Tag: Victims

They have been grieving since 1992, when their world came crashing down. Precisely 20 years, one month ago, they lost their husbands to the cruel hands of death. They were in their 20s.

They are the widows and children of about 131 officers of the Army, the Navy and the Air Force who died in the Nigerian Air Force Lockheed C-130Hercules aircraft, which crashed into the swamp in Ejigbo in 1992.

The then Military President , Gen. Ibrahim Babangida , promised to provide for their needs, including houses, education for their children and so on. The promises, which were made to assuage their losses, remain unfulfilled.

Regrettably, more than 20 years after, most of the widows and children of the victims of the crash have not fared better.

Some have even died. Two years after the incident, a directive was issued from the office of the Chief of Defence Staff that letters should be given to all the widows to their various state military administrators then to provide accommodation. While some of the state administrators then responded positively, others shut their doors against the widows. Most of the widows and their children were ejected from their various barracks.

The children education provided for under Section 334 of the Term and Conditions of Service for officers in the Nigerian Army 1979 was half-implemented. According to the provision of the Section, “ for the purpose of training, the children are to be treated as Federal Government scholars and all conditions applicable to Federal Government Scholarship students will apply to them.” But the reverse was the case.

On September 26 in Kaduna, a cenotaph was unveiled in memory of the victims by the Commandant of the Armed Forces Command Staff College(AFCSC), Jaji, Air Vice MarshalllAhmed Tijani Muazu. While the victims were remembered, nothings was said about their widows.

At a roundtable discussion with their counsel, Mr. Femi Falana (SAN) and Mr. Kabir Akingbolu, held at the Strong Tower Redeemed Christian Church of God, Gbagada, Lagos, some of them bared their grievance against the government, which successively, had abandoned them to their fate.

A daughter of one of the victims, Mrs. Bisi Olusanya-Johnson, said she lost her mother due to neglect by the military authority.

Olusanya-Johnson claimed that lack of adequate care and depression led to the death of her mother a few years after the crash.

Crying profusely during the event, Mrs. Olusanya-Johnson said she was 14 years when she lost her father in the crash. She said her mother faced a lot of trauma taking care of her children.

She said: “I was 14 years old when my father died. In fact, I was in school when we were summoned from the school to inform us of the tragic incident. Few days later, the military authorities directed us to quit our apartment.

“My mother died because of the trauma she went through since the demise of my father. My mother carried the burden to her grave. One thing which these wicked leaders should realise is that the pain which they made us go through, their own children will go through it.”

She also spoke of how her mother made several appeals to former military governors of Lagos State to provide their family with the landed property promised after the crash to no avail. Olusanya-Johnson appealed to military authorities to pay all her father’s entitlement.

A widow of one of the victims of the crash, Mrs. Stella Onabolu, said they had made several attempts to convince military authorities as well as Ministry of Defence but were paid little attention.

She explained that while their colleagues who are from Navy and Air Force had prompt attention from their corps, the Army turned deaf ears to their case, adding: “As at today, I have not received the school fees of my children from the Army headquarters for 2011, not to talk of 2012. We met the Minister of State for Defence in 2010 but nothing happened thereafter.

“Last year, the president made a statement on the issue and promised to offset all our entitlements but the presidential pronouncement was just an empty promise like that of his predecessors. We are praying silently for a miracle on the matter. The Army is the worst corps because they don’t want to see us at all.

“They are behaving as if they have something to hide but we know that God will fight for us. Several times, they had threatened us. They asked us not to marry and we are living without any man. This is sad. It has been tough and my husband served the Army for 20 years before the incident that claimed his life.”

Another widow, Mrs. Risikat Mukoro, said she wrote several letters to former President Olusegun Obasanjo, Gen. Abdulsalam Abubakar (rtd) without any response. She said she had not collected any money from the Army since they relocated from Lagos to Abuja.

She said: “Many widows did not get any landed property from their state government as promised. Initially, the then military government promised to give all of us landed property in Lagos. Later they directed military governors of our respective states to redeem the promise, but many states have not fulfilled that promise. Some states gave landed property to victims without any C of O.

“Since the Army headquarters relocated from Moloney Street in Lagos to Abuja, I have not collected any money from them. They asked us not to marry another man, but they refused to cater for our family.”

Mrs. Didi Feruke-Bello, the widow of late Lt. Commander Kareem Bello, said the battle for their entitlements was not a personal but aimed at upholding the ideals of their late husbands.

“We are not fighting for ourselves, but we are fighting for the dead. They made them to die and rendered us useless. If you have forgotten, I did not forget because the memory of that dark era is still fresh in my memory,” Feruke-Bello said.

Falana assured the widows of his preparedness to use instruments of law to get justice for them .

He said: “It is very sad that you have been abandoned for about 20 years by successive governments in the country. They made promises when the incidence happened but they didn’t do anything to correct this injustice.

“Is it not an irony of life that Obasanjo who was tried illegally for phantom coup, pardoned to contest elections would spend eight years ruling the nation without addressing the plight of the widows? When he was there one would have thought that he knows where shoes pinch others.

“If the military failed to address this injustice before the end of this month, we will be compelled to use the instrument of law to seek redress. We want to assure you that human rights community and progressive arms of the bar are behind you.”

Akingbolu toed a similar lane. He said: “The continued neglect of these widows is an act of wickedness and injustice by successive administration in the last 20 years.

“It is very sad that many of your colleagues have lost their lives in this struggle, but I want to task you that you should close rank and work as a team so that together you will get justice at the end of the day. The women had fulfilled their own part of the contract by declining to marry another man since the loss of their husbands, but their entitlement is still in the winds.”