The Nation Newspaper

Tag: Pensioners

  • Pensioners protest in Osun

    Pensioners protest in Osun

    Pensioners in Osun State yesterday marched on the House of Assembly and the secretariat on Gbongan Road in Osogbo to protest the non-payment of their allowances.

    They carried placards  with various inscriptions, such as “Pensioners are suffering”; “Pay our pension”; “We can’t suffer anymore, stop deceiving us”, among others.

    The state Secretary of the Nigeria Union of Pensioners,  Adesoji Adedire, said the protest was to press home their demands.

    According him, no fewer than 236 pensioners have died in the last seven months, since the government failed to pay their pensions and gratuities.

    He said the union resolved to protest because the former President Goodluck Jonathan said no state was being owed monthly allocation.

    Adedire, who lamented the hardship facing his members in the last eight months, described the pension as their only source of income after retirement.

    He said they are tired of “empty promises” by the  government, noting that many pensioners cannot afford medical treatment.

    The protesters called on Nigerians and the Federal Government to intervene.

    The Deputy Chief Whip of  House of Assembly, Taiwo Adeyemi, urged the protesters  to be patient.

    He assured that the governor would soon find a solution to the problem.

    But the government said it was not unaware of the plight of the pensioners.

    In a statement by the media aide to the governor, Semiu Okanlawon, the government said: “We are aware of the protests by some pensioners yesterday morning.

    “It is obviously in continuation of the expected pressure on the government to fulfil its obligations.

    “However, we must state that this is not the best of time to embark on such protests because the pensioners themselves know that meetings of their representatives with the government have been focused on this and we have assurances that very soon this situation will be resolved and all the backlogs cleared.

    “If no one can accuse Governor RaufAregbesola of wasteful spending in his four years of governance why now would anyone say he is wasteful.

    “It is ironic that those making these allegations today saw in him and applauded the very prudent manner he had managed the affairs of the state even with the meagre resources at his disposal.

    “Where has he been wasteful? The accusation of insensitivity cannot be true because they know that but for the revenue crisis, payments of salaries and allowances were major priorities of this government.

    “We are aware that at periods like this, the head of any administration becomes easy target for pillory but this is just a phase that will pass away.”

  • Pensioners to Fashola: pay our arrears

    Retirees yesterday appealed to Governor Babatunde Fashola to pay the three-year arrears of 142 per cent pension increment approved by the Federal Government in 2000.

    The appeal, raised by the Chairman of the state chapter of the Nigerian Union of Pensioners (NUP), Najeemdeen Adebayo Ibrahim, urged the Fashola administration to implement the six per cent and 15 per cent increase as directed by the Federal Government in 2003 and 2007.

    Ibrahim said the government did not implement the 142 per  cent increment when it was announced by former President Olusegun Obasanjo in 2000.

    According to him, the non-implementation of the increment prompted the pensioners to seek judicial redress, which was decided in their favour, with the judge ordering the government not only to implement the increment, but also to pay all the arrears.

    His words: “Of the six years arrears, the government paid only three years. That was for the 142 per cent. The state has not even implemented the six per cent and 15 per cent.

    “So, we are calling on the Fashola administration to ensure the payment of the arrears and implementation of the six per cent and 15 per cent increment before leaving office.”

  • I will lift pensioners, Buhari pledges

    The presidential candidate of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Gen. Muhammadu Buhari, has promised to alleviate the plight of pensioners across the country, if elected.

    Buhari, who spoke while being presented with petition signed by a group of ex-servicemen protesting their treatment by the PDP-administration, said that he was “saddened by the current situation of military, police and all other pensioners.”

    He said it was wicked to allow senior citizens, who have served the country with zeal and patriotism, to be subjected to indignity and suffering while waiting to be paid their gratuity and pension.

    He said it was painful many of them have to engage in protests in their quest to be paid.

