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OPINION: Ted Cruz’s Genocide, Blasphemy And Ida The Slave Boy

Published

10 hours ago

October 26, 2025

Today, Nigerian leaders are busy playing the biblical couple, Ananias and Sapphira, on allegation that they abet genocide in Nigeria. They do this while being enveloped in how to rig the 2027 elections. As they do, Citizen Yahaya Sharif-Aminu is on a death row. On February 23, 2020, this then 22-year-old was arrested for posting blasphemous statements on WhatsApp against Prophet Muhammad. The Kano bigoted mob, renowned for its hyena-like thirst for flesh and blood, immediately burnt down Sharif-Aminu’s family home.

For context, Sharif-Aminu is an adherent of the Tijaniyya Sufi Islamic order. That WhatsApp message ostensibly elevated, in estimation, Ibrahim Niasse, a Tijaniyya Muslim brotherhood Imam, higher than Prophet Muhammad. Tijaniyya laud Niasse, a Senegalese cleric, for reviving the sect by spreading it across West Africa.

Under Section 382(b) of the Kano State Sharia Penal Code 2000 where he was domiciled, it is illegal for a self-professed Muslim to insult the Quran or any of the Islamic prophets. The Penal Code’s recompense for such infractions, upon conviction, is death. The twelve states of the north, predominantly Muslim, are under the suzerainty of the Sharia laws.

During trial in March 2020, Sharif-Aminu was denied legal representation and was held incommunicado. On August 10, 2020, the Hausawa Filin Hockey upper-Sharia Court sentenced him to death by hanging. His appeal for “leniency,” was spurned by the Sharia judge because, “a case of blasphemy against Prophet Muhammad (P.B.U.H.) is among the things that a person who made them shall not be excused.” After the sentencing, then Governor of Kano State, Abdulahi Ganduje, shocked a sane world when he said he would not hesitate to sign the execution order.

In August 2020, another boy, a minor by then, named Omar Farouq, was equally convicted for blasphemy. An allegation that he made derogatory statements to a colleague in a heated argument became his albatross. Immediately, like Sharif-Aminu, a heartless mob comprising Stone-Age-minded Almajiris, typical to Northern Nigeria, descended on his home and burnt it. Omar was eventually sentenced to a ten-year imprisonment on account of being a minor.

An appeal court ordered a retrial of Sharif-Aminu’s case which again returned a judgment of death penalty on the musician. Since January 18, 2023, the case has been before the Supreme Court. The world was riled to its nadir when, in reaction, Lamido Abba Sorondinki, counsel for the Kano State government, said, “This applicant made blasphemous statements against the Holy Prophet.. If the Supreme Court upholds the lower court’s decision, we will execute him publicly…Anybody that has uttered any word that touches the integrity of the holy prophet, we’ll punish him.”

Ancient wisdom of my people says that no one needed to tell apart an àtànpàkò (thumb) from the omońdinrín, (little finger). Among fingers seated on the phalanges that make up the five fingers of the hand, the thumb and little finger stand out. Apart from these two, the phalanges also comprise the index, middle and the ring fingers. So, the Yoruba say, it is the àtànpàkò that points the way forward while omońdinrín describes where to go. In the last couple of weeks, like the àtànpàkò, US Senator for Texas, Ted Cruz, seems to be pointing Nigeria to Nigerians. In bursting the bubble of the Nigerian government’s appetite for its decades-old delicious broth of hypocrisy and duplicity, Cruz might just as well have been the àtànpàkò.

The Cruz’s bursting of the bubble reminds me of an ancient tale of Ida the slave boy. Not minding his years of servitude to him, Ida’s slaveholder once got him dressed in a resplendent attire, in preparation for a celebrities’ event he was invited to. So, on arrival, the organizers took Ida to where children of invited guests sat. Not long after, the celebrant, visibly perturbed, walked up to the slaveholder and asked, “Your son should have told us his specially-prepared meal was not enough. We found out he left the exalted group of children of guests and stepped into where slaves were having their meals”. Unfazed but matter-of-factly, the slaveholder told the celebrant, “You may have thought him my son but his behaviour has revealed that he is a slave.”

