‘Retired soldiers indicted for corruption’

Fidelis Soriwei, Abuja

The Minister of Defence, Mansur Dan-Ali, has justified the compulsory retirement of 38 officers of the Nigerian Army by the Army Council.

The minister said that the decision was not a witch-hunt but part of the ongoing reforms in the Armed Forces.

Dan-Ali made the comment while speaking with journalists shortly after delivering a lecture at the National Defence College, Abuja on Monday,

He said that the 38 officers were indicted for professional and corruption and were given the opportunity to defend themselves.

He said that any officer, who was found to be partisan, was asked to go because he was guilty of professional corruption.

He said that the affected officers were given the opportunity to defend themselves in a panel before the decision to retire them compulsorily was taken.

 He said, “What we did was to make sure that all those that were indicted in one way or the other for both professional corruption and monetary corruption had the opportunity to defend themselves.

`”What I mean by professional corruption is the soldiers’ involvement in partisan politics, if you are partisan then you are professionally-corrupt and you will be asked to go, so that was exactly what happened.

“Of course, they were giving fair hearing, they were called by a board and they went and testified.”

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