    If elected, Buhari said: “A situation where corrupt officials of state outrightly embezzle funds meant for payment of pensioners or delay such payment in order to fraudulently earn interest from deposit placements with banks will not be tolerated.”

    Buhari said he will invoke provisions of Article 1.5 of the APC manifesto to ensure that months before retirement of any officer, his or her entitlements would be worked out and accruing gratuity paid on the effective date of retirement while pension will follow as at when due.

    While noting that the way and manner a society treats its aged and infirm was reflective of the civilisation and decency of its people as a country, the presidential hopeful said Nigeria must strive to provide for the youth and build a strong future for retiring senior citizens.

  • Ambode assures pensioners of better life

    Ambode assures pensioners of better life

    •Launches Okada allowed stickers  

    The governorship candidate of the All Progressives Congress (APC) in Lagos State, Mr. Akinwunmi Ambode, has assured senior citizens of government’s support and prompt payment of their entitlement, if elected.

    Addressing members of the Nigerian Union of Pensioners (NUP), at the Blue Roof Center, Ikeja, he said the APC placed much emphasis on the welfare of the people, noting that he would make life better for them.

    “My father served in Lagos State, he served for 34 years and six months. He was unable to collect his gratuity. Ten years after his death I became the auditor-general for local government.

    “So, I had the opportunity for the first time to encounter pensioners, in view of my personal experience, I decided that I will correct the pains and agony encountered by pensioners.

    “The APC is after the welfare of our senior citizens, they will not be made to suffer for nothing. We are not only after the welfare of those who served in Lagos State but also those who did not serve in the state.

    “As senior citizens we need to take care of all of you. This administration is working on the harmonisation of the benefits of our senior citizens.”

    He added that government had built recreational centres, called ‘Welfare Villa’ in some locations, where senior citizens can relax and entertain themselves free of charge.

    Responding, NUP State Secretary Oludara Awoseye said they will support Ambode because of the innovation he brought to the management of local government, noting that the APC candidates ensured that pensioners received their entitlement promptly.

    He said: “There was a time we were owed five months, we planned to stage a protest, but somebody advised us to approach Ambode which we did and he solved the problem for us.

    “We appreciate all that you did for us when you served at the local government; we are particularly convinced that you will not leave us now that you are aspiring to be the governor. We will support and vote for you because you are dependable and reliable,” he said.

    Ambode launched the ‘Okada Allowed Stickers’ campaign, calling on motorcycle operators to ply the approved 9000 roads and stay off 475 roads for their safety.

    He said the government of the progressives had responded to the needs and yearnings of Lagosians by providing basic amenities.

    He said the safety of the commuters was the motive behind the traffic law awareness effort of the Support Group for Ambode 2015 as the right step in the right direction

    He praised the volunteer group for the radical shift it  recorded in campaign management, stating that he was overwhelmed by the passion and commitment which made many professionals in the volunteer group to leave their businesses and commit their time to his election.

    Noting that the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) deliberately misinformed the public to score cheap political points, he said the sticker campaign will expose their campaign of misinformation and show that the Babatunde Fashola administration  meant well.

    The Chairman of the group,  Demola Seriki, said the group discovered that the campaign of misinformation of the PDP was misleading many commercial motorcycles operators to assume that they were banned from operating on all routes.

    He said the group studied the Lagos Traffic Law and interacted with stakeholders,  such as the Ministry of Transportation, Local Government, Lagos State Signage and Advertising Agency and grassroots politicians to design the sticker campaign.

    Seriki said each LASAA street pole on roads that commercial motorcyclists could ply, according to the traffic law, would be decorated with the sticker.

    He pleaded with law enforcement agencies to be humane in enforcing the law, noting that complaints from operators were mainly on extortion.

    Similarly, he called on operators to obey the laws by using helmets and carrying the approved number of passengers to ensure their safety.