On his X account recently, Cruz, a Republican senator, revealed the systemic contradictions of the country we call ours. Government then began running, in the Nigerian parlance, from pillar to post, to deconstruct its age-long unsavoury profile. In his post, Cruz revealed how the rest of the world is aghast at Nigeria’s national disharmony. He also alerted the world of Nigeria’s Achilles’ heel and how its leaders’ hypocrisy constitutes the nation’s vulnerability. Cruz had written: “Officials in Nigeria are ignoring and even facilitating the mass murder of Christians by Islamist Jihadists.” He further remonstrated barbaric portions of the Nigerian blasphemy laws of northern Nigeria, especially provisions which “criminalize expression, behavior, or belief perceived as insulting religion.”

The statistics of Islamists’ killings in Nigeria are grim. The UN Development Programme (UNDP) estimated that Boko Haram had killed 350,000 Nigerians as at 2021. Ex-Chief of Defence Staff, Lucky Irabor, in a new book, also estimated that the insurgents had massacred “no fewer than 2,700 officers and soldiers” in over 12 years.

On September 9, 2025, Cruz doubled down on this allegation by sponsoring a bill requesting the U.S. Secretary of State “to designate the Federal Republic of Nigeria as a Country of Particular Concern, (CPC)” while demanding it to impose appropriate sanctions, with a caveat that, “It’s time to hold those responsible accountable.” Unfavourable and potentially unsettling for countries so tagged, the CPC is an acrid wage for countries found to have engaged in or abetted “particularly severe violations of religious freedom.”

Pronto, as Americans say, Nigeria drifted into a self-imposed dilemma which, again, can be summarized in an ancient wisdom of a man insistent on scouring the world for who owed his late father money. In the process of this stiff-necked attempt to demonstrate financial purity, he may stumble on one who his late father owed money. Today, like a rat struggling to free self from the choke-hold of a cobra, the Nigerian government is trapped in the center of the world’s anger. Like that man seeking who owed his father money, Nigeria’s government is choked by its own vomit.

MORE FROM THE AUTHOR:OPINION: The Madman Sermon On Mapo Hill

In May, 2022, Deborah Yakubu, a Christian student of Sokoto State College of Education, faced similar gruesome fate in the hands of the cadaver-seeking mob of northern Nigeria. Her crime was an alleged comment she made in aid of her Christian faith which allegedly disparaged Islam. The mob promptly stoned her to death and then incinerated her. The police were too scared of this murderous mob to intervene. They eventually arrested two student colleagues of Deborah’s but set them free subsequently. In northern Nigeria, it is a very rare spectacle to see murderers who kill in the name of religion arrested and prosecuted.

On account of Deborah’s killing in far away Bauchi State, Rhoda Jatau, a Christian, nurse, and mother of five, escaped death by the whiskers. Her crime was sharing the video created by someone else condemning the killing of Deborah. Immediately, a mob descended on her. It destroyed her store and injured so many people in the process. Arrested on May 20, 2022 and charged for blasphemy, Jatau’s reprieve only came after global outrage, leading to her acquittal in December, 2024.

In Northern Nigeria, many people have faced such persecution, resulting in death. In June 2023, during dispute with someone near his shop, a Muslim butcher living in Sokoto, Usman Buda, had a mob accuse him of blasphemy. He got an instant mob judgment of instant death. So also was Mubarak Bala. An ex-President of the Nigerian Humanist Association and an ex-Muslim, his charge for allegedly “blasphemous” Facebook posts got him convicted by the Kano State High Court on April 5, 2022. He was then sentenced to 24 years imprisonment. Recently in Bauchi State, an Islamic cleric, Idris Abdulaziz, was also charged for blasphemy. Realizing the fate that awaited him, Abdulaziz, as my people would say, immediately paid tribute to the hare. Also in 2016, Abdulazeez Inyass, during a secret trial in Kano, was sentenced to death for blaspheming Prophet Muhammad. Also of the Tijaniya sect, his crime was saying that Sheikh Niasse “was bigger than Prophet Muhammad”.

Of no less religious tyrannic proportion is a recent order by a Magistrate Court that two popular
creators, Idris Mai Wushirya and Basira Yar Guda, must, within 60 days, formalize a marriage relationship within 60 days. The two had posted series of viral videos wherein both engaged in romantic displays considered “indecent”. The Sharia courts in the north are notorious for handing down barbaric sentences of floggings, amputations and death penalty.

