Representatives of the widows of the officers who died in Hercules C -130 plane crashed in 1992 have lamented the non fulfillment of promises made to them by the federal government, their home states and armed forces in the area of building houses, purchase of cars and trainings of their children, 29 years after the demise of their husbands.
A statement by Special Assistant to the Minister of Defence on Media and Publicity Mohammad Abdulkadri Wednesday, said the national co-coordinator of the widows Ogale Jude stated this when they visited the minister in Abuja.
He said some of the widows have died for lack of funds to pick and pay their medical bills.
On September 26,1992 , a Nigerian Air force Aircraft (Lockheed C-130H Hercules transport plane- serial NAF911) crashed in Ejigbo, Lagos state three minutes after take-off from the Murtala Muhammed International Airport killing all 163 people on board.
Responding, minister of Defence Maj-Gen Bashir Salihi Magashi (retd) said he will address the gaps that led to the delay and discrepancies in settling the commitments to the widows.
Magashi tasked the group to furnish the ministry with the updated facts and figures about members living or dead, adding that the raw data will trigger actionable efforts to meet their demands once and final.
Meanwhile, Magashi said machineries have been put in motion to carefully contextualise and conceptualise the draft documents for the proposed Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) between Nigeria and Bulgaria.
He stated this when the Bulgarian ambassador to Nigeria, Yanko V. Yordanov paid him a courtesy call in Abuja.
General Magashi pointed out that the bilateral relation between Nigeria and Bulgaria spanning over five decades is long enough to snowball into a stronger defence cooperation, especially now that the country is confronting internal security threats being orchestrated by non – state actors.
