UN To Investigate Nigeria’s Participation In Peace Keeping

The United Nations has begun a fact finding mission on Nigeria’s participation in peace keeping.

 The Senior Programme Officer, Field Project Financing and Budgeting of the United Nations, Ms Hannah Davies, who led a team of UN surveyors to the Defence Headquarters, said their visit is in line with the United Nations’ mandate last year to pursue a different approach to doing surveys to find out the cost involved in a country’s contribution to UN peacekeeping.

 The survey, which will last for three days, will cover five categories which include training deployment medicals, allowances, personnel, gears and equipment.

 The Director, Army Public Relations, Brigadier General Ibrahim Attahiru , during the October 2013 monthly press briefing of the army in Abuja had dispelled a rumour that the authorities were deliberately with holding allowances of soldiers that participated in peace keeping mission.

 Attahiru said “The Nigerian Army commenced its participation in peace support operations in 1961. The first actors of this noble endeavour are still alive and can testify to the fact that the Nigerian Army has never held back operational allowances, or any allowance for that matter, of any personnel in the last 52 years of its involvement in peace support operations,” he said.

 Attahiru stated that some administrative and logistic factors might delay the payment of such allowances but disclosed that the army has ways of filling the vacuum saying “At times, administrative and logistic bottlenecks may delay the release of funds.

 The army headquarters has always made efforts to fill in the void, more so troops are kept informed of all developments” revealing that the “United Nations (UN) admitted to owing Nigeria and four other countries N127.2 billion accrued through her peacekeeping efforts to the global organisation.”

 —Abuja, Nigeria