Legal practitioners, Civil Society Organisations (CSOs), and concerned Nigerians have continued to express angst at the splash of bumper take-home packages including six Sports Utility Vehicles (SUVs), cash, domestic aides, and other benefits to the immediate retired Service Chiefs after they were replaced by new ones by President Bola Tinubu.
There were reports in the week of the retiring service chiefs in the Nigerian Armed Forces would each go home with several SUVs, about eight soldiers as aides, among others, which is raising hairs nationwide.
*’Proposal illegal, morally wrong under current harsh economic realities’
Reacting to the report, a senior lawyer, John Chibindu Okoli-Akrika (SAN), described the packages as not only illegal and morally wrong or reprehensible but also condemnable at a time the country is bogged down by a harsh economic predicament and huge debts.
He said the idea of civil servants, elected officers or political appointees going home with government properties or gifts borders on legality and morality.
Okoli-Akarika pointed out, “The legal aspect of it is that, on their terms or conditions of service, the right to take home such property instead of the person’s employment, and does the person’s terms of employment or service include the right to take such property?
“I am not aware of a by-law that says that when somebody occupies an office and when that person is leaving that office that the person is entitled to go home with government property.”
The legal practitioner added, “On the side of morality, it is immoral for one to know appropriate public property to himself because he held a public office. So, no matter the perspective from which one appreciates it, whether, from the point of view of legality or morality, that conduct is unjustifiable as it is immoral and untenable.
“From the economic viewpoint, there is no way the country can be borrowing and subjecting the common man to excruciating economic conditions and you turn around to allow those who occupied public offices to go home with public property because, at the end of the day, it would further deplete the socio-economic conditions of the people and the country at large.”
Another Senior Advocate of Nigeria (SAN), Ben Uzuegbu, said the action of rewarding or compensating the service chiefs with such bogus benefits smacked of insensitivity.
According to him, “Our leaders are so insensitive that they are calling on the masses whom they have raped all these eight years past. They are lying on the ground, and they are asking them (the masses) to make a sacrifice. On their own, they have continued to indulge in financial impunity and recklessness.”
He warned, “This is a country that is knee-deep in debt, and apart from getting loans, cannot pay the salaries of civil servants that are working day in, day out. I know you have up to 350 generals in the Nigerian Army, so if that kind of amount and facilities they want to give those officers are given out, it will create a gargantuan hole in the finances of Nigeria.”
The legal luminary further noted, “From all the directions you look at it, there’s no human being that has his senses that will support such things to be awarded to the ex-service chiefs.
“I have also looked at the law concerning this; they said there is one thing they have about these service chiefs, and that thing is not made known to the general public, how can you do a law that the general public is not aware of it when there’s a superseding law that says something about freedom of information?
Uzuegbu added, “The money that is being paid to these generals is like tax; it’s my money. It’s the common man in the streets that brought this money, and you want to take the money of the common man and you don’t want him to know the modality by which you are going about it?
“To me, there is no law that empowers them to do so. Considering the current situation of Nigeria, the financial paralysis Nigeria is suffering from, it is so insensitive, unjustifiable, and there is no way they can do that kind of thing and the masses will be looking at them.”
