The sun over Abuja didn’t just burn — it punished. Sergeant Bala wiped a line of sweat off his brow with a trembling hand. His uniform, what was left of it, clung to him like a wet rag. Around him, a hundred other ex-soldiers stood firm — sun-scarred, battle-tested, broke.
The chant rose again:
“PAY US OUR DUES!”
It wasn’t just noise. It was fury. Pain. Decades of silence detonating all at once.
Bala’s eyes scanned the streets, lips parched. A fly landed on his cheek. He didn’t flinch. His mind was far from here — back in Maiduguri, the day the bomb didn’t go off. It should’ve. But he’d crawled through sewage and wire, bare-handed, to defuse it. He’d saved a platoon. Got a medal. Got a handshake from some general who now lived in Dubai.
What Bala didn’t get was his pension.
“Sergeant, you alright?”
Private Sunday — just a boy during the insurgency, now grey like the rest of them.
“I’m not alright,” Bala growled, voice like gravel. “I gave this country both legs and half my liver. What did she give back?”
Sunday looked away. They both knew the answer.
Ten years ago, Bala had a name. Now he had arthritis, a leaking roof, and a wife who boiled rice with tears. He’d written letters, begged ministry staff, stood in queues like cattle. He once collapsed in front of the Defence Headquarters. They called it “unbecoming conduct.”
The trucks rolled in — black, dusty, mean-looking. Policemen jumped down, brandishing batons like they were medals.
“Disperse or face force!”
Bala laughed. Loud. Unhinged.
“You think force scares men who’ve tasted war?”
One officer lunged. Mistake. Bala twisted his wrist mid-air, disarmed him in two seconds flat. The crowd roared. The baton dropped to the ground, clattering like truth in a courtroom.
Then the tear gas came.
Men scattered. Some fell. Bala stood. Choking, eyes burning, pride bleeding.
Because this was the war no one prepared them for. No jungle. No landmine. Just policies, politicians, and promises packed with termites.
As he knelt beside Sunday, coughing blood and bile, Bala looked to the sky and whispered, “We didn’t lose the war. We lost the peace.”
The headlines the next day called it “Unruly Behavior by Ex-servicemen.” No mention of unpaid benefits. No mention of years spent bleeding for a country that now looked away.
But somewhere in the city, a schoolteacher read that story and paused. So did a nurse whose salary hadn’t come in two months. A farmer buried in taxes. A market woman who lost her son in uniform.
And just like that, the truth clicked:
If men who once held the line with bullets can be dumped like empty shells, what hope is left for the rest of us?
