In Future, We’ll Have More Female Generals – Amusu

…says ‘horrors of war in Somalia sharpened my military experience’

Major General (rtd) Tilewa Amusu was the only female selected to be among the contingent on a Peacekeeping Mission in Somalia in 1994. She told FLORA ONWUDIWE that her experience in Somalia prepared her to manage injured soldiers evacuated from the troubled cities in the North East, when she was Corps Commander, Nigerian Army 44 Reference Hospital Kaduna. Amusu was the second female in the history of the Nigerian Army that rose to the rank of Major General. Excerpts.

The females that joined the force usually give reasons, could you share with us why you joined the Army to practice your profession? Why did I join the army? I think I have been exposed to a bit of the military environment as a child. My mother was the first head teacher of the army but we now call it Command Children’s School that started in the AN Barracks Yaba and that was the primary school I went to. I think since then I had a bit of exposure to the Armed Forces as a whole. By the time you get to the fourth year in the university as a medical student, I had the opportunity to join the army. And I applied just like a number of my mates. I passed the Selection Board exam to join the army. I think part of the interest was that it was a bit of an unusual profession and would give me the opportunity to have the medical profession which I knew I had always wanted. I look back and have no regrets being both a medical doctor and a soldier.

You said you were at four hundred level in the university before joining the army, so you did not go through the National Defence Academy (NDA)? There are different ways in which you can join the Military. You can join by going to the NDA which makes you a Regular Combatant Officer. When we were in school, the army used to go round and educate young people about the different careers and opportunities in the army. For doctors you could join when you were about a year or two to graduation, so you join and start your career immediately. Whenever school is on vacation, you are attached to the nearest army formation, so you go there when you are on holidays and start learning the ethics and the traditions of the army. On graduation, you start working immediately. You are also exempted from the National Youth Service Corps (NYSC). After all, one would be serving the nation for more than one year. So, at that time the opportunity was there for people who wanted to join the military, but you still have to go through the normal selection process. That means you have the medical examination, to know you are fit, you have the physical test, you face the board, you do the aptitude test and you still get the training that you are supposed to get even as a professional.

At that period that you were selected, were there more females that wanted to join the army? When I joined the Army in 1982, there were females in the army already. You know some professions had a lot of women, for instance, we had a lot of nurses, we had a lot of Catering Officers. In some professions they were fewer. I was the fifth female medical doctor to join the army at that time. But now we have women in more professions in the army. There are practically no restrictions anymore. Though there might not have been obvious restrictions at that time, you know there were some careers that women would usually not want to go into. But I think now more women are going into what I call these unusual professions. At that time we used to have fewer women but now we have them in larger numbers.

You are the second female that rose to the rank of Major General in the history of the Nigerian Army, why the low figure? Yes I am the second female to get to the rank of Major General in the Nigerian Army. But you know the low number is not because there is a barrier on women not getting into that rank. I think it is more of the numbers. Like I said the number of people who joined, some people joined and chose to leave early, like I said I spent 35 years. Some people might not want to spend that length of time. Others decide to leave and pursue other things. The army also has criteria for reaching different milestones like promotions, you must meet the criteria, you must go for courses, there should be vacancies in that rank. By and large, it is a combination of two things – what the person is doing and what the service actually requires. So, when both merge, then you have the opportunity. I think another benefit that I had is that I was able to join the army early and by joining early I was able to have the opportunity to stay for 35 years allowing me to go through all the officer ranks from Second Lieutenant to Major General.

It was easy for you and Ronke Kale to get to that rank in the army as Major Generals because it is Medical, while in other army formations like Infantry, Artillery, Engineering, hardly would you find women getting to the rank of Major General. Do you agree? In the future, we are going to have more Major Generals because now we are having women in the Infantry and other Combat Corps. We didn’t have that. Females started getting admitted into NDA in 2011, so now they have started getting to senior ranks. We have females who go to NDA, who come out , who are shoulder to shoulder with their male counterparts, some- times coming tops in their course, and they are all running their seniority, going on their ranks, so eventually it shouldn’t be something that will be restricted. I can say that in the next 15-20 years we actually will have a large pool of female Major Generals.

When terrorists unleashed mayhem on our trained soldiers, the Nigerian Army 44 Reference Hospital Kaduna was overstretched; as a Corps Commander, how were you able to handle these injured soldiers ? Definitely, even if you have a riot, some people might be injured in different ways. So we did have people who were injured to different degrees. While I was in 44, the hospital served as the major base hospital and like any military hospital all over the world. You know the number of beds that the hospital has but it’s capable of expansion. This is not peculiar to the military hospitals. Most big government hospitals should have the capacity to expand, and expanding means that if there is what we call a mass casualty situation, for instance, somewhere there is something that caused a big destruction, like a country where they have earthquakes, you will have it in the mind that hospitals in those areas have the capacity to expand, in mass casualty situations. So this is something we will always have in our military hospitals. Because we are also trained to respond to mass casualties. And when receiving mass casualties, it means that you have space to attend to the casualties, that you can expand, even if it is 48 hours or for seven days, that you have staff that you can mobilise to come in and sometimes, you might even move in some retired personnel who are around that area to meet with the demand. So, our hospitals are capable of that. And I think at that time and even up till now our military hospitals still do that, so if there is a need to evacuate injured people, whether they are soldiers or civilians evacuated to the hospital, we always make sure that we have the facilities to manage them. Some of them are actually flown abroad, so these things have always been, and it became easier and faster to process; so it is going even now, not only the soldiers even families benefit from this. One of the Generals in the army react- ed angrily, though privately, it was like an outburst, when it was speculated that the terrorists had overrun the Nigerian Army. I quote, ‘We are trained to fight at the battlefront. The soldiers find themselves in a asymmetrical war situation, let them come out of their hideouts and face us at the battlefront, bastards.

