Your Excellency, Sir, when President Yar’Adua was alive, I wrote an open letter to him about pensioners and their condition in Nigeria. I told him how primitive it was for the federal government, through its Director of Pensions, to wickedly and senselessly direct poor pensioners to always report at Abuja for verification.
Thousands of pensioners would travel from different parts of the country to Abuja for the senseless verification. In effect, many of them died on the road while those who managed to get to Abuja would sleep under the bridges or just anywhere, as Abuja is a very expensive city where no Nigerian pensioner could afford an accommodation, not to talk of feeding. Luckily, I had stumbled on a newspaper report, the Tribune to be precise, in those days, which reported how a young man who wanted to collect his late father’s gratuity was asked to cough out 40% by the officers-in-charge at the pension house of horror, before he could get his father’s gratuity! I then included the report in my letter to the late president that the reason for asking people to always come to Abuja for verification was for the pension officials to negotiate away 40% of retiree’s gratuities and pensions. No wonder the pension house of horror became a goldmine for pension officers, I concluded. On this matter Yar’Adua, as a listening president, acted swiftly and cancelled the dangerous programme and corrupt system of pensioners’ verification in Abuja. The mind boggling report of 40% deduction from retirees’ gratuities opened the can of worms of corruption in the pension house of horrors.
Things got worse under president Jonathan who kept quiet when pension officers were caught stealing billions of pensioners’ fund, which explained why pensioners could not get their pensions even as of today. Perhaps the retirees’ problem with government could have been averted if not for the ineffectiveness of the Labour Unions and members of the National Assembly. The Labour Unions forget that they would one day graduate to retirees and suffer the same fate being suffered by the current retirees. Even members of the National Assembly usually feel unconcerned because the matter does not concern them or affect their jumbo salaries and allowances. As far as the Labour Unions and Legislators are concerned, the pensioners can go to hell, if there is hell, even though many of them have relatives and friends who are retirees. But I was surprised and happy when, at one time, the former Senate President, David Mark, in one of his rare utterances about pensioners, was so angry about the plights of pensioners that he pronounced curses on pension officers for stealing pensioners’ funds, and for the habitual non-payment of pensions and gratuities as and at when due. I openly wrote in praise of David Mark and asked him to work on a legislation that would make it mandatory for the government to pay gratuities and pension arrears with interests because it is money owed to pensioners by the government. If interests are paid on the arrears that should be treated as money borrowed from pensioners by the government, and is being withheld in fixed accounts, pension thieves would no longer be interested in fixing pensioners fund for making quick money because whatever interests accrue from the arrears of pensions and gratuities belong to the pensioners and not to the pension thieves. Unfortunately, the former Senate President never followed up his sensible gesture which now looks like a political gimmick coming out of the Senate Chambers at that time.
Sir, the present letter to your Excellency is reminiscent of my open letter to your predecessor, president Goodluck Jonathan, on the plight of pensioners. On the vexing issue of non payment of gratuities and pensions regularly and on time, I had a few questions for your predecessor in office (and which you may read with profit even now). Excerpts from The Nation, January 24, 2014, p21, to President Jonathan:
“Your Excellency Sir, are you aware that it is only in this country that pensioners do not receive their pensions, as and at when due, every month, like those currently in service? Are you also aware that, in this country, many pensioners are still owed probably up to 10 years, and that it is the pensions of those who had died since this period, together with unpaid pensions of those still alive, that are being stolen by officials in the pension house of horror? Mr. President, do you, for a moment, examine the life style of the people in your government in relation to the pitiful plights of the people you govern? Can you, therefore, say, with good conscience, that non payment of hapless and helpless retirees’ pensions and arrears is an act of good governance?”
“Now, Mr. President, Sir, are you aware of the 53% increase in pensions for retirees from July 1, 2009 which your minister of finance, Ngozi Iwealah, cut down to 33%, and the total cost of which your Technical Committee had calculated from July 1, 2009 at 53%? Is it true or not that the same 53% which was recommended from July 1, 2009, had been paid to the armed forces? Would it not be just and proper that these arrears are paid with interests from July 1, 2009 to date? Or are you delaying payment of the pensions and arrears so that more pensioners would die and the arrears of their pensions could go to the living pension thieves once more?”
