krendo:

congratulations the cup of garri has dropped by half since this revelation !!!!!!!!!!

A commander-in-chief is the commander  of a nation's military forces or significant element of those forces. In the latter case, the force element may be defined as those forces within a particular region or those forces which are associated by function. As a practical term it refers to the military competencies that reside in a nation-state's executive, head of state or government. Often, a given country's commander-in-chief need not be or have been a commissioned officer or even a veteran, and it is by this legal statute that civilian control of the military is realized in states where it is constitutionally required.

Last month, for instance, Nigeria returned to the United Nations at the highest level.  The UN listed the Nigerian leader as “President and Commander in Chief of the Nigerian Armed Forces.”

Leaders of presidential democracies are usually listed simply as “President,” and so should Nigeria.  Our 1999 constitution states, “The President shall be the Head of State, the Chief Executive of the Federation and Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of the Federation.”

In other words, the moment a Nigerian is the “President,” his profile is that of the Head of State, the Chief Executive of the Federation and Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of the Federation.

That Nigerian protocol continues to append the superfluous phrase of Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces tells the story of how much our democracy has failed to mature.    If a Nigerian leader must remind the world he commands the armed forces, does he, really?  

Take Ghana and the United States, for instance, nations that have constitutions similar to ours.  When the Ghanaian leader spoke to the United Nations General Assembly on 24 September 2009, he spoke as “John Evans Atta Mills, President of Ghana.”  On 23 September 2010, Mr. Barack Obama was presented simply as “President of the United States of America.”
On September 24, when Mr. Jonathan spoke, two weeks after he carried out a wholesale replacement of all the service chiefs in something of a pre-emptive or reverse coup d’etat, he was “President and Commander in Chief of the Nigerian Armed Forces.” I thought that was interesting because he is supposed to be the President of Nigeria, not of the armed forces.  It is a rather nervous democracy.