    Present at the launch were the former Secretary to the State Government, Mrs. Adenrele Adeniran-Ogunsanya,; former Auditor-General of Local Governments  M.M. Hassan; former Special Adviser to the Governor on Environment Sesan Olanrewaju; former Chairman, Ajeromi-Ifelodun Local Government Kamal Baiyewu, among others.

  • Hope for pensioners

    The grief of Abia State pensioners may soon be behind them. But that depends on two factors: one, if the All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA) governorship candidate in the state, Dr. Alex Otti wins the election, and two, if he keeps his promise to pay the retirees’ arrears.

    Otti said in Umuahia, the state capital, that he would pay the arrears if elected.  The former Managing Director of Diamond Bank Plc was speaking at forum with some members of the Nigerian Union of Pensioners (NUP) from the 17 local government areas of the state.

    Otti who sounded bitter over pensioners’ plight in the state, described them as the foundation and pillars upon which the Nigeria and modern civil service was built and should not be neglected.

    He said, “Anybody who doesn’t respect his parents is on his way down the drain. These people gave their all in the service to the nation as civil servants and do not deserve the kind of treatment being meted out on them today.”

    The candidate bemoaned the inability of governments over the years to treat senior citizens fairly.

    Otti regretted that senior citizens were, in addition to their unpaid arrears, also forced to pay heavily to access medical facilities, adding that he would end medical tourism in the state.

    He said that he had concluded plans to establish three major specialist hospitals in Ohafia, Umuahia and Aba with state-of-the-art facilities in order to take care of the medical healthcare of the people, expressing hope that the projects on completion would be staffed by health professionals and would make the state a choice destination for the treatment of various healthcare related cases.

    Otti lamenting how the state resources have been badly managed by the incumbent administration challenged the government of the day to account for what they have done with the money the state have so far realized from the rich oil deposits in the state.

    The former Diamond Bank chief went further to promise more dividend of democracy, free and compulsory education, and giving the state a facelift within the first 4years of his administration, adding that it was time politics should be taken serious not to be left in the hands of politicians to toy with it.

    In his response, Abia NUP chairman, Comrade Chukwuma Ndubuisi Udensi thanked the APGA candidate for finding time to come and see them.

    Udensi said he was optimistic that Otti would perform credibly if elected governor of the state owing to his track record and antecedents in Diamond Bank where his (Otti) records stand tall which he believed Otti would replicate as the governor of the state.

    Recall that no fewer than 500 pensioners in Abia State on Wednesday stormed Government House in Umuahia to protest for the third time in a month, the non-payment of their arrears of pension and gratuities which they said had lingered for more than 16 years.

     

  • Pensioners demand 29 months arrears

    The Nigerian Union of Pensioners (NUP) has urged the Federal Government to immediately pay pensioners 29 months outstanding arrears.

    The senior citizens also praised the government for earlier paying arrears of nine months with 33 per cent pension increment.

    Its President, Comrade Abel Afolayan, in a statemnt, said paying the pensioners the arrears would lift the heavy burden off their shoulders, stressing that pensioners would remain indebted to the government if the balance is paid as soon as this year’s budget proposal is passed into law.

    While stating that the payment of the nine months arrears put smiles on the faces of pensioners and their families, Afolayan said paying off the remaining arrears will demonstrate the commitment of government to the welfare and well-being of its senior citizens.

    “Our members will ever remain indebted to the Federal Government if the balance of the arrears is paid as soon as the 2015 budget is passed. Similarly, all unpaid gratuities and other entitlements of pensioners should be as well captured in the 2015 budget for payment.

    “We wish to equally make a case that the balance of 20.4 percentage pension increase which made the total 53.4 percentage increase, formally and officially approved by the Federal Government be immediately worked out and captured in the 2015 budget or in the subsequent budget for payment,” he said

    The union also called on the Federal Government to place pension funding on first line charge as obtained in other countries, and as a mark of respect for the senior citizens.

