Some ex-Biafran soldiers have threatened to embark on a street protest in Abuja if the Federal Government failed to release their entitlements.
The former soldiers said they had decided to take their destiny in their hands and would halt government and commercial activities in Abuja in order to alert the international community on their plight.
Rising from an emergency meeting in Enugu, on Wednesday, they said barring any last minute intervention, the planned showdown would kick off “in a couple of weeks.”
The meeting was led by Col. Victor Onah (retd.) and Ibe Nwachukwunta, as National Coordinator and Attorney respectively.
They told journalists that the action had become necessary since the government had “refused” to pay them their entitlements, more than 40 years after the civil war ended.
“While several promises have been made on paper, nothing is on ground to show that the government is concerned about our existence,” they said.
While condemning the nonchalance of the Federal Government towards their plight, the ex-soldiers added that some of their members had died out of lack.
Aside demanding urgent attention, rehabilitation, settlement, payment of their emoluments and entitlements, they also asked for their re-integration into the nation’s armed forces in order to facilitate the payment of their pensions.
A statement from the ex-Biafran soldiers read, “Having surrendered to the Federal Government, we are entitled to be treated as citizens. We should not be relegated and abandoned since 1970 and continuously remain abused and our human rights violated by the Federal Government.
“We are dying everyday of hunger, poverty, disease, frustration and abandonment and we have resolved and refused to accept the government’s further abuse of our human rights, abandonment and non-payment of our entitlements.”
