In his epochal memoir Why We Struck, Adewale Ademoyega, one of the majors who staged Nigeria’s first military coup, gave new life to the word ‘manage.’ Ravaged by hunger during his detention in Biafra while the Nigerian Civil War raged, Ademoyega realized, to his discomfiture, that whenever the prison authorities asked any detainee to ‘manage,’ they meant that he should endure hunger. And so the unjustly detained Nigerian Army officer constrained to defend the Biafra cause discovered a new life of managing non-existent food. Hear him: ‘It is not as if we did not want to die, but that death was absolutely impossible in the circumstances. If there was no food, we had to starve. If we then said thank God we would soon die, food would come and we just had to eat or be forced to eat.’
Prison life is actually horrible, and Nigerian writers, like their kindred the world over, have documented their nasty experiences. If you have lost your copy of Wole Soyinka’s The Man Died, perhaps you still have Helon Habila’s Waiting for an Angel, a factional account of the heady days of the 1990s when the military habitually threw ‘questioners to hyenas,’ as poet Tanure Ojaide quips in his poem The Owl Wakes Us. But whatever Habila writes of life in prison is just a lived experience known to all of us. It is exactly what the plight of pensioners illustrates. In Nigeria, unless (s)he is part of the overfed political class gorging itself on the country’s resources, the pensioner is a prisoner. Go to the pension department of most MDAs and you will see pensioners being treated with absolute contempt by officials locked in an intellectual hole that prevents them from thinking of the fate that awaits them once they leave office. Once on this page I wrote on the penury of police retirees, but the story is the same now that I turn attention to soldiers.
If you disagree with my characterization of pensioners as prisoners, then explain why they are treated with so much contempt. Last week, someone in Abuja thought that military pensioners were mere irritants or, worse still, subversive elements. The correspondent of The Punch newspaper ‘counted two armoured personnel carriers and more than 15 vehicles belonging to the police, Army, Immigration Service and VIO stationed at both ends of the road’ as aggrieved military pensioners laid bare their plight. The pensioners were at the Ministry of Defence to protest the non-implementation of consequential adjustments to their pensions following a series of salary increases for serving personnel. But they were not allowed to converge in front of the ministry.
Apparently, the authorities had approached retirees with a ‘Yakubu manage’ mindset. The viral meme originates from an airborne training video wherein an instructor yells instructions to a trainee named Yakubu, urging him to keep moving and saying: ‘You will feel it like you want to die, but you will not die!’ While this is appropriate for a trainee, it is utter punishment for a retiree. After spending a lifetime serving, justice requires that you at least have a reasonable level of comfort. You cannot be expected to ‘manage’ like Ademoyega or Yakubu while the big men acquire all the lands and other assets in this world.
As the American abolitionist Frederick Douglass said: ‘Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.’ The protesters last week apparently understood that. They seemed to have embraced the novelist, James Baldwin’s submission that ‘Not everything that is faced can be changed; but nothing can be changed until it is faced.’ That was why they trooped into the streets asking for a better deal.
What the retirees are demanding is naturally taken for granted in civilized climes, but alas, this is Lord Lugard’s Nigeria. Said one of the leaders of the protest, Lt-Col. Innocent Azubike (retd.): ‘In November last year, the President approved a new pay increase for the military, and it came with a consequential adjustment for retirees and pensioners. It was in the news throughout that November, and the high military authorities repeatedly thanked the President for the gesture. But suddenly, in July and August, it was not implemented and they started changing their stories, as if it should be forgotten. Another military salary increase was announced this August, totally ignoring that of last year. The new announcement is supposed to start implementation in September. They have computed the fund requirement for implementing this second announcement of pay increase. In their computation, they excluded pensioners and the consequential adjustment of pensioners’ pensions. That is the main issue we are protesting.’
The implication is indeed dire. A major who retired 15 years ago could be earning the same pension as a Master Warrant Officer who recently retired. When salaries are increased, the authorities ignore retired personnel. Sad!
It is a tragedy that people who gave life and limb to guarantee Nigeria’s sovereignty have to take to the streets before they can be heard by the military they served. While serving personnel enjoy their well-deserved salary increase, pensioners wallow in poverty, living like savages, and finding no money with which to contain combat disability. Besides, many are contending with various ailments, and drugs have become prohibitively expensive. Not everyone has a roof over his/her head, and not everyone has a thriving business. By excluding retired personnel from the badly needed consequential adjustment in pensions, the authorities give the impression that they buy goods and services from a different market. Yet I have not seen a retired staff sergeant, say, being given free gari and beans at Bodija market, or asked to go home and rest because the government has paid his/her son’s fees at the University of Abuja.
On this occasion, though, the Minister of Defence, Gen. Christopher Musa, was on hand to give assurances. Represented by the Permanent Secretary, Ministry of Defence, Mr Richard Pheelangwah, the minister said concerns regarding pension adjustments were receiving urgent attention, with relevant military, pension, and financial authorities engaged to achieve a fair, sustainable, and implementable resolution that would preclude veterans from being unfairly disadvantaged. Great.
I agree with Musa that any adjustment to veterans’ entitlements must be properly computed, adequately funded, and implemented in accordance with extant regulations. I am also willing, given his antecedents, to accept his assurance that the Ministry of Defence would work with their representatives and provide appropriate updates as progress is made in resolving the issues raised. But his claim that the Federal Government deeply values the patriotism, courage, and sacrifices of Nigeria’s military veterans and remains committed to ensuring that their service to the nation is recognized through sustained attention to their welfare and legitimate entitlements would have to be proved beyond reasonable doubt.
For years, the nation has witnessed utter contempt for grey hair by the military authorities. This is a tragedy. If serving personnel know that their comfort in retirement is not guaranteed, they will grab every opportunity to steal public funds with both hands. This is not in the military’s enlightened self-interest.
Sections 173 and 210 of the 1999 Constitution protect pension and gratuity rights for public servants, and benefits generally cannot be withheld or altered to the retiree’s disadvantage except as permitted by law. Going forward, Nigerians don’t want shibboleths like ‘DHQ takes personnel welfare seriously.’ They want credit alert on the pensioners’ phones.