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A Bank Alert Is Not a Salute
Letters from Stockholm: to President Tinubu, on the morning his soldiers were paid
Kio Amachree | Letters from Stockholm
Stockholm, Early Morning
It is just before seven in Stockholm. Autumn has settled over the water, the light is thin, and on my screen Nigerian soldiers are telling SaharaReporters that their new pay has finally reached their accounts. A Private who used to take home about ₦103,000 a month now receives about ₦190,000. A Lance Corporal has gone from about ₦110,000 to about ₦202,000. Your own social media aide, Mr President, was quick to celebrate it on X as a lift for frontline morale.
I read it twice. Then I put my coffee down and began this letter, because I think you have mistaken what you have bought.
The facts first. In August you approved rises of 80 per cent for Privates to Staff Sergeants, 50 per cent for Warrant Officers to Colonels and 30 per cent for officers above Colonel, effective 1 September. About 250,000 personnel are covered. The annual military wage bill climbs from ₦660 billion to ₦924 billion.
Pay Them, and Pay Them More
Let nobody twist my words. The Nigerian soldier deserves every kobo of this and more. A young man sent into the bush to face Boko Haram for ₦103,000 a month was being treated with contempt by the country he defends. Even after this rise he is poor by African standards: Daily Trust reported that a South African private earns the equivalent of roughly ₦715,000 to ₦1 million a month.
So this is not generosity, Mr President. It is a part-payment on a debt Nigeria has owed its soldiers for years. My argument is not with the soldier’s payslip. It is with what you believe his signature on it now means.
Why Now, Mr President?
In politics, timing is confession. The same week the soldiers were paid, public servants under the Joint National Public Service Negotiating Council called a three-day warning strike, 2 to 4 October, over hardship. The nurse, the teacher and the ministry clerk received no 80 per cent. They carry chalk and files, not rifles.
Cast your mind back to October 2025. Sixteen officers were detained. Defence Headquarters called it indiscipline and called the coup reports false. In January 2026 the same headquarters admitted officers had been implicated in a plot to overthrow your government. In April, six people, among them a retired major-general, were charged with treason and terrorism. Reporting at the time said the alleged plotters were officers bitter about promotions and benefits. They are presumed innocent until a court rules. But you drew a lesson from that episode, and I fear it was the wrong one.
Add a presidential election in January 2027, and the picture is plain from where I sit. This is not thanks. It is an insurance premium. Pay the men with guns, and let the men with chalk strike.
A Lesson from the Mess Hall
You have spent your life in the counting house of Lagos politics. So allow a man who grew up around the old-guard officers who once ran Nigeria to explain something. I did my National Service in the corridors of power. I have seen it all.
The French call it esprit de corps: the spirit of the body. It is the bond between a soldier and the man beside him in the trench, between the section and its sergeant, between the regiment and its colours. It is forged in shared danger, shared hunger and shared grief at a graveside. It is not credited to an account on a Wednesday evening.
Napoleon, who understood soldiers better than any politician, remarked that men will fight long and hard for a scrap of coloured ribbon. He was not talking about money. He was talking about honour and belonging. A mercenary fights for wages. A soldier fights for his comrades and his country.
The officers I knew had their faults, some of them grave. But they all understood this: you can rent a soldier’s time, but you can never buy his loyalty. Loyalty is earned by the commander who eats last, visits the wounded, brings the bodies home and does not forget the widow.
Honour Has No Price Tag
Here in Sweden, where I have lived for decades, conscription returned in 2017 and the armed forces belong to the citizens. No Swedish prime minister imagines he can purchase the regiments. Their loyalty belongs to the constitution and the people, and everyone knows it.
The Nigerian soldier swears the same kind of oath: to the Federal Republic and its Constitution. Section 217 gives the armed forces a duty to defend Nigeria and its integrity. That duty is not to you, Mr President. It is not to the APC, and it is not to Aso Rock. Military honour is the one Nigerian currency that never devalues, because it was never put up for sale.
And please do not underestimate the humour of the barracks. Soldiers have a nickname and a joke for every politician who ever tried to buy them. Tonight, in messes across Nigeria, men will bank the money with straight faces, because they have earned it, and then laugh at the idea that it settles anything. They know the difference between a raise and respect. Do they have armour? Proper weapons? Will they be evacuated if they are hit? Will their widows be paid? A President whose response to bloodshed in Plateau was ten minutes at Jos airport should not expect them to mistake a bank alert for leadership.
The Arithmetic at the Top
Percentages flatter. On the scale Daily Trust published, the new pay runs from ₦187,200 at the bottom to ₦3.25 million at the top. A 30 per cent rise at the top is worth about four times a Private’s whole new monthly salary. The private got the headline. The general got the money. Soldiers can count.
What the Soldier Sees on Leave
Every soldier has a mother in the market, a brother in the civil service and a sister with a degree and no job. On leave he sees what all Nigeria sees: food prices, fuel prices, a mountain of debt. He hears about the contracts and the European holidays. ₦190,000 does not blind him. His barracks is not a gated estate. It is Nigeria.
Mr President, Money Will Not Make You Safe
If you believe this payment has made you safe, you need your head examined. No ruler has ever been protected by a payroll. Nigeria has had seven successful coups. Across Africa, presidents who fattened their armies while starving their people learned too late that illegitimacy cannot be bought off.
Let me be precise about what I mean. I do not want soldiers anywhere near power. I lived through Buhari’s Decree 2 and through Abacha, and I would wish a uniform in Aso Rock on no Nigerian. I condemn anyone who plots one. The army belongs in its barracks, loyal to the Constitution.
That is exactly my point. Your danger does not come from the soldier you are trying to buy. It comes from the ballot box, the courts, the FOIA files in Washington and the forensic auditor. It comes from the market woman, and from the soldier’s own mother who cannot afford rice. None of them can be bought with 80 per cent.
The Kio Solution
- Publish the full new pay scale for every rank, and show in the budget where the extra ₦264 billion a year comes from.
- Order an independent audit of defence procurement and troop welfare, covering armour, ammunition, rations and medical evacuation, so the money reaches the trench and not the contractor.
- Clear every outstanding death benefit, injury payment and pension owed to soldiers’ families within twelve months, and publish the list.
- Give the police, civil servants, teachers and health workers a matching cost-of-living settlement, and begin the full reboot of the Nigeria Police. Security is not only men with rifles.
- Keep the armed forces out of politics. No soldiers as campaign props. No deployment at polling units in 2027 beyond what the Constitution and the Electoral Act strictly allow. A public pledge from every service chief to the Constitution, not to a man.
Disclaimer: This is an opinion piece. The coup-related charges mentioned are allegations before the courts, and all accused are presumed innocent. My reading of the President’s motives is my opinion, drawn from the public record.
Salute the soldier, Mr President. Then earn his respect. It is the only thing you cannot pay for.
Nigeria belongs to Nigerians.
Kio Amachree
Letters from Stockholm | The Kio Solution
Founder and President, Worldview International, Stockholm
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