A knowledge of History Help Us To Plan For The Future and also Vote wisely. In an attempt to catch up militarily with the South, the Northern politicians had thrown out all discretion. They had lowered standards of admission drastically, settling for the minimum. For as I recalled, all the Northerners in my intake had been trained at the Mons Officer Cadet School in Aldershot. And they had become officers after barely six months of military training, whereas those of us who had been sent to Sandhurst had had to do two long years to earn the Queens Commission. The implications were quite clear - and most disturbing. Not only had these Northerners become commissioned officers before we were half-way through our first year at Sandhurst, they had all risen to the enviable rank of Captain before we could even appear at the sovereigns parade which served essentially as a prerequisite for our passing out as Second Lieutenants. --- Col. Ben Gbulie (rtd) in Nigerias Five Majors, pages 12 - 13, Published 1981. By 1964 a group of young Nigerian officer-cadets, mostly Northerners, had been declared academically unfit and hence repatriated by the Canadian military authorities. These cadets were however pronounced commissioned by the Nigerian Federal Government no sooner than they had arrived at the Ikeja Airport. Consequently they had had to be absorbed into the Nigerian Army as commissioned officers, even though they had received no requisite military training. ----- Col Ben Gbulie (rtd) in Nigerias Five Majors page 13, published 1981. Zak (Maimalari) had held the rank of Captain in 1960. But before my return from the United Kingdom in 1963, he had soared to the top rank of Brigadier. In other words, he had risen from Captain to Temporary/Major, to Substatntive/Major, to Temporary/Lieutenant-Colonel, to Substantive/Colonel and then to Brigadier, all within that short span of time. It was just scandalous ----- Col. Ben Gbulie (rtd) in Nigerias Five Majors page 13, published 1981
Posted on: Mon, 26 Jan 2015 09:57:18 +0000
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