President Buhari stops special allowance for Aso Villa guards

President Muhammadu Buhari has ordered the stoppage of special allowance for security personnel in the Presidential Villa, investigations by The Punch have revealed. Before now, all security personnel posted to the Villa were being paid what is known as Risk and Hazard Allowance.

However, since his assumption of office, President Buhari was said to have refused to pay the money to them. During the last regime, our correspondents gathered that senior security officers covering the Villa were said to have been collecting between N75,000 and N50,000 while their junior ones received between N30,000 and N25,000 on a monthly basis...

One of the officers manning the Villa told correspondents that the ADC to the President, Lt. Col. Muhammed Abubakar, summoned sectional heads of all the security agencies manning different positions within the Villa to inform them about the stoppage of the allowance.

It was gathered that the ADC decided to call the sectional heads following rumours making the rounds among the operatives that the money meant for the affected officers was being embezzled. One of the affected officers, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said, “About two weeks ago, an assistant superintendent of one of the agencies called and said that the ADC met all the heads of the security agencies in the Villa where the news was broken to them.

“Our own head also met us and warned us to desist from carrying rumours about the money. He said that the ADC told them that no money was being released to the guards, as being speculated.”

It was further gathered that the leaders of the affected security organs were told that the officers manning the Villa should be contented with their monthly salaries.