Badeh is ungrateful, says teacher who sent him to NDA

A former school teacher and retired principal with Government Day Secondary School in Vintim, Mubi North Local Government Area of Adamawa state, Mr. Augustine Dabiya, in retrospect, recalled with regret that his intervention way back in 1977 made it possible for the former chief of defence staff, Alex Sabundo Badeh to attend the Nigerian Defence Academy in the first place .

“I was the very person that took the former chief of defence staff, Alex Sabundo Badeh to Nigerian Defence Academy (NDA) in 1977,” he told The Daily Times Yola correspondent at his home in Yola, the Adamawa state capital recently.

“Throughout his stay in office, Badeh did not one day come back to say, thank you, or show a single appreciation over what I did to him.”

Pa Augustine vividly recalled how hard he tried to convince Alex’s father to allow the young man go to the Nigerian Defence Academy so as to become a military man.

“In 1976 while I was teaching in Kano, Alexander came to me and complained that his father told him he will never give him money to be a military man, that he preferred him to go to University of Maiduguri to study Medicine.

“I told him that he must become a military man; even if it means selling my motorcycle to send him to NDA, I will do that; we will travel home to see your father tomorrow on the issue.”

Pa Augustine recalled that Alexander’s father was a very influential person and a great farmer in their locality. “Yes, his father was a local wealthy man; at that time, he had all that it would take to sponsor Alex to the defense school.

“We met him in one of the nearby farm working. There I reasoned with him and told him that he should permit his son to go to the military school, but the man said, ‘over his dead body’, that he was told university of Maiduguri is the best and now I’m telling him a different story. He said firmly he cannot waste his money on that school.

“As an experience teacher in St Andrew’s primary school in Mubi where Badeh used to be a part time teacher, an idea came to me and I told his farther: if your child becomes a military man, he will one day be like Yakubu Gowon, and I asked him: won’t you like that? Yakubu was a military man that was why he has became head of state at such a young age.

“That softened him and he reluctantly agreed to give 2 pounds for his fees.

“When I gave Alex the money, he complained bitterly, saying that it will not cover all other expenses required at the NDA. I told him he should not worry, that I will provide the rest.

“Then I took him to Kaduna where he was enrolled as an air force student of Nigerian Defence Academy (NDA).”

Pa Augustine said of the misunderstanding that started with the former CDS. “The very day I bluntly told Mrs Badeh in a community meeting in Vintim, to always respect elders and kinsmen of Falli land, that was how relationship ran out between me and the Badehs.”

He said that Badeh grew up to become somebody with very high ego, who claims to know it all and as such throughout his stay in office, he did not listen to any of his kinsmen’s advice.

“He was running away from us when he was in office; now that he is facing all forms of attacks by the present administration, I know he needs us.”

Dabiya lamented that the worse of it all is that Sebonduh did not help any of the young people in their community who are graduates and well qualified to join the NDA. “He believes in himself that in the state at large, no one had helped him.

“It pains me that Alex refused to help any of our youths to join the army, the only help he did was to built hospital, civic centre and some churches he built around.”

It would be recall that the former Chief of Defence Staff is currently being interrogated by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) over arms monies he received to fight insurgency in the North-East of the country during former president Goodluck Jonathan’s administration.