BLACK SOCIAL HISTORY My narrow escape from assassins in Cameroon, by Vice Admiral Adekeye, ex-Chief of the Naval Staff
*’Twice, Samuel Doe soldiers came close to sinking my ship with 70 men on board’
Vice Admiral Ganiyu T.A. Adekeye, as a former Chief of the Naval Staff, saw the Nigerian Navy inside out. In this interview, he speaks about his career in the navy that spanned 40 years in the process of which he had close shave with death many times and life in retirement. Excerpts:
How is life in retirement?
I left office about five years back, so it might not be that easy to immediately change from something you have been doing for the past 40 years. The only difference now is that I am not afraid of anybody as to whether I come to the office or not. Nobody is asking now whether I come to the office or not. I get myself engaged now most of the time. If not for the Ramadan, I still wake up around 4am and I don’t go to bed until around 12midnight and 1am every day.
What prompted you to join the navy?
First of all, as a student then, I was reading anything on war, spies and technology. James Bond stories fascinated me a lot. And because of this, I was determined to go into the armed forces whenever I had the opportunity. So when the opportunity came, I decided to go to the navy, mainly because of technology. This was exactly what I told members of the interview panel when I was asked why I wanted to join the navy. The navy operates on the all the strata, under and on water and even in air and you see the technology that goes with it is quite different and challenging.
But did you at that time think you would come this far by reaching the peak of your career?
There is a saying that every cadet that goes into the academy has at least a star in his pocket. That is high level star. That was the aim of every cadet. And if you are able to get to the rank of commodore, one would have achieved that. As a cadet, yes that ambition was there that I would go far, just like every other cadet that came in, but there was no certainty of anything. As a believer, I didn’t have any
assumptions as to where I would reach but I just applied myself to every facet of my training, administrative and left the rest to the environment to judge. When I went to sit for the entrance examination, I didn’t know anybody; so when I was called for interview, I was surprised and that is why I felt, shortly after I came in to the NDA, that the navy was there for anybody to rise to any position.
*Adekeye …I had close share with death several times
Can you recollect some life threatening moments particularly during combat?
There are quite a few. Do you know the rope with which they tie a ship? Those ropes can be terrible because some of them are made of nylon. It has terrible elasticity such that if it parts at maximum speed, it is like a bullet. The effect can be catastrophic. If it hits anybody on the chest for example, that is the end. If it hits a car too, the car would be fatally damaged. So we are always very careful about it in the navy.
There is also something we called bite. That bite can close at short notice. In July 1986, I was a lieutenant -commander, we were in Malabo trying to bring a ship out. I was in charge of the front part of the ship; I was giving instruction but I discovered that they were not reacting sharply enough to my orders. So i jumped down from the pedestal I was standing on to meet them. But as I was running there, I stepped on a bite and instantly it tightened on my left leg above the knee.
The ship was taking its weight on it and the ship was moving. The next thing that came to my mind was that I was going to lose my leg, but, miraculously, before the bite could cut off my leg, the rope flew off and the belt opened. I kept on giving the orders as if nothing happened. If my leg had been cut off at that time, of course, few months later, I would have been out of the navy. It is not something I always talk about, because it will amount to praising one self.
There was a time when we were in Liberia for ECOMOG operations. We captured a ship without firing a gunshot, because we didn’t have anything to fire. What we did was aggressive pursuit of the ship; the captain was frightened and that was how we captured the ship. There was another time I was patrolling off Downtown Monrovia. At that time, the late President Samuel Doe was still in power and in the Villa.
The Villa over looked the water and his armed men were busy shelling the water. We had gone on patrol and we were returning to base. Suddenly one of my men said, ‘’Oga, something dropped behind us”, and, immediately, I said, ‘’Shut up, it is your ship they will drop something on, not mine”, but, shortly after, some other shells dropped which I saw myself. We had to quickly change direction towards the sea we were able to manouvre our way out of the danger.
If one of the shells had hit my ship, we would have sunk. And we had about 70 men on board because we were carrying ammunitions too, and there would have been secondary explosions. There was a time they were shelling us at the port. On that occasion, my fuel was low, so I took permission to go to the jetty to take fuel; the ship could take 35,000 litres and had only taken 26,000 when the shelling of my ship started.
It was unexpected. The shells were just falling around us. But minutes before that time, I had gone to meet the men managing the ropes that if we had to leave in an emergency, they had to release the ropes and the bite to us. That was one of the things that saved us because by the time the shelling started, everybody ran away including those on the jetty. As we were making our way out, the shelling was just following us. Of course, the most talked about was when hired assassins were after me in Cameroon. The sad part of is that was organised from our (Nigerian) embassy. It originated from a top embassy official and they used two other officers in the embassy.
The men came well determined, they had all the information they needed to execute the job, they even had an insider in my house who was to leave the doors opened for them except that, for one stroke of luck, we withdrew all the keys to the outside doors the previous night. We had no prior knowledge of what was about to happen. Unfortunately the assassins could not come in, so they had to break through the burglary proof of the house from outside.
