Dan-Ali: Retired Officers Were Partisan, Professionally Corrupt

•  Says it is part of ongoing defence reforms

Senator Iroegbu in Abuja

The Minister of Defence, Brig-Gen. Muhammad Mansur Dan-Ali, has said that the 38 Nigerian Army officers compulsorily retired from service were partisan, financially as well as professionally corrupt.

Dan-Ali made this remark on Monday while fielding questions from journalists shortly after delivering a lecture titled: “Defence Management:
the Nigerian Experience”, at the National Defence College (NDC), Abuja

He said that the purge is part of an ongoing reform in the Armed Forces of Nigeria rather than a witch-hunt, and urged Nigerians not to be deceived by what he described as “the false information going round about the retirement of the officers, stressing: “No innocent officer was retired unjustly”.

The minister disclosed that the concerned officers were retired after due process, painstaking review and assessment of their conduct in the various tasks assigned to them at a particular time.

According to him, the affected officers were indicted for offences ranging from partisanship and professional misconduct to financial corruption.

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.”

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