub-regional force. When I got to Sierra-Leone, the troops were already on ground and at that point, we started strategising on how to tackle the situation in Liberia. There and then, I appointed staff officers to run the affairs as the Chief of Staff. Then, we prepared to storm Liberia.

I remember that the Ghanaian government released some of their war-ships. Nigerian Navy also was on ground. At the headquartres of ECOMOG, there was this perception that the rebels would abandon their guns the moment the peace enforcement operation arrived in Liberia. But from my experience, I advised against taking the rebels for granted which the Force Commander, General Quainoo ignored.

Not withstanding the consistent threats and reports we were daily receiving concerning how Charles Taylor had boasted of destroying any ECOMOG troop that ventured into the Liberian soil, the Force Commander did not believe we were going to wage a war against the rebels. Under that kind of condition, I didn’t see how we were going to keep peace in Liberia.

In the first place, there was no peace to negotiate for . Therefore, I wondered how we were going to keep peace in a hostile environment.

Rather, I stated categorically that we were going to Liberia for peace enforcement operation. All the troops that made up the ECOMOG operation drawn from Ghana, Nigeria, Sierra-Leone, Gambia and Guinea, believed that we were going to Liberia on a peace keeping operation . As a result, none of the soldiers was prepared to fight in Liberia.

Some even came there with a truck load of their civil party dresses. But I never believed we were in Liberia to make peace, following the fact that the enemy had vowed to destroy any ECOMOG troop that touched the soil of Liberia. And true to my prediction, the moment our foot touched Liberia, the rebels opened fire on us.

We managed to secure our flanks, moved forward and the rest is now history.

The operation

But one thing I noticed during this debacle was that it’s a dangerous decision to send officers who are in the infant stage of their career to a peace enforcement operation. When we arrived Monrovia, the Force Commander had no clue whatsoever about what we were to do in Liberia.

I remember that on a number of occasions, when I asked General Quainoo his plans in the event of the possible influx of refugees into the ECOMOG quarters, having been convinced that we would surely play host to some army of refugees, he was indifferent and ignored the need to put into consideration the possible influx of refugees into our base.

At that point, I couldn’t understand why a commander of a peace enforcement operation couldn’t envisage that in the theatre of war, the refugees usually seek protection in the camp of the troops. As the Chief of Staff, I gave instruction to the troops at designated areas to make adequate provision for the influx of refugees.

And again, true to my prediction, the refugees or better still, the displaced Liberians were the first set of people we encountered on arriving Free-port in Monrovia.

While we strove to advance forward, we had the refugees to cater for and protect. On arrival, the information available to us was that there was a standing cease-fire between Prince Johnson who was commanding the Independent National Patriotic Front (INPF) and Charles Taylor’s National Patriotic Front of Liberia( NPFL), as well as Sgt. Samuel Doe, who was the Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Liberia. Strategically, we drafted the Nigerian troop to the East of Liberia, while the Sierra-Leonian troop was positioned at the centre and the Gambian troop was stationed to protect the headuarters of ECOMOG.