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On the grave of Biafra By Olatunji Dare

On the grave of Biafra By Olatunji Dare New York[RR] Awka–Is anyone perchance feeding on the grave of ex-Biafran soldiers? In a clime where nothing is sacrosanct anymore would some morbid fellows in government exhume the better-forgotten Biafran debacle and profit by it? Hardball fears so. Why the Nigerian civil war, also known as the […]

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On the grave of Biafra By Olatunji Dare

New York[RR] Awka–Is anyone perchance feeding on the grave of ex-Biafran soldiers? In a clime where nothing is sacrosanct anymore would some morbid fellows in government exhume the better-forgotten Biafran debacle and profit by it? Hardball fears so. Why the Nigerian civil war, also known as the Biafran war, ended about 44 years ago with the war generation aging and passing away while some scars of battle remain visible and in some cases unhealed. Many compatriots from the Biafran side still feel hard done by as not much reconstruction and rehabilitation have been achieved over these years.

In fact, most must have moved on with their lives knowing that Nigeria is a wayward entity where government is apt to provoke its citizenry to strive and contestation. Explains why government keep poking stick in the eye of the Biafran wound. If it refused to attend to the wound, dress it and in fact find out the anatomy of the wound, why rake it up after more than four decades? Yes the recent story that the federal government is paying pension to ex-Biafran soldiers reads like a hoax.

According to the report, government has started paying pension to soldiers of the Nigerian Army who fought on the side of the
secessionist Biafran army during the Nigerian civil war of 1967 to 1970. The freshly appointed chairman of the Military Pension Board (MPB), Air Commodore Mohammed Dabo told his visiting boss Musiliu Obanikoro who is the Minister of State for Defence that the MPB had enrolled 160 ex-Biafran soldiers for the payment of monthly pensions.

Strange things happen daily in Nigeria and desperate things stranger than fiction would happen when big elections are nigh. This scheme seems so strange even a rat would smell a rat. Now the civil war ended 44 years ago; no one remembered the ex-Biafran soldiers till the year 2000 when the government of the day deigned to have pardoned the soldiers. But between then and now, nothing was heard of the hapless soldiers anymore. Then out of the blue, a very ‘magnanimous’ Goodluck Jonathan administration is suddenly paying pensions to some unknown and forgotten soldiers?

Hardball would wager that the Nigeria Army does not have proper data of its current soldiers not to speak of those who fought in the civil war in what must se like dark ages now. A few weeks ago, Nigeria Army retirees protested in Kano, Ibadan, Taraba and Abuja over 39 months of an unpaid 20 per cent of their pension. The protest was carried out under the aegis of the Retired Army, Navy and Airforce officers’ Association. They had protested to the president in 2013 who promised to see that their outstanding was capture in the budget of 2014. Now the year is more than half way gone yet nobody cares. As you read this, those soldiers are still being owed.

Nothing can be fishier than this ex-Biafran soldiers’ pension story. It would be nice to see the remnants of the Biafrans. It would be salutary to publish their names, addresses, local government areas, hometowns and states of origin. It would be wonderful if MPB could give Nigerians more information including the sum paid to these ex-soldiers so far. This is the only way to prove that some soulless people are not feeding on dead Biafran soldiers.

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