This year’s annual Armed Forces Remembrance Day may have come and gone, but interactions with the some ex-military personnel show that all is not well with the living heroes. They say even widows of the fallen heroes being celebrated are wallowing in penury and neglect. GBOYEGA ALAKA reports.
When she opted to retire from the Nigerian Army at age 53 in 2016, many, including her contemporaries, queried her decision, arguing that she was still young. However, Master Warrant Officer, Esom Chinyere Juliet, insisted that the decision had already been taken. Her argument was that she joined the army quite early and it was time to go pick her pieces. She actually looked towards the future with hope, age being on her side; little did she know that she was walking into penury, and that with all her glowing Military training and experience garnered serving, winning laurels for the Nigerian Army and traveling across Nigeria and Africa, she was only going to end up peeling and selling groundnuts by the roadside.
“I enlisted in the Nigerian Army at a very young age, I was 18. I was a regular intake; General Dominic Oneya of blessed memory took me into the army corps. I was a talented athlete; I started by running for the Nigerian Army; from there, I ran for the Nigerian Armed Forces. Bauchi ’85, while running for the Nigerian Army, I was the Queen of Tracks; I won eight gold medals. The immediate past Chief of Army Staff, Lt-Gen. Tukur Yusuf Buratai, was a sprinter at that championship. Then a captain, he was doing Triple Jump and Long Jump for the Army.
“I came in 1981 and retired in 2016 as a Master Warrant Officer after 35 years. The army was all I knew. All my life, I have never had cause to write a job application letter. I was in Liberia, I was in Sierra Leone, I was in Bakassi, I was in Sudan, I was in Cote d’Ivoire, I was in Mali. If you see me, you will know that God has been merciful to me, even with lots of injury and health hazards. My body is no longer complete. If you add 18 to 35, you’ll know how old I was when I retired. Some people said I was too young, but I told them I was not too young, I joined early. I said let me retire and go and see if I can still pick my pieces, but it has not been easy picking that pieces. And that is because the money the Federal Government was supposed to pay us to pick up out pieces called Security Debarment allowance has not been paid, almost five years after I retired. That money was supposed to enable us get out of the military and reintegrate well into civilian life socially, physically and psychologically, but as I speak to you, not a dime of it has been paid.”
Now getting agitated and emotional, MWO Esom (Rtrd) continued, “Even the minimum wage arrears that the Federal Government approved for all Nigerians in service, none has been paid to retired military personnel, 24 months after. If you add this January, it will be 25 months. Then the war veterans who are our seniors, who fought to keep Nigeria together, some of them, as I am talking to you now are on the streets, roaming and begging. They are not receiving a kobo as their pension. All they get are promises upon promises. The health insurance that we’re supposed to be benefiting, if you go to the hospital, once the drug is costlier than paracetamol; once it is N1000 or N2000, they would tell you they don’t have it, go and buy. Like you well know, most of us in the elderly category are suffering from High BP, diabetes; some have partial stroke, some are partially blind. Now imagine that you cannot walk into any hospital and get drugs worth N5,000. So what is the essence of the health insurance? What is our offence? Is it that we missed it by serving our country? During our time, there were no moneybags; we were doing our work diligently and were happy to go on foreign mission and come back alive.”
Remembrance Day a farce
More disheartening for Esom is the farce that the Armed Forces Remembrance Day has become. To her, the whole annual celebration rarely has any impact on the families of those the nation is purportedly remembering; same for the living veterans.
“If you see the families of the so-called fallen heroes and what they’re going through, you will feel sorry for them. Even the living heroes are being ignored. Every year, they celebrate Armed Forces Remembrance Day, please ask them who and who are beneficiaries of all the money they are donating? If you are able to meet widows of those fallen heroes, you will know that the grassroots widows are not seeing a dime of the money they are donating. Every 15th of January, the faces you see at the Remembrance Arcade are the same faces you see there every year. Go to the barracks and check out families of these fallen heroes, they don’t have a place to hide their heads; you’ll see them roaming around gutters, with their children. Nobody cares about them. As I am talking to you, if they hear that I’m dead, they will immediately close my account; nothing for my family. So why not give me my entitlement when I’m still alive? We are using this opportunity to beg you journalists to come to our aid and help us to be heard. After 35 years, I don’t have a shelter over my head. I don’t have a house of my own. I can’t even retire to my village in Enugu State because I was not able to build a house there before retiring. As I speak, I am a squatter. Anywhere I see space; I sit down, peel my groundnut and sell. Yes, say it loud, I, a retired Master Warrant Officer of the Nigerian Army, hawk and sell roasted groundnuts by the roadside to survive.”
