Why Troops’ Allowances Were Delayed – Army

Sani Usman-Nigerian ArmyThe Nigerian Army has explained the reasons behind the delay of operations allowance to soldiers, which was said to be affecting the fight against insurgency in the North East.
The Acting Director, Army Public Relations, Colonel Sani Usman, in a statement on Thursday, said the delay was due to “minor” administrative issues which are being treated and should be resolved soon.
Usman also denied reports the development was affecting the counter-insurgency operation in the North East.
He said: “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”.
Continuing the Army spokesman said “as regards to payment of operations allowances, it is borne 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”.
Mr. Usman noted that majority of the troops have been receiving their allowances regularly.
“The very few indiscipline 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”, he concluded.