  • ‘Lagos budget is pensioners’ budget’

    ‘Lagos budget is pensioners’ budget’

    The valedictory budget presented by Lagos State governor, Babatunde Fashola last month will solve most of the state parastatals and agencies pensioners lingering problems, Commissioner for Establishment, Training and Pensions, Mrs. Florence Oguntuase has said.

    Oguntuase who described the budget as pensioner’s budget while speaking in Lagos said the pensioners whose problems mostly rose from the old pension scheme will soon have cause to smile.

    Speaking on pension arrears being owed pensioners of local government and Water Corporation, she said the problem will soon be resolved.

    She said: “There is no doubt we have issue with few parastatals and we are taking it on board. We are going to pay each parastatals on its own merit. Before we were going to lump them together but we discovered that their cases are different from each other.

    “What the executive council has asked us to do is to take them one after the other.

  • Kebbi pensioners protest non-payment of gratuity

    PENSIONERS in Kebbi State have stormed the office of Governor Saidu Dakingari at Birnin Kebbi , to protest unpaid pension arrears and gratuity. The protesters, who were largely retired teachers and local government workers, cried out for the non-payment of their pension and gratuity. “We are tired of unfulfilled promises,’ they declared noting that apart from Kebbi, other states had complied with the FG’s directive on the payment of pensions.

    The state chairman of the National Union Of Pensioners who led the protesters, stated: “The state government did not even pay attention to us today, but before now, whenever we demand for our funds, the government would plead for more time to pay. Now we are here to demand for our money and nobody is even attending to us.

    The Governor is in the office right now but he did not attend to us or even send a representative. We have had enough of his government. We want our money. Some people have died in the course of waiting for this money and some are really sick and hypertensive; you can see for yourself we are all old people that need to be resting, yet here we are suffering in the sun.”

  • Agony of pensioners

    Agony of pensioners

    “Rest Is Sweet After Labour”, is a truthful saying which is adopted by the Nigeria union of pensioners, NUP, as its motto: This motto is apt because every pensioner expects to have a sweet rest after laboring for the better half of his life. Rest is a connotation of comfort which comes after exiting from the hustle and bustle of life. It is essentially at the root of all human struggles in life. Everybody desires peaceful and stress-less living after old age. Thus, a father sends his child to School with the expectation to give him support when he becomes old. In the same manner a man establishes business in order to make profit which he saves in anticipation of making life easy for him when the chips are down. The Nigerian pensioner is no less desirous of a peaceful life devoid of stress after retirement. Once this desire is not met then there arise problems. But the question is: has this desire been met?

    The average pensioner had spent more than half of his youthful and productive life serving his or her fatherland in anticipation of the payment of gratuity and pension which he or she would fall back on after retirement. Unfortunately though, this has been a tall dream! No thanks to the absolute neglect and contempt for pensioners by successive governments and the twin evil of massive corruption by pension officers which has not only brought untold hardships, but also sent many of them to their untimely graves.

    There is no doubt pension problems, like many others, predate President Jonathan’s administration, however, It smacks of self delusion for his aides to exonerate him from blame for their continuation. This is unacceptable because it is presumed that the President knew these problems before aspiring to be President, and that he had ready answers to them, therefore there is no justification for shifting blames.

    Thus, it is an open secret that, pension problems, like many others, have grown from bad to worse since the advent of President Jonathan’s administration, and there is no hope or signs that they would soon be surmounted. Reason is that, all the supposed efforts embarked upon by Mr. President to sanitize pension problems have been half-hearted. Some of such efforts include the setting up of the Abdulrasheed Maina Pension Reform Task Team to sanitize pension administration in the country, a mandate which was creditably executed. Expectedly, Mr. Maina’s Task Team produced a Comprehensive Biometric Database of Federal pensioners, in addition to Smart Cards to minimize the frequency of verification exercises which had become veritable avenues for perpetuating corruption by government officials. Unfortunately though, these laudable achievements were scuttled by the Senate Joint Investigation Team headed by Senator Aloysius Etuk.

