Forty-three years after the Nigerian civil war, respite is yet to come the way of soldiers who fought on the side of Biafra.
The soldiers told DailyPost that they were still licking their wounds, as they are left in the cold without their benefits released to them, stressing that in spite of the “No Victor, No Vanquished” policy of the Federal Government after the war, they were neither integrated into the Nigerian Army nor paid their pensions.
Worried by this development, some of the ex-soldiers led by one Victor Onah, met in Enugu recently, where they resolved to embark on a street protest in Abuja if the Federal Government refused to release their entitlements.
“We are dying every day of hunger, poverty, disease, frustration and abandonment and we have resolved and refused to accept the government’s further abuse of our human rights, abandonment and non-payment of our entitlements”, the group had stated.
However, speaking to DailyPost in Enugu on Tuesday, the National Coordinator of the War Veterans Social Welfare Association, WVSWA, Colonel Emmanuel Osita Ossai, said the association would continue to maintain its non-violent stand on the matter.
He maintained that although they were aggrieved by the neglect of the ex-soldiers by the Federal Government, his leadership was not in support of the planned protest in Abuja over the non-payment of the entitlements.
Colonel Ossai, re-called how as the leader of the group in 2009, he met with the late Biafra War Lord, Chief Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu, adding that he would continue to fight for the rights of the soldiers.
According to him, Chief Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu, had met with him in 2009 as the leader of the WVSWA and told him to remember that he was one of them, urging him to use every opportunity to do good things for ex-Biafran soldiers.
He said, “Dim Ojukwu said to me, ‘I am a member of this association and wherever you go I am there. If you people live, I am living and anything you do must be taken to remember what we fought for. Nothing can separate you people from me and it is difficult for me to be seeing you as often as you wish. Always stand tall, don’t be afraid for you are the bone with which the Easterners stand’”.
Col. Ossai noted that the group led by Lt. Col. Victor Onah has since been expelled from the association, adding that the group ought not to have been speaking for the association.
According to him, the idea of appealing for reintegration and rehabilitations was not to confront the authority, recalling how he was instructed by the late Ikemba of Nnewi, Dim Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu not to be violent against the constituted authority.
“I seize this opportunity to declare that from now on wards, any veteran or group of veterans who parade themselves that they are veterans, to disturb any, be it state or Federal, if caught will be severely dealt with. Already the indiscipline ones who proposed to go to Abuja must be disciplined accordingly”, he added.
For the Onah group, which was planning protest, the ex-Biafran leader stated that if they failed to retrace their footsteps, they would be disciplined in military fashion as nobody authorized them, adding that that their action smacked of mutiny.
Sounding like a warrior, he said, “some of these unscrupulous elements have been going about in the villages and communities collecting illegal levies from unsuspecting members of the public and veterans in the name of fighting for their cause. People should be wary of them”.
He added that they would hesitate to order the arrest of anybody found to be committing crime in the name of the association.
He maintained that the ex-Biafran soldiers had been going through untold hardship since the end of the civil war, noting that he was optimistic that President Goodluck Jonathan would address the issue at the appropriate time.
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