I went into details of all the blasphemy laws in northern Nigeria to be able to situate the fact that, let us even for a minute forget about the gauntlet of Boko Haram, the intense and barbaric censorship on freedom of religion in the north is Nigeria’s albatross. Unfortunately, Nigerian leaders abet it by their willing conscription into a tyranny of silence. Northern leaders can’t disclaim it for fear of not being rejected at the polls and Aso Rock is afraid to dabble in it for political expediency.

Blasphemy laws of northern Nigeria, which clearly violate the Nigerian constitution, are a legal relic in today’s modern world. Nigeria shares this untoward and disreputable space with six other countries – Afghanistan, Iran, Mauritania, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and Somalia – which still have the laws in their rule books. For instance, in Iran, Amir Hossein Maghsoudloo, professionally known as Amir Tataloo, faced the Sharif-Aminu hell. An Iranian singer, rapper and songwriter controversial for his full body tatoo, Tataloo was also sentenced to death on January 19, 2025 for blasphemy.

The most abhorrent in all this is that northern leaders, from the Sultan to the lowest person, approve of this antediluvian blasphemy laws. Most times, what can be termed a licence-to-kill pall of silence from northern leaders hovers over the land. Amnesty International corroborated this when it said, “government officials rarely publicly condemn mob violence for blasphemy.” Ex-VP Atiku Abubakar, for instance, was appalled when his social media handler excoriated the barbaric murder of Deborah and immediately ordered it deleted. In August 2020, as governor, Ganduje, ex-APC chair currently undergoing trial for corruption, vowed to “waste no time in signing the warrant for the execution of the man who blasphemed.”

The truth is that, there is a connect between the barbaric blasphemy laws of northern Nigeria and the allegation of genocide by Ted Cruz. Having profiled Nigeria as a country that is receptive to barbarism, it fits into the trope to submit that the animalism of genocide is a Nigerian way of life.

Now, let us come to the Ted Cruz allegation. In an interview with the Fox News Digital, Cruz alleged further that over 52,000 Christians had been killed in Nigeria since 2009, and over 20,000 churches and Christian schools got destroyed within this period. This rattled the Nigerian government which knew that if Cruz’s allegation carries the day, its pot of soup would go sour in America. Senate President Godswill Akpabio, House of Representatives Deputy Speaker, Benjamin Kalu and others defended this pot of soup. In his characteristic gruff, presidential spokesman, Bayo Onanuga, took the usual Bolekaja route. “Senator, stop these malicious, contrived lies against my country. We do not have a religious war in my country,” he blabbered at Cruz.

But, President of the Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN), Archbishop Daniel Okoh, said the church “affirms, without hesitation, that many Christian communities in parts of Nigeria, especially in the North, have suffered severe attacks, loss of life, and the destruction of places of worship.”

To diffuse and defuse the controversy, the Nigerian government instigated a fact-finding mission to engage the narrative. It led to a pulling off of shroud from the face of pretentious patriot, Reno Omokri, who, as it would be revealed, lives off a life of packaging and make-believe. Having packaged the fact-finding team to Nigeria, like the man insistent on scouring the world for who owed his late father money, both Omokri and his sponsors got deconstructed. Mike Arnold, an ex Mayor of Blanco, Texas, against the bid to pull wool over the world’s eyes, confirmed that there is indeed genocide against Christians in Nigeria.

The controversy of whether there is genocide against Christians in Nigeria is not a new one. It dates back many years. For decades, many Christian communities in the North have been wiped out by terrorists, while churches and houses were razed. People were also beheaded by Jihadists. Under the Muhammadu Buhari government, the European Union gave incontrovertible evidence of the occurrence of these brutal killings. Doubtful that Buhari himself was not a member of the insurgents, he was surely acutely sympathetic to their cause.

