Jemibewon, Akinrinade, others tell military to stay off politics

Retired Army Generals have warned the military to steer off politics if the words of the Chief of Army Staff,

In a report by Punch, retired generals led by Maj. Gen. David Jemibewon (retd.) and Gen. Alani Akinrinade (retd.) have cautioned the military officials, who are reportedly being approached by politicians to respect democracy and stay off politics.

"It is a good one from Buratai because we are now under democratic dispensation and the military should not be seen as interfering in politics. Politicking is not their job. I am in total support of what Buratai said,” Jemibewon said.

On his part, Akinrinade said: "Politicking is a misadventure that virtually destroyed the military as an institution and left our country crawling in the race to modernity. I suspect general Buratai will feed his information to the intelligence community for evaluation."

Continuing, he said: “The military knows that even the populace will confront them and I’m not discounting the likelihood that the military itself has diverse reasons to oppose any move to truncate our rickety democracy.”

For retired Brig. Gen. Ajibola Togun, the military was not built for the purpose of politicking, hence the military should not to do anything to destabilise democracy.

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“The military is not for politicking at all. It wasn’t the purpose for which we have it. The military has no business in politics at all. However, it is the politicians who messed up the military when they started throwing money at soldiers. The politicians corrupted our military establishment.

“Be that as it may, the military should completely stay out of politics. We have democracy now and no soldier should be seen as destabilising it,” Togun said.

Buratai, had recently warned military men against being used by politicians to disrupt the country’s democracy, saying he had received information that some individuals had been approaching some officers and soldiers for undisclosed political reasons.