AMBODE, RTD D.I.G ISRAEL AJAO AND THE INJUSTICE IN LAGOS STATE NEIGHBORHOOD SAFETY CORPS (LNSC), OWING BATCHES 3 & 4 OFFICERS 11 MONTHS UNPAID SALARIES
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By: AbdulAziz S.O.
Ikeja, Lagos State, 27 March, 2018 marks a year since the Lagos State Neighborhood Safety Corps was launched with fanfare. The Board of the Safety Agency was mandated to recruit, train and equip 5,700 officers from 20 Local Governments and 37 Local Council Development Areas of Lagos. It is, however,sad to note that corps officers in Batches 3 & 4 are yet to get salaries for 11 months The authorities of the corps has engaged in a needless hide and seek game of denials to the detriment of the affected officers. These officers are said to have suffered severe insults and embarrassments in the hands of their landlords and creditors due to their unpaid salaries. Some were reported hospitalized without adequate treatment; there were cases of those who lost their children to sickness because they could not procure proper medical care; some of them were reported to have been shamefully and forcefully ejected from their rented apartments; while some had to bear the stigma of having their children sent home from school because they could not pay school fees of their wards.
It is, therefore, most uncharitable for the authorities of the Lagos Neighborhood Safety Corps to have vehemently denied owing eleven months salaries to Batches 3 & 4 Officers. We do have it on authority that verifiable evidence are available to show some officers have been working in some Local Governments and Local Council Development Areas since May, 2017. All the lame excuses making the rounds are not valid enough to keep these suffering officers in dire straits for salaries they have laboured for in the Past Eleven months. Now the much-touted March 2018 date slated for the payment of the outstanding salaries has come and gone. So what else?
Besides, it is regrettable that several promises made by the safety corps in the past to clear the backlog of unpaid salaries were severely broken without any valid reason. We are compelled to urge the corps to immediately pay all outstanding salaries to the concerned officers, and thus relieve their sore financial burdens. For an Agency that stands for the safety of lives and properties, it should not be seen jeopardizing the health and financial safety of it’s gallant officers through unpaid salaries. Suffice it to say that such unwholesome practice may lead to compromise of professional values and incalculable damage to the ethical psyche of officers. Henceforth, we advise that primacy be given to their welfare to further boost their confidence to fight crime and criminality in the State alongside their senior colleagues in Batches 1&2.
We also earnestly APPEAL to our amiable Governor Akinwunmi Ambode, in particular, to strongly prevail on the authorities of Neighborhood Safety Corps to look into the plight of these affected Corps Officers and as a matter of urgency credit their accounts with the unpaid salaries latest first week in April.

I just pray that justice should be done concerning this case. The pains and suffering the affected corps members are passing through is too much

Reading this post makes me cry