Blaming Cruz for claiming that the Nigerian government ignores and “even (facilitates) the mass murder of Christians by Islamist Jihadists” runs against the grain of available facts. Like Ida the slave boy, Nigeria revealed to the world its true colour. Pushed to the wall to explode, in January 2012, then president Goodluck Jonathan admitted that there were Boko Haram sympathizers in his government. Earlier in November 2011, a Nigerian senator was charged for alleged links to the Boko Haram Islamist militants. Said Marilyn Ogar, DSS’ then spokeswoman, the organization’s arrest “confirms the service’s position that some of the Boko Haram extremists have political patronage and sponsorship”.

Also in May 2019, former president Olusegun Obasanjo admitted that the Boko Haram insurgency was religious in colour. Earlier in 2012, ex-Chairman of the Christian Association of Nigeria, Pastor Ayo Oritsejafor, also claimed that there was a “systematic ethnic and religious cleansing” in Nigeria.

While the Nigerian government has blindly remonstrated Cruz’s claim, Professor Ebenezer Obadare, Nigerian-American academic and Douglas Dillon Senior Fellow for Africa Studies at the American Council on Foreign Relations, in a piece entitled The government of Nigeria V Sen Ted Cruz, would seem to have successfully fitted together the jigsaw of why and who Boko Haram kills in its genocide. He asked the Nigerian government to first seek to understand the raison d’être of Boko Haram’s strikes. Once Aso Rock does this, he counsels, it would do less of this barren attempt to disclaim a globally known truth.

Rather than engage in driving away its own shadows, unveiling what Boko Haram represents would make the Tinubu government effectively face its reality. And the reality is that, though Boko Haram attacks Christians and Muslims too, its polytheist (the belief in or worship of more than one god) strikes make it look like it is religion-blind. The truth however is that the insurgents are after Christians and their “accomplices” in Islamic regalia.

“From Boko Haram’s perspective, there is no difference between mainstream Muslims and Christians: they are all ‘polytheists’ who suffer from a common affliction: ‘unbelief’” (of Islam) – my addition – Obadare wrote.

Instead of government spending Nigeria’s scarce resources on religious leaders and asking them to defend the indefensible, knowledge of the above fact could wake it up from its slumber. Government is also said to spend on foreign lobbyists, asking them to help it make the corpse of this genocide allegation walk. However, Prof Obadare’s take on the insurgency should get Aso Rock to be alive to the truth: Boko Haram’s genocide is against Nigerian Christians, even if its strikes stray to mainstream Islamic faith adherents.

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Why We Expanded Presidential Amnesty Scholarship Scheme — Otuaro

Published

2 hours ago

October 26, 2025

Editor

Otuaro (middle) in a group photograph with the PAP foreign scholarship students in the United Kingdom after an interactive session in London on Saturday, 25 October, 2025.

The Administrator of the Presidential Amnesty Programme, Dr Dennis Otuaro, has expressed his unwavering commitment to ensuring that more indigent students and communities of the Niger Delta benefit from the PAP scholarship scheme.

He stated this while explaining what informed his decision to expand the scheme and increase formal education opportunities for poor students, and to build a huge manpower base in the region.

A statement issued by Mr Igoniko Oduma, Special Assistant on Media to the PAP boss said Otuaro spoke during an interactive session in London on Saturday with the beneficiaries of the scholarship initiative deployed for undergraduate and post-graduate programmes in universities across the United Kingdom.

The engagement, which was at the instance of the PAP boss, provided an opportunity for the Office and the scholarship students to discuss issues pertaining to their welfare and challenges with a view to addressing them.

Otuaro said that while in-country scholarship deployment was 3800 in the 2024/2025 academic year, the figure increased to 3900 in the 2025/2026 and foreign scholarships were about 200.

He attributed the increase in deployment to the massive support of President Bola Tinubu and the Office of the National Security Adviser.

Otuaro stressed that he was greatly encouraged by the President and the NSA, Mallam Nuhu Ribadu, and that he knows how impressed both of them are concerning the PAP initiatives, which align with the Renewed Hope Agenda.

He reiterated his call on the students to justify the huge investment in their education by the Federal Government by studying hard to make good grades.

He also urged them to conduct themselves and be responsible ambassadors of Nigeria while in the U.K, stressing that “you will be adding value to your families and communities when you complete your programmes successfully.”

The PAP helmsman said, “We want the scholarship programme to impact more students and communities in the Niger Delta. That’s why we have expanded it and increased formal education opportunities.

