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The Minister of Defence, Brig-Gen. Mansur Dan-Ali, yesterday confirmed the recent forced retirement of senior army officers, was necessitated by alleged corruption and professional misconduct established against the affected officers. This was as the Nigerian Army clarified that contrary to reports making the rounds, only 38 officers were given the boot.
While offering clarification on the sack of officers, which has raised a lot of dust in the polity, Dan-Ali maintained that none of the officers was wrongly sacked.
The minister further explained that the 38 officers were given fair hearing, having been earlier summoned to defend themselves on findings by a Board established to investigate allegations of partisanship and financial corruption. Dan-Ali urged the public to see the retirement exercise as a step in the direction of reforms in the Nigerian Armed Forces.
Many had imputed ethnic motive to the forced retirement of officers, saying it was carefully done to weed-out officers from a particular region.
But, the Defence Minister said the development was well intentioned as it was far from being an exercise in witch-hunt.
“What we did was to make sure that all those that were indicted in one way or the other for both professional corruption and monetary corruption, had the opportunity to defend themselves. “What I mean by professional corruption is soldiers’ involvement in partisan politics; if you are partisan, then you are professionally corrupt; you will be asked to go; that was what happened.
“Of course, they were given fair hearing; they were called by a board and they went and testified.
“Don’t forget that in the military, there is no half way to doing things; the moment you are found wanting, you have to succumb and you will go,” Dan-Ali said. He disclosed that plans were afoot for the implementation of a reform policy aimed at reducing dependence on the Armed Forces for duties that would ordinarily be carried out by the Police.
Meanwhile, the Nigerian Army has expressed worry over the figure it said was circulating as number of officers eased out of service. The Army, in a statement by its spokesman, Col. Sani Usman, described the reports on the number of sacked officers as ‘unethical and unfair.’
The Army, which had failed to state the actual number of officers affected in the retirement exercise in its earlier statement on Saturday, however, stated that 38 officers were retired. It gave the breakdown as follows: nine Major Generals, 10 Brigadier Generals, seven Colonels, 11 Lieutenant Colonels, and a Major.
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