Tuesday 24 October 2017

Tribute To Gen Malu: Nigeria’s ECOMOG Hero.

Even before the United States assembled the 30-nation “Allied Forces” against Iraq during the first Gulf war in 1991, with all the attendant controversies and uncertainties, the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) had demonstrated an international best practice in regional peace keeping operation in Liberia through its Military Monitoring Group, ECOMOG.

Nigeria provided the bulk of troops for the ECOMOG maiden mission with 10 journalists including this writer embedded in the regional force which landed with the Nigerian Naval War Ship (NNS AMBE) in Monrovia’s Freeport on 24th August 1990, to help end the civil war waged against then President Samuel Doe by Charles Taylor, ex-warlord now war crime convict serving time in Scotland.

That mission was under the command of Ghanaian General Arnold Quainoo, whose tenure was later marred by the controversy that surrounded Doe’s capture and eventual death at the hands of former rebel leader Prince Yormie Johnson, now a Liberian Senator. The rest, they say is history, but a host of Nigerian Generals were later to succeed Quainoo and the 8th ECOMOG Commander (1996-98), was General Samuel Victor Malu, who sadly passed away on October 9, at a Cairo, Egypt hospital after a prolonged illness, aged 70.




By Paul Ejime.

Full story at Leadership.

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