“We want you to take this opportunity very seriously so that the government, too, will be encouraged. I know how much support His Excellency, President Bola Tinubu GCFR, gives to the Presidential Amnesty Programme.

“Mr President and the National Security Adviser (NSA), Mallam Nuhu Ribadu, are very impressed with what we are doing. On your behalf I would like to, once again , thank His Excellency and the NSA for giving you this life-changing opportunity. We are confident that Mr President and the NSA will continue to support us.

“The knowledge you are receiving in your institutions today is to enable you plan yourself and prepare for the future. Whatever knowledge you gain cannot be taken from you.

“So as PAP scholarship students, we expect responsible and good behaviour from you. Government is investing heavily in you and you have the obligation to justify the investment. Be agents of change and avoid acts of mischief while in the U.K.”

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OPINION: A ‘Crazy’ African Nation, Where Citizens Eat And Drink Football

Published

4 hours ago

October 26, 2025

Editor

By Tony Erha

It was in October, a semi-summer-month and twilight of the year that ushers in the chilling and extreme winter. A nonagenarian woman gave me a friendly smile that revealed cheeky dimples. As I bowed respectfully to her ripened age, she offered a leathery hand for a handshake, which I received warmly, returning her infectious smile. For a youth who prays for longevity shouldn’t deprive the elderly of the walking stick. I had helped her, carrying a furred handbag to our seats on a night-long intercity bus, from Istanbul to Ankara, in Turkey, the Balkan nation, where we stopped over, in year 2004.

She spoke Turkish rapidly, whilst I retorted in a passable and incoherent Turkish language that ‘I don’t speak the official language of the only country of the world that is located on two continents; Europe and Asia. “You American?” She asked in English. It was obvious that my jeans, necklace and a fez cap that I upturned, in the manner of the Yankees, might have portrayed me as one. “No. I am a Nigerian”, I said, dragging the words. “You Nee-jay-rian!” she exclaimed, whilst I nodded confidently. Then she was elated; “Okocha Jay-Jay!” She spoke to others in the bus that clapped and hailed. I wondered why a 91 years-old-woman, was so passionate about football and one of its heroes, as if she was a youth.

At her request, an old video of a football match showed the mesmerising display of Austin ‘Jay Jay’ Okocha, viewed on a television set affixed to the bus. There were instantaneous excitement and catcalls each time Okocha, the great football ‘talisman’ from Nigeria, did his ball flips and dribble-runs that displaced his opponents, earning him one of the few (if not the greatest) football entertainers in football’s history. It was as if the video tape, recorded in his notable plays in Besiktas, a Turkish club side, was a live match. So great was Okocha’s global fame that the old woman relived again; “Jay Jay Okocha is a dangerous footballer, who’s full of tricks on the field of play. The only trick he didn’t do with the ball from his bag of football artistry was to play on top the swimming pool”. In Mustafa Ataturk’s nation, footballers of Nigeria’s decent had and still make their soccer very eventful.

Victor Osimhen, the leggy playmaker and striker with a dye-hair like the white mushroom head, who recently renewed his contract with Galatasaray, a Turkish top team, is also a Nigerian, who has received the applause in the peninsula country and across the globe like Jay Jay Okocha. Candidly, Oshimen, the goal mechine, who is a tonic to the Turks and football fans across the world, also does the unimaginative with the round leather, but certainly not with the same fascinating skills of Jay Jay! But the Turkish fans are readily tilted to football fanaticism.

Victor Osimhen

If it’s ‘fanatic-fans’ in Turkish football, it’s certainly ‘supporters hooliganism’ in the United Kingdom (UK), where association soccer (football) was founded in 1863, with similar kicking games played in Greece, China and Rome since 2,000 years. In UK, football is played with fanfares, pool betting and media vuvuzela. English soccer is a gainful entertainment industry raking in huge gate fees from plays, promotions, television and media razzmatazz, which is often imitated in Nigeria, with passions and ‘occult’ following. So worrisome was the ‘social hype and lawlessness’ youths and others attach to English soccer that security operatives have constant migraine fighting soccer addiction and frequent street brawls.