It was that that alerted us. As I came out to look at what was happening, they were just trying to come into the compound. So as I was shouting at the balcony, I saw that they were withdrawing from the compound, but one of them pointed his hand at my direction, an instinct just told me that this guy might be armed, why not lie down. Second after I took that action, he fired and the bullet hit the upper part of the window.
So I ran inside to make a call to the national security but these people, to show they were not thieves, went to the back of my house, climbed through the balcony; it was high that you could not climb it without ladder, and they didn’t use ladder. My bedroom had sliding glass door, very difficult to break, they did. And suddenly they were knocking and banging on my bedroom door, all we were hearing was, ‘I will shoot you, I kill you, open the door.
I say open’. But I kept asking them what I did and whether I was owing them. When I saw that the door was about to give way, I threw the phone away, grabbed my wife and we both ran into the toilet.
Couldn’t you have shot, or were you not armed?
We were not allowed to carry arms as diplomats. The government said they would provide us with security. It was only Americans and Israelis who were lucky to be allowed to carry arms. The Israelis were doing some training for them (Cameroonian armed forces) and so the rest of us were not allowed to carry arms.
The toilet was in two parts, there was the wardrobe side and the wash room . As we ran into the toilet, they were breaking into the bedroom and of course headed straight to the toilet door;
they kicked it, the door didn’t give way, they now fired into the toilet but, before that time, my wife and myself were lying down flat. The way they fired the bullet, you would know that they were very technical guys, they fired at an angle thinking that we would be standing at the window, but the bullet didn’t hit the window, it hit the wall; if we were standing, there was no way the bullet would not have hit us.
After that shot, I was thinking that these people knew we were not hit by the bullet and they would know that I am a military man; we got up and i took my wife to main wardrobe, we were there for close to 40 minutes. Help did not come and they too were still there. We broke the toilet window glass and threw it to the roof of adjacent buildings so that we could arouse attention, but nobody responded. There and then, I made up my kind that if indeed these men were bent on killing us, one of them would not leave the place with his full body intact. I removed the toilet rack made of steel, and
told my wife to lock herself up. Whoever I lay my hands on first, either his head or hand will go, and if that happened, the tide will definitely turn. Maybe they thought I might do that, so they didn’t bother to come further, they only stopped at the toilet door. The question on many lips was what stopped them from coming further when they had already gained access to the main room which was difficult; at least every knows that toilet doors are usually not that strong. Of course we knew, with benefit of hindsight, that it was God that stopped them.
The military, some say people say, are not tackling Boko Haram effectively. What do you think?
I don’t agree with that statement. I think we should look at security globally. Security, first of all, is information; and correct application of such information. The military is always used as a last resort.
These (Boko Haram) are civilians after all. These are people like you and I except that they have another aim, to kill. So you can’t put everybody under military scrutiny 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. That is not possible. Information is necessary. You need to know what their plans are, how they are carrying out the plans. Military is supposed to go in, in a precise short period, finish the job and get out.
But they have not been able to do that now?
Yes, because the crisis had festered for so long and you now bring the military in. These are insurgents. They are part of the people. Unless you want to do what happened in Odi to these states under review, the military is not trained to relate to that kind of situation. Military solution should come in as a last resort. Even the secret service will be part of it. It is only when they are not getting the desired result that the military comes in and they are usually given a definite task over a definite time. The fact that we have stopped giving our military definite task over definite time is why you think the military is not effective.
How did you come about the word “iron bender” while in service?
A: It was a very funny matter. Most of my early career, I was always in ships and training establishments, I was always insisting on following the rules especially in operations and training. I always told them that there is a manual combined many years back, taking all kinds of considerations, saying that if you want to do this, do it this way but people will come and say we can do it this way, it does not matter. But for me it matters, we must follow it.
If we follow it and develop it, we can now create our own rules; that is a different thing. So in all training, I was always very stubborn when it comes to rules. I will never yield to another rule apart from the laid down ones. It was not as if I was forcing the boys to do it, I was always participating. Like when I asked the personnel in Port Harcourt to trek 35 kilometres exercise, I participated .It was the trainees that gave me the name. I know better than to trying to stop or fight it because the more you do that, the more it becomes popular.
Any regret at all?
None that I can think of. I am a very flexible person all along. I am flexible enough to know that I cannot force you to do what you don’t want to do. That is why I can never be disappointed. For example, if I didn’t start the Post -Service Housing Programme then, I doubt if it would ever have taken off, may be the present chief of the naval staff would have started it. Nobody would have started it because everybody would just be conscious of the time he would finish and leave office. So, if I had left office without some of those things we did, I might have regretted. So, I don’t have any regret in my life.
Who are your role models?
At the initial stage of my life, my role model then, if I
told you, you will be surprised. It was General Olusegun Obasanjo. As a soldier and engineer, I was seeing him in two different roles.
He was at the battle front and he virtually ended the war. He was part of those who constructed the Ijora area with inter locking stones then. I have role models all over the world, he remains number one.
Any political ambition?
I have always said it that the vista is wide enough, that there are areas where we all can make impact nationally that all of us will now concentrate on politics.
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