R-a-w d-e-a-l
Retired Army officer ‘robbed’ of N2.2m pension
By KUNLE OWOLABI
Sunday, October 11, 2007

•Anyasi Photo: Sun News Publishing

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Peter Anyasi, a retired Staff Sergeant, has the love of his fatherland at heart. In contributing his own widow’s mite to its continued existence and the defence of its territorial integrity, he enrolled in the Nigerian Army. He spent close to 17 years in service to his beloved country and voluntarily disengaged in 1991.

A testimony to his diligence and brilliance while in the army was contained in a certificate of service with serial number 156229 given to him. It stated: “ S/SGT Anyasi Peter is very disciplined, competent and reliable senior non-Commissioned officer. He has good initiative drive and unflagging dedication.

He served the Nigerian Army for sixteen years, three hundred and sixty days in various capacities including the headship of the Department of General Studies at the Army Certificate of Education Centre.” This remark gave assurance that his retirement would be stress-free through adequate payment of his pension by army authority. Alas, he thought wrongly. His dream flew in his face. Barely six years after his disengagement from the army, the payment of his pension stopped abruptly! It amazed Anyasi that the army he served with all his youthful vigour is now treating him in such a shabby manner.

He lamented how, so far, he had been robbed of a total sum of N 2. 2 million- an over ten years pension entitlement.
Recounting on what he has gone through to reclaim his entitlement, Anyasi began thus:
“I served in the Nigerian Army from April 6, 1974 to March 3,1991. I spent 17 years. At the end of it all, I was entitled to pension, which they started paying. It was paid up to February 1997. Then, they suddenly stopped paying the pension.

The military authorities claimed it was stopped because I was not available for the various verifications and since pension was meant for living people, they were not sure whether I was alive or dead. I had left for England in 1995 and I did not come back to the country until April 2005. But even when I left, they paid up to 1997, that is two years after I left. They then stopped the payment.
“When I returned, I went to the pension office, carried out all the necessary formalities for the restoration of the payment and the Army Headquartres issued a letter dated April 10, 2005 directing the Military Pension Board to restore my pension.”

The letter with reference number NA/364/A, entitled: “Confirmation of Discharge Status Ex-63NA/417757 SSGT Anyasi Peter and signed by Lt. Colonel A. O. Emuekpere, stated in part: I am directed to refer to reference A and to inform you that the above named ex-soldier is the rightful owner of the regimental number stated against his name. He enlisted into the NA on 6 Apr 74 and discharged on 31 Mar 91 after a total service of 16 years 260 days. In the light of the above, I am further directed to request you to process his pension accordingly.”

With that authority, they asked him to go and that his pension would now be paid promptly to the designated account. So, he went back to London. Up to November 2005, nothing was paid into his account. He continued, “I became worried and decided to send a complaint to the Chief of Defence Staff (CDS). I wrote the complaint, took it to the Nigeria High Commission in London. I asked an officer of the Defence Adviser Department to attach a letter to the complaint indicating that I live in London. The officer said that there was no need to go through this route.

He said he would like to resolve the matter amicably instead of writing a protest letter to the CDS. He called an officer in the army pension office in Nigeria, who he said he knew personally. He asked the man in Nigeria what happened to the army pension. That man said the authorities are preparing with some others things and that they would pay in December 2005. The officer at the high commission now asked if it was still necessary to forward the letter when the pension would be pay soon. I said that it was not necessary again in that circumstance.

I thanked him and left. I waited till December 2005. Nothing happened.
Then by March 2006, I forwarded my letter to the CDS. I sent the letter from London by DHL. I went to the web site of DHL to download the time, day, date and the name of the person who signed for the letter. This I brought in April 2006, when I came to Nigeria. I went to the CDS’s office and asked for the officer in question called Corporal Makama because he signed for the letter. I was told he was off duty. I was also asked why I wanted to see him.

I told them. A colleague of Makama waded into the affair and told me the action they had taken on the matter. He gave me a letter to show what they had done on the matter and told me to go to the Military pension Office where they would attend to me. I went to that office and met one a Lieutenant Colonel Mosaku, who was then the Director for Army. He refused to see me.”
Prior to that meeting with Mosaku, Anyasi had got information that his pension was being paid into a ghost account in Modakeke, Osun State. After staying at the reception of Mosaku’s office for four hours, one Major Bature to attended to him.

