Tired service chiefs should leave honourably —Oluwole Oke, Ex-Defence Committee chair

THE service chiefs in the administration of President Muhammadu Buhari have been in their various positions for over five years with all of them having either passed retirement age or service tenure as civil servants. With the growing displeasure against their performance, is there no law limiting their term of office as service chiefs?

The president is the commander-in-chief of the Armed Forces. He has the prerogative to retain the service chiefs for as long as he wants. There is no law stating when he should drop anyone of them. It is not written anywhere.

However, the way the people, the society have reacted, nobody needs to tell the president what to do. Besides, the service chiefs themselves should be tired. They should not only be tired, but also leave honourably.

If the president refuses to heed the call by legislators that the service chiefs should be sacked and the orgy of killings persists, what other option will be open to the National Assembly and, by extension, Nigerians?

There is nothing anybody can do. It is his (the president’s) prerogative; but I am sure that the president, as a retired military man, will do the right thing at the right time.

He is a member of that constituency. He is one of them in the security sector. The information at his disposal, you don’t have it. I don’t have it. He is in that position where he has access to certain information that might have made him to approach the subject that way so far.

However, whether the service chiefs are leaving or staying, they will render accounts of their stewardship. Otherwise, they will paint this government badly. Many people know the president as a gentleman. But every one of them that worked with him will render the account of their stewardship so as not to taint the man.