Launched on 20 March 1984 by Chief of Staff (Supreme Headquarters) Major-General Tunde Idiagbon, the War Against Indiscipline (WAI) ran in four phases — Phase I orderliness and queue culture; Phase II patriotism and nationalism; Phase III environmental sanitation (monthly sanitation Saturdays); Phase IV anti-corruption.
Bus-stop floggings of queue-breakers by soldiers became iconic; civil servants who arrived after 7:30 a.m. were made to do frog-jumps; the monthly sanitation Saturday (last Saturday of the month, 7 a.m.–10 a.m.) halted all movement nationwide. The WAI Brigade — a uniformed paramilitary auxiliary — was set up by Decree 38 of 1985.
WAI ended with the 27 August 1985 coup that replaced Buhari with Ibrahim Babangida. Babangida's MAMSER programme (Mass Mobilisation for Social Justice, Economic Recovery and Self-Reliance) inherited the institutional shell. Nigerian sanitation Saturdays survived in some states until the 2000s, and the Lagos State Environmental Sanitation Day was finally abolished by Governor Akinwunmi Ambode in 2016.