The Nigerian Army on Thursday said the alleged non-payment of operations allowance among returnee peacekeepers was due to administrative hitches.
The Army however said, the allowances have been paid to the point that all outstanding owed soldiers from peacekeep ing operations have been paid, with the last batch payment done last Tuesday.
A statement from Army headquarters signed by Col Sani Usman said “As regards to payment of operations allowances to soldiers prosecuting the war on terrorism, it is borne out of 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.
It said “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.”
The Army was speaking on the reported problems in the Nigerian Army occasioned by the non-payment of allowances to some soldiers serving in the North East.
“In particular, the soldiers 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 Army statement continued, “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.
“We wish to state further that those soldiers involved or complaining 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 troop’s 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.