Jay Jay Okocha, Nwankwo Kanu, Dan Amokachi, Taribo West and other Nigerian stars, that once dominated and currently rule other foreign clubs, opened the floodlight of extremist football following into the country. Once upon a time, the then Prince Charles (now the king of England), was spotted (with young boys) playing the game, inside the Buckingham Palace, all wearing jersey number ’10’ with Jay Jay Okocha’s name inscribed). That the number-one-global-royalty adored soccer by wearing the jersey of a footballer from a third-world African nation, somewhat illustrates that which is often said about soccer being more than a mere sport. ‘Football Tripper’, a British online news porter, describes soccer as “oxygen” to numerous men and women. In Brazil, the South American nation, there is a deity called “Soccer”, as well as it’s a vivacious Reggae, a unique music genre in Jamaica.

Still, it is food and sups in Nigeria. In this Africa’s most populous nation, with plentiful viewing centres and liquor spots, there are live television football tournaments and soccer video games, with consumable food, alcoholics, carbonated drinks and some ‘unlawful substances’ that are at the behest of business owners and ‘intoxicated’ fans.

In what soccer dramatics came to know as ‘the Dammam Miracle’, viewing centres, beer parlours and restaurants were instantly sold out in the country, in 1989, after ‘footbocrazy’ Nigerians, stormed the streets in prolonged wild celebrations. For the Nigerian U-20 football team, at the FIFA World Youth Championship, held in Dammam, Saudi Arabia, came back from a four-goal deficit to level up and defeat the Russian counterpart, making the Nigerian team the first to come back from a semi-final to win a FIFA tournament. Soccer, indeed, is a crazy sport in Nigeria. Once upon a time, a man had shattered the screen of his expensive television, because Austin Jay Jay Okocha, his favourite star, had lost a penalty in a continental match!

It’s said that football, especially when the Nigerian national teams of men and woman play, tends to unite Nigerians than other national blights that turn them apart. Now, the current national fanaticism is for the Victor Osimhen-inspired Super Eagles, to qualify for the 2026 World Cup gala, even though it has to go the extra obstacles of playing more legs, whereas the team had frittered the early opportunities to qualify.

And sensing that most Nigerians care less of the economic woes that plagued them, but for the football fad, Bola Ahmed Tinubu, the nation’s President, would cash-in to feed their ago awarding huge cash to high profile football tournaments and wins, like he recently accorded the Super Falcons, the female national team, for achieving a similitude of the Dammam miracle, to bring home a coveted African Cup of Nations (AFCON) trophy!

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Ex-soldiers Fume Over Lifetime Benefits For Sacked Service Chiefs

Published

9 hours ago

October 26, 2025

Editor

The sacked Chief of Defence Staff, General Christopher Musa, and two other service chiefs, Chief of Air Staff, Air Marshal Hasan Abubakar, and Chief of Naval Staff, Vice Admiral Emmanuel Ogalla, are set to receive generous retirement benefits.

The benefits include bulletproof vehicles, domestic aides, and lifetime medical care.

Their exit follows President Bola Tinubu’s appointment of new service chiefs on Friday.

General Olufemi Oluyede has been named the new Chief of Defence Staff, while Major-General W. Shaibu takes over as Chief of Army Staff.

Air Vice Marshal Sunday Kelvin Aneke becomes the new Chief of Air Staff, and Rear Admiral I. Abbas the Chief of Naval Staff. The Chief of Defence Intelligence, Major-General E.A.P. Undiendeye, retains his position.

The President’s Special Adviser on Media and Public Communication, Sunday Dare, said in a statement on Friday that the removal of the service chiefs was in furtherance of the Federal Government’s ongoing efforts to strengthen Nigeria’s national security architecture.

According to the Harmonised Terms and Conditions of Service for Officers and Enlisted Personnel in the Nigerian Armed Forces, signed by President Tinubu on December 14, 2024, the service chiefs are entitled to substantial retirement packages upon disengagement.

The document stipulates that each retiring service chief will receive a bulletproof SUV or an equivalent vehicle, to be maintained and replaced every four years by the military.

They are also entitled to a Peugeot 508 or an equivalent backup vehicle.

Beyond the vehicles, the package includes five domestic aides — two service cooks, two stewards, and one civilian gardener — along with an aide-de-camp or security officer, and a personal assistant or special assistant.

