Not less than 200 soldiers who fought in the African Union (AU) peacekeeping operation in Guinea Bissau in 2015 stormed Yola, the Adamawa State capital on Thursday, April 28, 2016 to protest the non-payment of their six months allowances after the war.
SkyNews reports that the soldiers who are from the 158 Task Force Battalion in Gubio Local Government Area of Borno State told journalists in Yola that the failure by the Nigerian military authority to pay their six months allowance after the peacekeeping mission was generating tension in the affected battalion.
A soldier, who pleaded anonymity, said they visited Yola essentially to vent their grievance to member of the press so that those concerned will release their allowance for them.
He lamented the fact that men committed to fighting Boko Haram have been starved of their allowances despite their sacrifices, adding that the development is also affecting the current fight against the Boko Haram insurgency in the North East.
In a swift reaction, the Army has issued a statement clarifying the issue of unpaid salaries. The statement signed by the army spokesman, Colonel Sani Usman, on Thursday, April 28, 2016, claims that the media reports are not true.
Read the full statement below:
The attention of the Nigerian Army has been drawn to some stories going round the media circles with the title “Disquiet in the war front as soldiers complain of unpaid allowance” alleging that there was problem in the Nigerian Army due to non-payment of allowances to some soldiers serving in the North East.
In particular, they were alleging non-payment of outstanding peacekeeping operations allowance of troops that served in Guinea Bissau under the auspices of the Economic Community of West African States and operation allowances to some troops in counter-terrorism and counter-insurgency operations, among others.
The issues contained in such publications are not true nor correct. While some media treated the matter professionally, giving the military benefit of doubt and sought to know the truth, while others mischievously went to town with the false story without recourse to ethics of the profession and bothering to find out from the military.
The effort of the former is quite commendable and really appreciated, while that of the latter is quite unfortunate.
For the avoidance of doubt, we wish to inform the public that the issue of non-payment of peacekeeping operations allowance is a minor internal military administrative matter which was treated and resolved accordingly and has no bearing on the fight against terrorism and insurgency as they mischievously alleged.
It should be reiterated that the alleged non-payment of operations allowance among the returnee peacekeepers was due to administrative hitches which was solved to the point that all outstanding peacekeeping operations have been paid and the last batch payment was done last Tuesday.
As regards to payment of operations allowances, it is borne out of deliberate mischief and failure to comply with the new measures aimed at ensuring probity and accountability in the Service. All officers and soldiers are now paid their operations allowance directly into their account.
All those that did not receive theirs was due to non-compliance with the directive of giving correct account details or duplication of names due to recent postings. This has been explained to all those affected and efforts were on to rectify same shortly.
We wish to state further that those soldiers involved or complaint to the media are very few compared to the soldiers in the operation area who are working assiduously to finally clear the remnants of Boko Haram terrorists.
Majority of our troops have been receiving their allowances regularly. The very few undisciplined ones cannot be used to distract us, neither should they be used as yardstick to measure troops general well being and performance.
Already issues relating to troops welfare have been of utmost priority to Mr. President and the army leadership is doing everything possible to ensure troops’ high morale.
We would like to once again thank those responsible media outfits that showed understanding and maturity in reporting issues of national defence and security professionally.
Kindly disseminate this information to the public through your medium.
Thank you for your kind cooperation.
Colonel Sani Kukasheka Usman
Acting Director Army Public Relations
