Just In: Tension in Aso Rock as Buhari’s former bodyguards protest

jchima

Some former bodyguards to President Muhammadu Buhari have threatened to occupy Aso Rock if demands for wages owed them are not met with immediate effect.

The bodyguards who served during the electioneering campaigns in 2015, on Wednesday, September 7, vowed to occupy the presidential villa if allowances owed to them were not paid to enable them cater for their families during the upcoming Salleh celebrations.
The Vanguard reports that the bodyguards who staged a protest at the entrance of the presidential villa, Abuja decried their living conditions.

Their spokesman, Olabiyi Balogun who spoke with newsmen on phone said that they had been owed arrears of 17 months even as other of their demands had also fallen on deaf ears.

Balogun vowed that the group would continue to protest u till their demands were met. He said: “If you recollect, the last time we had a parley with the press was about 4 weeks ago when they asked Mobile policemen to seal off our office, the APC presidential campaign office.

From that time till today is 28 days. We had no form of official response to our demands and it is as a result of that we decided to take the protest further to them. To prove our point we had to stage our protest right to the Villa, this morning. We were stopped.

“The DCP, the squadron commander in the Villa came to address us. He told us that he was sent from inside. He said that the right persons told him that they are already sitting on our issue and that we should give them between now and the end of the month, that the demands we made would be met. We will abide by our words.

“We want to give them the benefit of doubt. But the issue right now is sallah. Sallah is on Monday and 80 percent of us are Muslims. They have been paying themselves. They just paid themselves the allowances they owed the personnel in the villa. Each person got N450 thousand.
One of our demands is that our allowances for the past 17 months should be paid but they have exempted from the allowances they paid.”

We are paid N50 per month. That’s the agreement. “Our other demands included a request to have audience with Mr. President, we demand that arrears of our allowances be paid.

We also demanded that we need to be paid our entitlements and we proposed that for the inconveniences we have suffered in the last 20 months, we demanded to be paid 20 million each.

We are growing from one level of protest to another. We don’t know what we are going do next but definitely, we will not keep quiet. If they do not reach out to us for this sallah, on Friday we have something in mind.”

This not the first time some security personnel attached to the seat of power have grumbled regarding unpaid salaries.

A report by Daily Trust recently revealed that security personnel attached to Nigeria’s seat of power, Aso Rock are being owed their special allowances for 13 months.

The security personnel are drawn from the Nigeria Police Force, the Department of Security Service, the Federal Fire Service, the National Intelligence Agency, the Federal Road Safety Corps, the Nigerian Army.

The Aso Rock security team stated that they have not been paid their special allowances since President Muhammadu Buhari assumed office on May 29, 2015.

Checks revealed that former President Goodluck Jonathan government was paying the senior security staff N30,000; and the junior ones, N25,000 as their monthly special allowance.

Few months back, security operatives attached to the presidential villa in Abuja were reportedly discontent and upset over their unpaid allowances.

The Punch reported that the situation may degenerate into a security breach, if it is not addressed quickly.

Speaking with newsmen on Wednesday, February 10, multiple sources who pleaded for anonymity noted that “loyalty of the security operatives had dropped drastically” over the non-payment of the allowance.

Sources: http://nigeriabreakingnews.com.ng/just-in-tension-in-aso-rock-as-buharis-former-bodyguards-protest/