Minister of Defence, Major General Bashir Magashi (rtd.) on Friday announced that a total of 102 ex-Biafran soldiers granted presidential pardon have been captured for payment of gratuity and other emolument by the Military Pensions Board, Abuja.
General Magashi, who spoke at the Ministerial briefing to inaugurate the 2022 Armed Forces Remembrance Day celebration in Abuja, said “it will interest you to know that the Military Pensions Board just concluded the documentation of ex-Biafran service personnel totaling 102 who were pardoned by Mr President.”
“The war ended 51 years ago and many of those involved are no longer alive but those with genuine complaints can come forward with their claims for consideration.”
The first set of the ex-soldiers who fought against the federal government during the 1967-70 Biafra War, were pardoned after the National Council of State meeting in November 2002 presided by President Olusegun Olusegun.
The main beneficiaries were soldiers who had left the Armed Forces of Nigeria to join the military of the short-lived Republic of Biafra, including the Biafran leader, Colonel Emeka Odumegwu Ojukwu.
Under the terms of the pardon, they were restored to their former ranks, making them eligible for retirement benefits, effective 32 years after the end of the civil war in 1970.
Then Ogun State Governor, Olusegun Osoba, briefed journalists at the end of the meeting which comprise of the President, Vice President, Senate President and Chief Justice of Nigeria, Governors, former Heads of State and President and CJN, saying: “This pardon wipes out the stigma of dismissal.”
Ojukwu had declared the independent State called Biafra over the former Eastern Region following massacres in Northern Nigeria in which tens of thousands of people, mainly Igbos from the Southeast, were wilfully killed.
Thirty-six months of fighting followed and more than one million people, mostly Igbos, died in what was then described as Africa’s worst modern war. Ojukwu himself was pardoned in 1981 by late President Shehu Shagari, which enabled him to return to Nigeria after a 10-year exile in Cote d’Ivoire.
In March 2012, the Military Pensions Board (MPB) announced that the former Biafran leader, alongside other pardoned soldiers that fought on the side of the defunct Biafra during the Nigeria Civil war, have been paid their pensions and arrears totaling N1.5billion by the Federal Government.
Then Chairman of MPB, Rear Admiral Bala Mshelia, told ‘Pension and You’ that the payment of the pension benefits to ex-Biafra soldiers and others whose pardon were backdated to year 2000 started in August 2011 and that the N1.5billion released for the payment had been exhausted.
But sources said that since the initial funding payment that got exhausted in 2012, no new funds have been released for the payments, making the payments to accumulate in arrears.