26th December, 2023
Members of the Nigerian Legion Corps from Badagry are currently facing salary and appropriate welfare denials since June 2023.
It was reliably gathered that many of the legioneers recruited over three years ago were not officially regularized or posted on any bit until June 2023. They remained loafing, attending meetings, parades, and back to their ‘huzzzzles’ all year round without any form of official engagements or payments.
A seeming good news came when the administration of Governor Sanwo-Olu requested for the services of more personnel in Schools. 800 men of the legion services spreading across the state commands were to man different Primary and Secondary Schools as part of the government’s commitment to curb indiscipline at that level, the source added.
Official letters of engagement were soon distributed to different Command heads. According to our source, rather than picking 800 men in accordance to the executive request, the figure was padded with another 100 men.
Picking officers from the various zones, BADAGRY command had 33 service recruitees on that roll. Before this engagement, the authority pledged that none of the men will be posted outside their Local governments. June 2023, 33 Legioneers from BADAGRY command received their posting letters each and all to far travel distance from BADAGRY without transport allowance or welfare concern.
As dedicated men, they travel daily on borrowed monies from family, friends, and neighbors to exact their patriotism, yet until the time of writing, none of the officers from Badagry has been paid a single Naira. Our source claimed, adding that even when three of them were involved in a bad accident returning from their bits, they did not receive any recovery wishes from the office, let alone a welfare stipend.
The aggrieved Legioneers from Badagry now clamor for their long overdue salaries to pay off all the debts they incurred in the course of official serving.
As a result of this peaceful demand for their rights, most of them are now scared of rumored unspoken threats of sack emanating from the headquarters and their base Local government commands, some engineers feared in the Badagry command.
It was further gathered that there is a cabal of jurganuts in the Ministry that is depriving the civil servants of their hard-earned money, making life difficult for the poor, contrary to the statement of President Bola Tinubu, “Let the poor breathe”.
We reached out to some legioneers and their commanders at the Badagry command. More catchy is the words of the divisional commander for Badagry.
Col. Sesinu Asanbe, Rtd.The chairman, of Nigeria Legion Badagry Division corroborated the complaints thus: “In 2017, the Lagos State government started recruiting men of the Legion into primary and secondary schools, and they have been paying them as contract workers.
What is happening to our officers employed this year is unusual. This is cheating, which should not be supported particularly by myself as their chairman. I have continued pressing them at the state headquarters and Alausa Ikeja on the need to pay my men. Our problem is that the permanent secretary at Alausa is yet or willing to understand the evil in that civil act. It is rather mischievous to hand over an entire employment process to people not well-schooled about the government’s intentions regarding such employment. As we speak,16 supervisors’ salaries for January and February are still been withheld by some civil servants.
Assuredly, my officers are working so hard; they are responsible for controlling stubborn and mischievous students in secondary schools. It has been viral in the news and on social media that some students in some areas of the state do bring weapons and charms to school to fight their fellow students. This is the root of the most condemnable act of cultism.
The worst of it is that under the agreement of their employment, they are to be posted within their local government areas, but when the employment started, I posted them within their local governments as agreed without any fuss. Later, they were placed under the control of District 5 of Agboju and the employed officers were posted to other LCDAs within Badagry, which was still good then. By the time the batch of 2023 was employed, the whole thing changed. Arbitrary posting out of their local government without consideration for logistics. Even if they are not staffed, the government is using their essential services for which remuneration is deserved.
Meanwhile, we visited the Office of Special Duties at Alausa Ikeja where it was claimed that the affected Legioneers were not genuinely employed and that the posting letters may have emanated from the Oshodi Command Office from where requested number of employees may also have been inflated. The responding officer also added that a letter has been sent to the command office in Oshodi to suspend all involved officers irrespective of any administrative errors officially perpetrated.
Meanwhile, the involved officers from Badagry have insisted that they were being witch-hunted as much as maginalised Badagry in the scam. They claimed to have received their letters from the Ikeja office after official screening just like every other legionaire employed in June 2023. “How is it possible for any rational being to gulp in such wreckless and unguarded claims that 33 letters issued to all 33 agile legionnaires at the Badagry command be fraudulent and not the same at other local governments.”
The Legion state headquarters at Oshodi, later asserted that unknown persons may have fabricated the employment given to the Legionnaires after their screening at Ikeja.
It was claimed that the error was discovered when the officers submitted their monthly clearance and that the number of employed officers was more than the clearance submitted. Hence, all 33 Badagry officers recruited by June 2023 were suspended.
As it is difficult to identify the fake assumption letters from the original. It added that some of the officers may not have had their names on the prepared list of the Lagos state government, pointing out that any detailed look into the matter may point arrows at, and subsequently affect some top Civil Servants in the system.
The source added that it was not only Badagry officers that were affected, although the affected officers insisted that Badagry is a likely target.