Retired personnel of the Nigerian Army have threatened to block all federal roads nationwide over non- payment of 45 years pension arrears to it’s members
The retired soldiers mainly comprising over 700 ex- service men from all the zones of the country except the South East who served for between 10 to 15 years, on Wednesday staged a warning protest in Ibadan carrying placards with various inscriptions such as ” we were used ad dump by the federal government, we are dying of hunger”, ” President Tinubu please save our soul, we are ten years and above civil war veterans” to
draw the attention of the federal government to their plights
The National Coordinator ,
The Able Voluntary Discharged Soldiers Of Ten Years And Above, Less Than Fifteen Years, Corporal Babawande Phillip, who spoke with Punch correspondent said more than 100 of their members have died as a result of poverty while several members are currently physically challenged
Philip laments that their counterparts who fought for the Biafran Army have since been paid by the Obasanjo administration describing the situation as ‘unfair ‘
” For the past 44 to 45 years ,we have been deprived of our pension rights . In 2015 , we did a capturing in Abuja wherein everyone of us was issued with genuine pensioners form , we all have those copies with us ,since 2015, we have been waiting for this to really come up.
” The painful aspect of this is that the Biafran soldiers that we went to fight with have been paid their own pension since some years back. How did that come about , we that went to fight with them are not paid. This is very unfair.
” Majority of us are dead today because of the abject poverty they have thrown us into. Among us here are some people that are not able. If you see them, you will know that they are not physically okay. The reason why is because, there is no money with which to take care of themselves. Some have died without this money being paid to them.
” Sometime in December last year, we wrote a letter to the president, the Senate , House of Representatives, Chief of Staff to the president, Secretary to the Government of the Federation (SGF) Minister of Defense and the Chief of Army Staff. Up till now, we have not heard anything from them.
” It is a plea we are making, there is an adage that says , of you consistently pursue a goat until it gets to the wall, the goat will fight back. The energy we exhibited during our service to the nation is still there.
” We don’t want to make any trouble with the federal government, we are only pleading that they should come to our aid and rescue us from this predicament.
” We are demanding for our pension arrears that we are qualified for for the past 45 years. I want to emphasize on this , in 2015, when they saw that the pressure was much , they invited us to Abuja for capturing, we all have the documents with us wherein the said we are genuine pensioners, since 2015 up till date, we have not received anything .
If government failed to accede to our demand, they are going to incur our wrath. All the federal roads will be blocked. We will show them that the brain with which we fought the civil war is still there. In the letter we wrote to them , we told them that if they fail to respond to our agitations before the Armed Forces Remembrance Day on January 15, 2024, we will stage a warning protest. The next one after this, we will be aggressive, all the federal roads will be blocked.
” Over 700 or more of us on our nominal role have been deprived of this nationwide except the easterners.
Also speaking, 81 years old retired corporal Rafiu Olabamiji, who has been blind for the past 20 years said since he retired on June 1, 1978 he was yet to get his pension.
Olabamiji who said his children are dead and wife gone as a result of abject poverty, appealed to president Bola Tinubu and the Senate to look address their plights
