Founder and Chief Executive Officer of the Support Our Troops Foundation (SOT), Funmi Ogbue, has appealed to philanthropists and well-meaning Nigerians to support families of soldiers who died or were disabled while serving the nation.

She made the call at the launch of the Foundation’s Annual Empowerment, Skill and Livelihood Initiative held over the weekend in Abuja. Ogbue said the programme was designed to equip widows, wounded soldiers and dependants of fallen heroes with livelihood skills to help them earn a decent living.

“We are poised to extend our support to not just the widows of the fallen, but also the wounded soldiers and the orphans. Our target is to lift the spirits of Nigerian military personnel, whether the wounded or those left behind by the fallen,” she said.

“For us, it is about partnership and the success of Support Our Troops rests entirely on you, the public, because it is not something we can do entirely by ourselves. Without the good-spirited Nigerians who have been supporting us up till today, we could never have done anything.”

Represented by the SOT Project Coordinator, Ojinika Mbakalu, Ogbue explained that the one-year empowerment programme targets 100 dependants in the military community.

Founding Director of SOT, Tokunbo Oladeinde, said supporting the armed forces and their families was a way of safeguarding Nigeria’s peace and freedom, which “do not come free.”