To me, whether asymmetrical or otherwise soldiers should be ever ready, do you have a contrary view to this General? The business of the military is war, there are many principles that go with warfare. And we have symmetrical and asymmetrical warfare. What is going on now is what we call asymmetrical warfare. Everybody has a role to play. I think the military is doing a good job. The Nigerian Armed forces is very well trained. We all have the history of our roles in the peace enforcement, peacekeeping in different situations. I am sure we will get there.

Did you have the opportunity to serve outside the country? Well, I served in Somalia in a peacekeeping mission as a Major in 1994. At that point I witnessed some of the horrors of war. As a young child in Nigeria between 1967 and 1970, I was in Lagos, so I did not have much experience of war. I remember when we were woken up at night, if there was an alarm and we had to take shelter. Well, being in Somalia was an experience for me because I saw the effects of war, services were broken down, the hospitals closed, young children would be on the streets with guns. They had a breakdown of institutions just because of the war.

Before, soldiers were hardly seen outside the barracks, they were feared and respected, but now they even live among civilians… My own view is that these things happen due to a number of reasons. Some- times, the cities have expanded to meet the barracks. Before now, these barracks were at locations a little bit far from the cities. Even Ikeja Cantonment when we were younger was not really within the city. Another example is Ojo Cantonment. The city has expanded to reach Ojo Cantonment now. The same thing happens outside Lagos. I remember I had two tours of duty in Ibadan. The first time I went to Ibadan in the 80s, the Cantonment was on its own, very far, really detached from the town. Now, when you get to Ibadan you may miss the turning to the gate before you realise that you are there. Also, the population of the armed forces and by extension their families have increased. In some cases, the accommodation in the barracks is not enough for everybody. That also has to do with population. Some of these things contribute to the fact that soldiers are now more visible. It has its advantages and disadvantages. The advantage is that people now realise that soldiering is a profession that people can go into. But then it also behoves on the citizens to respect the military because the role of the military truly cannot be given to any other institution. The military as one of the symbols of our country when given respect increases our national pride and helps us as Nigerians to carry our heads high.

How did you balance your personal life with your career? I had good family support. When my children were very young my mother in-law would come and stay for some time helping me look after them, making sure that everything was fine. When my mother-in-law was not available, I took them to my parents house. My aunt, my sisters, were willing to help and I think every woman needs to have that kind of support. Like I said, I was in Somalia in 1994 when my children were small. My son was four years old. My mother in-law came to stay in the house to help. I was posted out of Lagos when my daughter was a year old. My mother took her annual leave and came to stay with us. By the time she was completing her annual leave, my aunt took her annual leave, then my sister took her annual leave to come stay with my daughter and I. After her, my younger cousin who was then in secondary school and on holidays was with me. All these helped me settle down to work. This kind of support system was of great help. I had some friends, also officers in the army, that we opted to stay with. For me as a doctor, when I was on call, they would babysit my young daughter. You just need to have good support. This actually happens across professions now, not just in the military.

Were you not affected psychologically in a male dominated institution like the army? Well, it is possible, but maybe because of my background, I was not. I come from a family of all girls and were encouraged to pursue our dreams and interests. Gender was not seen as a barrier. My mother at that time would ensure that by the time you were 12 years old, you must be able to, then you did not see vulcanizers around like now, pump the tyres. So she had this mobile pump in her car. If the tyre went down, we got down to pump it. By age 16 years old you should be able to change the tyre of the car, by age 13, you must be able to change the light bulbs in the house. We did not have any boys and we had to do it. Yes you find out that you are the only female sometimes. When I went to Somalia, I was the only female in that contingent. When we got to Somalia, the United Nations had no plan for female accommodation for the Nigerian contingent, so for the first few weeks I had to stay in a bit of dormitory like space. I stayed with officers from the Army, Air Force and Navy. They were truly gen- tlemen. Many of them are still my friends today. I had no problems with them, they gave me my own space, till I was given the appropriate accommodation.

Since you have been integrated into the society, you are now one of us, the military calls us “bloody Civilian”, what lesson has life taught you? The lesson life has taught you should maintain good relationships with family and friends. You should appreciate them. Life has taught me to give back to society and give back to the people. I think I am doing a bit of that in my church, Anglican Diocese Lagos Mainland and also my alma mater that is Methodist Girls High School, Yaba. We should also encourage and mentor younger ones.