War wounded threaten suicide

Wounded Nigerian troops who served with the West African peacekeeping force, ECOMOG, have threatened mass suicide if the Nigerian authorities fail to send them overseas for advanced medical treatment, the ‘Post Express’ newspaper reported on Monday.

The some 100 soldiers were wounded during ECOMOG’s campaign in Sierra Leone and Liberia between 1990 and 1999, the newspaper said. Some patients have bullet particles in their bodies and others have had their legs amputated but need final treatment abroad, as recommended by doctors at the Nigerian Army Base Hospital in Yaba, a Lagos suburb.

Some of the soldiers have been at the hospital since their evacuation between 1997 and 1999, the newspaper said. It quoted the director of Army Public Relations, Colonel Felix Chukwuma, as saying that more soldiers would be sent abroad for further care as soon as money was available.