“Lately, Sir, the newspapers have carried the frustrating news and even wrote editorials that your government failed to pay December salaries to Federal workers and pensioners, thus denying them the opportunities of celebrating Christmas and the New Year while you and your ministers, special advisers, their children and relatives consumed as much food as would have catered for millions of unpaid civil servants, pensioners and other poor Nigerians at that festive period that comes up only once in a year, at which time pensioners and civil servants were dying daily from non payments of salaries and pension arrears? It is just as if the government under your leadership and those of the states are enjoying it all, and perhaps saying that those pensioners that have survived penury so far should forever keep quiet or, if they like, jump into the lagoon or the atlantic ocean! But I believe in the truism: “Nobody knows what his/her future would be, and this future starts from the next moment”.
Now, Sir, it is surprising that even as we write, the condition of pensioners in this country has not improved significantly even under the present administrations at both the Federal and State levels. Federal pensioners are still owed many years of pension arrears after President Jonathan’s approval of 53% increase since 2009. The Police and bloody civilians are still fighting for the non negotiable 53% increase. Does this mean that pensioners are forever doomed in the hands of successive governments in this country? God forbid! The latest rumour is that the 20% cut from the original approved 53% has been passed down as income tax and deduction or contribution to housing programme in which pensioners do not, and cannot, participate while pensioners’ stipends are tax free. Of course, pensioners all over the country had protested over this illegal and wicked deduction of 20% out of the 53% as approved by your predecessor on July 1, 2009, and which had been approved for payment after the Wages Commission and the National Universities Commission (NUC) were said to have prepared 53% payment arrears for inclusion in the budget.
Sir, if our various governments (past and present) in this country are not wicked and selfish, it ought to have occurred to them that payment of gratuities and pension arrears in bulk sum instead of in installments would help pensioners to build or buy their own houses with their pension arrears paid at once. Also there is the danger of pensioners dying during installmental payments of arrears. On this matter, I once gave kudos to the then president, Olusegun Obasanjo when a proposal to pay gratuities and pension arrears by installments was made to him by his Minister of Finance. Obasanjo lambasted his minister saying that it was wrong and inhuman to ever think of paying a pensioner at 70 or 80 years by installment when there was no guarantee that such a pensioner would still be alive the following year to collect the next installment of his/her gratuity or pension as being proposed. He therefore recommended payment of gratuities and pension arrears to affected people who, by the grace of God, were still alive to collect and enjoy their pension arrears which may enable them to own their own houses in their life time after working for many years without being able to build houses of their own! In short, Sir, Obasanjo’s sensible position was that payment of arrears of pensions and gratuities should never be staggered.
When critically considered, we could see the perceived wickedness and selfishness of government officials, most of who own houses in big cities like Lagos, Abuja and Port Harcourt (in Nigeria) and also USA, UK, France, Dubai and other expensive locations in the world. In Abuja, for instance, there are many mansions owned by individuals, like in Maitama, which are not occupied but only guarded by maigards while many Nigerians have not a single room to live in, not to talk of having a one bedroom shanty in any of Abuja ghetto areas. Yet, pensioners who would have seized the opportunity of using their gratuities and pension arrears to own houses in their country homes or non expensive locations in Nigeria are willfully and cruelly denied the big opportunity of doing so by wickedly staggering the payments of their arrears which they cannot properly use for building their own houses. The reasonable thing to do to help pensioners is to pay them a lump sum of the arrears of their pensions and delayed gratuities at once. As Christmas and the New Year festivities are fast approaching, Nigerian workers and pensioners must be prepared to face the doom and gloom of unpaid salaries and pensions, as usual, in December 2016, by both the federal and state governments while people in government will enjoy themselves to no limit with their families and relatives as if we are not all children of God – all blessed with only one head, one mouth, one stomach and similar organs without discrimination of status before Him. God has not been so partial as to create some people who can sleep in more than one room and live in more than one house at the same time!
Even right now, Sir, the present Federal Government has been paying four years arrears of pensions by irregular, truncated, installments. After many years since 2009, pensioners were paid one year of 4 years arrears only a few months ago, with no undertaking about when the remaining 3 years of arrears would be paid. This is wicked and selfish for those who are actually swimming in Naira, Dollars, Pound sterling and Euros, and living in mansions with their families while they still have many mansions all over the country and abroad to the bargain! This is just one aspect of the many sins which our governments and their officials must acknowledge, confess and ask for forgiveness not only from God, but also from the poor Nigerians they may have cheated and traumatized to no end. But the pertinent question remains about the plight of pensioners in this country: will the present be like the past and the future be like the present? Thanks. Long live the Federal Republic of Nigeria.
- Professor Makinde, FNAL is DG/CEO, Awolowo Centre for Philosophy, Ideology and Good Governance, Osogbo: 08038011118