They will also retain three service drivers, a service orderly, and a standard guard unit comprising nine soldiers.

The benefits extend to free medical treatment both in Nigeria and abroad, as well as the retention of personal firearms to be retrieved upon their demise.

However, while officers of lieutenant-general rank and equivalents are entitled to international and local medical care worth up to $20,000 annually, the benefits for the service chiefs, though not stated in the document, are believed to be considerably higher.

The HTCOS reads, “Retirement benefits for CDS and Service Chiefs: The following benefits shall be applicable: one bulletproof SUV or equivalent vehicle to be maintained by the Service and to be replaced every four years. One Peugeot 508 or equivalent backup vehicle.

‘’Retention of all military uniforms and accoutrement to be worn for appropriate ceremonies; five domestic aides (two service cooks, two stewards, and one civilian gardener); one Aide-de-Camp/security officer; one Special Assistant (Lt/Capt or equivalents) or one Personal Assistant (Warrant Officer or equivalents); standard guard (nine soldiers).

“Three service drivers; one service orderly; escorts (to be provided by appropriate military units/formation as the need arises); retention of personal firearms (on his demise, the personal firearm(s) shall be retrieved by the relevant service); and free medical cover in Nigeria and abroad.”

However, the policy specifies that such entitlements apply only if the retired officers have not accepted any other appointment funded from public resources — except when such an appointment is made by the President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria.

In such cases, the officers, according to the document, will only receive allowances commensurate with the new role rather than a full salary.

Retired soldiers protest lavish perks

Reacting, some retired soldiers decried what they described as the luxurious benefits and entitlements reserved for service chiefs and senior military officers.

They lamented that junior personnel continued to suffer neglect and unpaid entitlements despite years of service to the nation.

The retired officers expressed frustration over the disparity in welfare and treatment between senior and junior ranks within the military.

One of the leaders of the discharged soldiers demanding their owed entitlements, Sgt. Zaki Williams, expressed frustration over the entitlements reserved for the service chiefs.

Speaking in an emotional tone, Williams, who claimed to be speaking for more than 700 soldiers in his group, said many retired non-commissioned officers had been abandoned despite dedicating their lives to defending the country.

He said, “I don’t really understand how our people in Nigeria do things. The people at the top always do things to favour only themselves. They don’t care about the poor or the junior ones who sacrificed everything.”

The retired sergeant recalled that government officials had made several promises to improve their welfare, but none had been fulfilled.

“Since the day they made those promises to us, we went back home and didn’t hear anything again. Everything just ended there. We’ve been waiting till now, but nothing has happened,” he added.

Williams said the situation had left many of his colleagues demoralised and divided over whether to continue pressing for their entitlements.

“Some of us said we should protest again, but others refused. We told them that day that we were not going for another protest. If the government wants to help us, they should help us. If not, we’re done,” he said.

He also accused senior military officers of frustrating efforts by the defence ministry to address the concerns of retired personnel.

According to Williams, life after service has been extremely difficult for most of them who retired voluntarily or were discharged without compensation.

“How can someone retire after years of service and still not get their entitlement? Many of us can’t even build a house. The senior officers have houses, cars, and everything good, but the rest of us have nothing,” he said.

He added that the little compensation given to some was not enough to rebuild their lives.

“If they give you N2m today, what can you really start with it in this country? You have children, family, and responsibilities, yet you can’t even afford a plot of land,” he said.

Expressing disappointment, he said most junior officers had lost faith in the system.

“We’ve handed everything over to God,” he said quietly. “We’ve cried and done our best. They promised us, but in the end, it’s still zero. We haven’t seen anything. That’s why many of us are now silent.”

Another retired soldier, Abdul Isiak, lamented that promises made to retired personnel had remained unfulfilled, leaving many struggling to survive.

He said, “All you said they would give to them would be done promptly, and they are more than what we need to sustain our lives. This is very unfair. We have suffered a lot, and they’re yet to give us our entitlements after leaving the service. What is our offence? Is it because we are junior officers?”

The former sergeant said the senior officers continued to enjoy generous retirement packages while lower ranks were denied their due benefits.

“We are preparing for another protest for them to pay us. This is very bad,” he said.

(PUNCH)