Retired military officers are set to stage a protest at the Ministry of Defence on Wednesday over the non-implementation of consequential pension adjustments following salary increases approved for serving military personnel.
One of the leaders of the retirees, retired Colonel Innocent Azubike, disclosed this in an interview on Monday, saying the demonstration would focus on what the retirees described as their constitutional pension rights.
Azubike said President Bola Tinubu approved a salary increase for serving military personnel in November 2025, which he argued should have resulted in a corresponding adjustment to the pensions of retired personnel.
According to him, the pension adjustment has not been implemented despite previous acknowledgements by senior military authorities that the President had approved the salary increase.
He said the retirees would gather at the Defence Ministry on Wednesday to demand the implementation of the adjustment.
Azubike alleged that another salary increase for military personnel was announced in August 2026 and is expected to take effect in September, but the pension implications for retirees were again left out.
He said funds had already been calculated for the latest salary increase, but the consequential adjustment for military pensioners was not included in the computation.
The retired colonel stressed that the retirees were not opposed to improved salaries for serving personnel, but insisted that retired officers must also benefit from the corresponding pension adjustment.
He warned that continued exclusion of existing pensioners could create significant disparities between officers of the same rank and with similar years of service who retired at different times.
Azubike explained that personnel retiring under the new salary structure could receive substantially higher pensions than colleagues of the same rank and similar service duration who retired earlier.
He illustrated the potential disparity by saying a recently retired captain could receive as much as N500,000 in pension, while another captain of the same rank who retired earlier could receive about N250,000.
According to him, the disparity could affect retirees across different ranks if the consequential adjustment is not implemented.
He said this concern was the major reason the retirees decided to protest at the Ministry of Defence.
When contacted, the spokesperson for the Minister of Defence, Leah Katung-Babatunde, declined to comment on the matter.
