Mindful of its regimented nature and need to maintain military core values and discipline particularly respect for seniority the ministry of Defence and Chief of Defence Staff(CDS) have asked officers of Regular Course 38 and below of Nigerian Defence Academy (NDA) still in service to voluntarily retire from service.
The directive is likely to affect 100 Major Generals, Rear Admirals and Air Vice Marshals , and their other course mates on the rank of Brigadier general,Navy Commodore and Air Commodore in the Armed Forces.
They have been given Monday , July 3, 2023 deadline to voluntarily retire following the appointment of Major General Christopher Musa a Regular Course 38 officer as Chief of Defence Staff (CDS).
The Chief of Army (CAOS ) Major General Taoreed Lagbaja, the Chief of Naval Staff, Vice Admiral Emmanuel Ogalla and the Chief of the Air Staff, Air Vice Marshal Hassan Abubakar are all members of Regular Course 39 NDA.
All the three service chiefs have affected major reshuffles of their services and had posted few of their seniors whose competence are still needed to Defence Headquarters’ establishments under the Chief of Defence Staff.
In the internal memo dated June 26 and signed by Maj. General Y. Yahaya, on behalf of the new CDS, the Defence Ministry stated that seniors of the new service chiefs must exit the military “in order to preserve and uphold the tenets of the military profession which values hierarchy and service discipline”.
According to the memo the affected officers are directed to submit their retirement applications to their respective Service Headquarters not later than July 3, 2023.
The memo read partly: “It would be recalled that the President, Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, His Excellency Bola Ahmed Tinubu recently appointed new CDS and Service Chiefs on June 19, 2023.
“Consequently, I am directed to respectfully request Services to direct all officers with seniority on commission above that of NDA Regular Course 39 to submit their applications for voluntary retirement from Service with immediate effect.
“It is important that all officers whose officer cadet courses run seniority above that of the current Service Chiefs disengage from the Service ”
Recall that similar disengagement was effected in 2020 when former President Muhammadu Buhari appointed the service chiefs who retired last week.