Our Fallen Heroes and Veterants Must be Well Celebrated -Aregbesola

By Adebayo Rasheed Mabayoje

The 2016 edition of Armed Forces Remebrance Day flagged off today with the launching of the emblem in remeberance of Nigeria’s fallen heroes and veterants.

Governor Rauf Aregbesola addressed members of the Nigerian Legion, in Osogbo.

Bellow is an excerpt from the text of his address.

“Our own society must devise means to specially reward and support our veterans. Their plight should not be an annual event, during the Armed Forces Remembrance Day celebration only.

“In other lands, stores give them special discounts; those returning to school have their tuition fees slashed while veterans are given free passes to gated events. In several instances, they enjoy free medical care and other social services.

“They are made to feel appreciated every day, and not just on special occasions like this. We can draw many examples from this and build a reward system for our veteran soldiers into our social institutions.

“We must also build industries around the sets of skills they have acquired in service. This by no means does not include hired assassination, since a soldier by definition must be a sharp shooter. But I am kidding.

“The commonest engagement of veterans has been to hire them for sentry duties. This is hardly enough. In many cases it amounts to underutilisation of resources. There are diverse ways they can be engaged productively and maximally. Most of them have acquired advanced skills in many vocations that could be deployed into nation building and development, but are just lying fallow. Those of them with combat experience can be reprogrammed and put in a special police units needed to engage armed bandits and other violent criminals in our urban centres. They will be glad to resume their defence duties in civilian capacities.”

-Excerpts from a Text delivered by Osun Governor, Rauf Aregbesola at The Lauching of The Armed Forces Remebrance Day Emblem, held in The State House, Osogbo.