Posted on: 11:27 Wed, 15 Jun 2016



Security operatives attached to the
Aso Rock Presidential Villa,
including 95 presidential body
guards, are grumbling over non-
payment of their 13-month special
allowance.

They are officers of the Nigerian
Army, the Department of Security
Service (DSS), the Nigerian Police
Force (NPF) the National
Intelligence Agency (NIA), the
Federal Fire Service and the
Federal Road Safety Corps (FRSC).

Since President Muhammadu
Buhari assumed office on May 29,
2015, the State House security staff,
numbering about 1,400 say they
have not received their special
allowance otherwise known as Risk
Cautious Allowance (RCA).

The administration of former
President Goodluck Jonathan was
said to be paying each of the senior
security personnel at the Villa
N30,000; and the junior ones,
N25,000 as monthly special
allowance.

Findings, however, revealed that
even though Jonathan’s
administration had reviewed the
special allowance upward, the last
time the Villa security staff
received it was in March, 2015.
But the officers currently securing
the nation’s seat of power said it
beat their imagination that they
could be owed their RCA under the
administration of President Buhari,
a retired general.

The security personnel, who craved
anonymity, lamented that several
months after President
Muhammadu Buhari had ordered
the payment of the allowance,
“nothing has been done.”

One of them, a policeman, told our
correspondent that he was
surprised at the non-payment of
the special allowance “especially
because the president is from a
security background.

The Presidency explained that
“clean and lawful” means of paying
the special allowance was being
devised, as directed by President
Buhari.

The Senior Special Assistant to the
President on Media and Publicity,
Mallam Garba Shehu, told our
correspondent that on assumption
of office, Buhari’s administration
discovered that the Office of the
National Security Adviser (NSA)
was paying the special allowance
without following due process.

Shehu said: “Under the
Muhammadu Buhari
administration, you are not going
to have the NSA going to the
Central Bank or the NNPC to fetch
money to share around. That is not
going to happen.”

He said the president had, to that
extent, directed the incumbent
NSA, General Babagana Munguno,
“to devise clean and lawful means
of paying those allowances as part
of the overall effort to clean up that
office.”