Security Debarment Allowance, my homelessness and Gen. Olonisakin
As far as MWO Esom (rtrd) is concerned, one main reason she is homeless and has had to squat and stoop to the level of hawking groundnuts by the roadside is the refusal of the powers that be to pay her Security Debarment Allowance. For some reasons, they have also kept them in the dark as to the exact amount due to her. A case of ‘what you don’t know does not hurt you perhaps.’
Through investigations, however, she has been able to discover that it is a handsome sum, something in the region of N17million. That money, if paid, would help her erect a two-bedroom flat in her Enugu hometown.
What makes her situation more hurtful, she claimed, is the fact that the batch that retired a year after her – 2017, have been paid, courtesy, the then Chief of Defence Staff, General Gabriel Olonisakin.
“How do you pay my junior and not pay me? If they pay me that money, it would have been enough for me to build a 2-bedroom flat for myself. I have a land in my village. If anyone wishes to build a house for me, let them come, I have a free land; I will retire happily to my village to be planting green and ugwu in my compound and be selling. I only got N3.8million as gratuity, whereas those who left after me got over N21million in total.”
It was the Chief of Defence Staff, General Gabriel Olonisakin (rtrd), who opened our eyes to that money, because he paid it to those who retired in 2017 during his own time. Since then, we have been writing letters, clamouring for them to pay our own but they have kept ignoring or telling us stories. As I am talking to you, they said the last letter we wrote is with the Chief of Defence Staff and he is about to take it to the presidency. Over four, five years after, that letter has not gotten to the presidency.
“That is why we recently held a warning protest in some states – Lagos, Oyo, and Kaduna. We also had one in Abuja on the 6th; we were at the Ministry of Finance and the Ministry of Defence.
“The Ministry of Finance said our minimum wage arrears have been captured in 2022 budget and will be hastened so that we could be paid as soon as possible. But we are also hearing that the budget will not be effective till around March. As for the Security Debarment Allowance, the Ministry of Defence is just tossing us around. Nobody knows if the letter has really gotten to The Presidency or not.”
Esom, however, has a lot of good words for General Olonisakin. “God bless that man, General Olonisakin, man of integrity. It was he, in his magnanimity, when he was appointed as Chief of Defence Staff, who brought out the document where this money had been approved and said, ‘No, this money is these people’s entitlement, I cannot sit on it.’ He said, Enough was Enough! And once he brought out the file, there was no going back. Nice man, good man. He will make heaven!” she said, thumping her fist.
Miserly pension
Esom admits that her pension has been regular more recently, but was quick to say it is peanuts.
“Imagine a veteran collecting N35,000 as monthly pension in these days of inflation. He will pay house rent, he will pay school fees and he will take care of his health. I was talking to a veteran and he told me that the N35,000 he was paid for December didn’t last him two weeks because he was sick and his child was also sick. They were not even able to buy Christmas rice. And every day, you hear politicians stealing billions. If rat does not carry the money, snake will carry. And the people who fought for the unity of this country are wallowing in pain. Most of us wake up every day, thinking. As I speak to you, I’m on BP drugs, I’m on diabetes drugs.”
Family life
Esom is married to a civil servant and together they have four kids – three undergraduate and one waiting to go in for his master’s. But she says that success is largely because she is always drinking garri ijebu.
“My husband is a civil servant and I know what they are also going through.”
Would she advise any of her children to join the military?
Her answer was sharp. “My children are witnesses to what I have gone through and still going through, so if they decide that they want to walk into hell fire, it is not my duty to tell them. They were with me in the barracks and saw what we went through. No child is as stupid as we were in those days. They now know that they have a better choice outside the military.”
She has however not seen any such sign in any of them. Besides, she doesn’t even discuss it with them. Hers, she claimed, is to give them full support in whatever they come up with.
Once a soldier
Asked what the Armed Forces Remembrance Day means to her, the retired Master Warrant Officer said it means a lot to her as somebody who went into the force with all her heart and love for country. Her only regret, she said, “is how my country is treating me, how I am being denied my benefits and entitlement by powers that be. Are they waiting to celebrate me when I’m dead? All my life, I have never owned an okada (motorcycle); how then can I own a car?”
In spite of all her lamentations, MWO Esom is quite convinced she would still opt to be a soldier, if there was a possibility of coming back to this world a second time. Her reason? “I still have deep love for the Army. My prayer is that things get better.”
Talk of the saying, ‘Once a soldier….’