“He came, took me away from Mosaku’s office and led me to another barricaded office. He said ‘one officer will come and show you if your name is on the pension list that will be paid next month.’ I asked if we could enter his office. He said there was no need. I told him that I did not come all away from London to be treated in that untidy manner. He said the army knew all about my pension problems. I said it’s okay. I waited. Later, one officer came to tell me that my name was on the list and I would be paid at the end of the month. So, I should go. As unsatisfactory as the answer was, I still left since I had no other option. I waited again from April till September 2006. I never heard anything from them.

“I wrote another reminder to the CDS and copied the then Minister of Defence, Dr. Rabiu Musa Kwankwaso. Sequel to that letter, they renewed the payment. They paid the sum of N18, 744.6 which they said was my monthly pension. But instead of calling it pension, probably to disguise the fact that they have been paying the pension to a ghost account, for the past nine years – (March 1997 – September 2006, then January 2007 till date) – they described what they paid to me as ‘salary.’ They paid this on the 22 November 2006, which they called October ‘salary.’ On 29 December, they paid another one described as November ‘salary.’ On the 22 January 2007, they paid that of December ‘salary.’”

After that they stopped the payment again, perhaps when they thought that the heat generated by Anyasi’s letter had subsided. He waited until June 21, 2007, when he wrote another letter to the CDS and copied two committees – the Pension and the Defence committees of the House of Representatives.
Entitled “Where is my Service Pension: A Very Urgent Enquiry,” the letter stated inter alia: “For the third time in the last fifteen months, I am once again constrained to address this urgent enquiry to you in the hope that you will use your good offices to unmask all those involved in the fraudulent diversion of my service pension since February 1997 and restore it to me. Even though the Army Headquartres had by its letter referenced RREC/64/A dated 26 April 2005 authorised the payment of my service benefits, Lt. Col. B. O. Mosaku and Major A. Bature, two former officers of the Military Pension Board used their influence on the board to resist that lawful authority.”

According, to him, the letter yielded fruits shortly after. He narrated further, “A few weeks after these people received the letter, a Brigadier-General Betrus Kwaji, who is now the Chairman of the Military Pensions Board, called my home in London. He asked if he was speaking with Mr. Anyasi, I said correct. He said I wrote a lengthy letter. I said I did. He noted that thy have been paying my pension. I asked where they have been paying it to. I told him that even though I was in London, I have access to my account in Nigeria via the Internet. I added that before his call came that afternoon, I checked my account. He then told me that they made a mistake in one of my account numbers by omitting one zero. That he just noted through the letter I sent to them.

I asked where the ones they paid had gone to if truly they have been paying? He responded that it might be hanging somewhere. I asked him how that could be possible without him having knowledge of it and if he had knowledge of it what have been done to correct it and why haven’t they got in touch with me when they have my full address? He said we should forget all about that since I would be paid from January to July 2007. He added that the other ones of about nine years were being worked out and they would pay it in arrears. I thanked him, thinking that he was speaking the truth. I did not inform him that I was coming to Nigeria.”

On August 22, Anyasi arrived Nigeria. A few days later, he checked his account in the First Bank, no money was remitted into it. Thus, he put a call through to Kwaji. Kwaji said he should call him in the next few days so as to allow him to find out what happened. Three days on, Anyasi travelled to Port Harcourt, checked his account once more – empty. He called Kwaji right there from the bank. “Kwaji said he would check my record and call back.

That day he called to tell me that the money was ready in their record. I now told him that I would come to Abuja to get a printout of that record. But on a second thought and with my discussion with some people, who saw some of the letters that I wrote, warned that something sinister might happen to me if I go to Abuja. The reason is that those who have been signing my pension may want to erase the evidence by silencing me. Instead, I went to my bank and asked for two years’ statement of account (2006 – 2007) to show if they have been paying or not. I attached a handwritten letter to the bank statement and sent it to him through Fedex on August 29, 2007.

I addressed it to him so that he could get it. Three days later, I called to ask if he got the letter. He sounded irritated on the phone. He said, ‘But you told me you would come to Abuja and you did not.’ I told him that I changed my mind since he would tell me to go and check my account at the end of the day, which I have sent to him to assist his investigation.

He told me he has not received my letter. I said that was very strange because Fedex showed me it delivered the letter on August 31, 2007 and one Kayode signed and received that letter at his office. He said by the way, we should not make the matter a telephone affair and that he was closing the chapter of that discussion. But in the letter I sent to him with my bank statements, I told him I shelved the Abuja trip because those who are currently diverting my pension to the wrong account have no wish to see me alive. I very much need my pension but I have no wish t o disappear while pushing for its payment.”
Since August he has not heard again either from the Army Headquartres or Kwaji.