Delayed payment to soldiers a minor internal issue, says army

The Nigeria army says the reports of late payment of allowances to soldiers is a “minor internal administrative issue”, as its personnel now receive their allowances in their bank accounts.

Reacting to reports that some of its soldiers had not received their allowances, Sani Usman, spokesman of the army, Sani Usman,  explained that some of its men had not received their allowances due to administrative hitches, which had since been resolved.

“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 northeast,” he said in a statement on Thursday.

“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 (ECOWAS) and operation allowances to some troops in counter-terrorism and counter-insurgency operations, among others.

“The issues contained in such publications are not true not correct. While some media treated the matter professionally, giving the military benefit of doubt and sought to know the truth, 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 born 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 complained 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.”