    This unfortunate development has predictably, further encouraged unprecedented corruption by pension officers, resulting in more sufferings for pensioners in terms of missing names, non-payment of pensions and deaths among many of them. In addition to these atrocities, pensioners have continually been forced to travel long distance to undergo sham verification exercises in-spite of their fragile health. They have also been forced many times to fill complaint forms which have always ended up in trash cans.

    Pensioner’s problems do not end there. Pensioners have not had their pensions increased since 2003, even though workers’ salaries have been increased several times since then. The Nigerian Constitution provides in sections 173 sub-section 3 and section 210 sub-sections 3, that pensions must be increased every five years and also whenever workers’ salaries are increased, whichever comes first, yet these constitutional provisions have been obeyed in the breach. Another very disdainful issue is the federal government’s vault-face over the 53 percent pension increase which it announced in 2009, but which it has scaled down to 33 percent.

    In an attempt to justify this unjustifiable action, the federal government said the reduction is as a result of the deduction of 10 percent tax, 7.5 percent contributory pension and 2.5 percent national housing fund, amounting to 20 percent. This is not only funny but laughable, because pensioners under the Pay As You Go system do not fall under the purview of any of the above. Pensioners will take nothing less than the official 53 percent increase from the federal government. Following from this, the three tiers of government in Nigeria are advised to note that pension matter is a statutory issue and not a privilege, which any leader can subject to his or her whimsical pleasure.

    Deriving from these official recklessness, it is no surprise that in a country like Nigeria, there are to be found many pensioners who still earn less than one thousand naira as pension per month, and to add salt to injury, they are not even paid as and when due. This is in spite of very difficult economic times, when even those who control and manipulate the Nigerian Treasury to their own advantage, are not content with their loot, jumbo salaries and mind-boggling allowances. And given the insouciant manner the federal government handles most important national issues, there is no hope that pensioners’ fate would change for the better any time soon.

    In this regard, pensioners have lost faith with steps so far taken by the federal government to sanitize pension administration in the country. Notable among such steps are the recent merger of the old and new pension systems under one law, and the creation of Pension Transitional Arrangement Department, PTAD, which is seen by pensioners as another ploy by government to create a new avenue for pension thieves to deal the last blow on the remaining pensioners alive. Pensioners also believe that if government really wants to sanitize pension administration, it should do more than just churning out laws that are obeyed in the breach or creating institutions that would serve as mere conduit pipes for top government officials.

    Given the above scenario, it is an incontrovertible fact that one of the most abused, traumatized and neglected categories of Nigerian citizens are pensioners whose only crime is that they had served their country meritoriously. Besides they are seen as old and weak men and women who lack the energy to fight for their rights as other able bodied individuals and unions do. This includes strike which is the only language the Nigerian system understands. But Nigerian leadership seem to forget that as old people, God would always prod them up, and would also punish every individual who maltreat the aged who are the conscience of society. Pensioners desire to be venerated and not maltreated.

    Finally the Nigerian government is hereby adviced to wake up from its slumber and apparent poverty of ideas, if it really wants to sanitize pension administration in the country, and declare national state of emergency on pension. Enough is enough, as pensioners are all tired of sanctimonious preachments which have been anything but deceitful.

    Banchir, is a member Nigerian Union Pensioners, NUP, Langtang Zone, Plateau State

     

  • Photo: Pensioners protest in Abuja

    Photo: Pensioners protest in Abuja

    Ex-Military Pensioners protesting against non payment of their allowances at the Federal Secretariat Entrance to the Presidential Villa in Abuja Wednesday. PHOTO AKIN OLADOKUN.
    Ex-Military Pensioners protesting against non payment of their allowances at the Federal Secretariat Entrance to the Presidential Villa in Abuja Wednesday. PHOTO AKIN OLADOKUN.