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By Madu Obi
Awka-THE president of
The ex Biafra war affected police officers have pleaded with government to harmonize their pension in the interest of equity and fairness.
President of the association, Mr. Matthew Udeh lamented that many police officers in the association earn as low as N6000 as monthly pension because they were on the Biafra side during the civil war.
Speaking in an interview in Awka, Udeh recalled that all police officers who were in Biafra were dismissed after the civil war in 1970, adding that it took 30 years of petition before former President Olusegun Obasanjo granted them presidential amnesty in 2000 and converted their dismissal to retirement.
He urged the Executive Secretary of Pension Transitional Arrangement Directorate, PTAD, Dr. Chioma Ejikeme to do everything within her power to ensure the harmonization of the pension of war affected police officers with the prevailing pension arrangement in the country.
He said: "Our case is peculiar because at the end of the civil war in 1970, we were dismissed from the police because we served in Biafra.
" We had to petition the injustice and thirty years later, our dismissal was converted to retirement through the presidential amnesty granted by the then President Olusegun Obasanjo.
" The retirement took effect from May, 2000 and naturally our pension was supposed to be based on the salary we were earning at the time of retirement.
In other words, we expected that our pension would be based on the prevailing pension in 2000, but unfortunately as a punitive measure, our pension was based on what we were earning when we were dismissed 30 years earlier, which was why many of us were earning as low as N6000 pension per month for constables."
According to Udeh, what members of his association receive as pension is too small to assist them as they have become old and urged to the Executive Secretary of PTAD to prevail on the present administration to harmonize the pension of the war affected police officers with others.
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