Pensioners are supposed to be enjoying their lives after years of toiling for their country. But, in Nigeria, the reverse is the case, as the monthly dues of many of them are delayed for months and at times years, writes LEKE SALAUDEEN
HE knew he did not have the strength. So, he sent his son to the Pension Office in Abuja from his base in Benin, Edo State. But despite the fact that his son was armed with a letter of authority to receive the money on his behalf, he was ignored by the officials in charge. He had to return to Benin to fetch his aged and sick father, a decision which proved fatal.
Elder Michael Igiebor Okhokpa had worked with the National Youth Service Corps (NYSC). He died on his way to Abuja to receive his pension. He died inside the vehicle conveying him to Abuja. In frustration, the son took his father’s body to the pension officers. There was pandemonium when they arrived, as angry onlookers, including other pensioners, nearly caused a riot. The hitherto recalcitrant officials promptly paid the dead man’s pension.
Certainly, this is not how to treat a senior citizen who had served his country meritoriously. It shows how callous and insensitive the Nigerian system can often times be.
Getting gratuity and pensions in Nigeria has become a nightmare for senior citizens. Often, these men and women who spent their youth serving the country are compelled to make long journeys to Lagos or Abuja or state headquarters for some officials to ascertain their continued existence. In some cases, the pensioners, where they enjoy good health, do not even have enough funds to make the trip.
Retirement is a period workers should look forward to with hope and pleasure. After many years of hard labour, a worker is entitled to some peace and security in his old age. It is for this reason that many people once considered a career in civil service safe and secure. But that is no more. The life of an average pensioner is now insecure and generally, senior citizens are treated shabbily. Help does not come from the state either, and the future is uncertain.
Last Wednesday, the National Union of Pensioners (NUP) was to hold a peace protest. The Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) had directed all members of the congress, who work in Abuja and Lagos, to stay off work on that day in solidarity with the pensioners. But the protest has been suspended till April 30 to allow government to address the issues at stake.
The Ag. President of the congress, Comrade Promise Adewusi, had, before the suspension, said that NLC would not rescind the decision unless the Federal Government “considers the inequities in the pension fund administration in the country, particularly as they affect our members.”
He had said: “The issues in a nutshell are non-payment of outstanding arrears to scores of pensioners, non-enrolment of thousands of pensioners on the Federal Pension Payroll , non-payment of death benefits to deserving next of kin.”
He added that other issues at stake are the non-implementation of payments to pensioners to reflect the 53.4 per cent salary review and payment of pension in line with relevant increases in the Minimum Wage to N18,000, withholding of the NUP statutory check-off dues for over a year, and the slow pace at which pension payment is being processed by the Office of the Head of Service of the Federation.
The NLC recalled that the administration of pension funds has been enmeshed in unprecedented corruption with some public officers, institutions of government and banks generously helping themselves to the said fund, and in the process, deny pensioners their pension.
This, situation, said Adewusi, has thrown majority of whom are members of NLC into penury, with some dying in queues of protracted and unending verification exercises that yield little or no result.
The congress noted that government’s undignified silence on the matter in spite of the shrill cries and agony of the victims and the criticism of concerned citizens has been shocking.
According to the Ag. President, the congress had tried to intervene or mediate by writing several letters to the presidency and reaching out to the government through other channels.
He said the NLC also made public pronouncements on the pension saga in the hope of getting the government to do something to ameliorate the trauma and sufferings of pensioners, all to no avail.
The congress submitted that “the government did not as much as acknowledge any letters, let alone respond to the issues Congress had publicly raised, lending credence to its indifference and complicity.”
To avert the impending peace protest, NLC therefore called for immediate restoration of the withheld check-off dues to NUP, accelerated payment of all arrears of pensions to the deserving pensioners.
The NLC President, Abdulwaheed Omar, and the Acting General Secretary, Chris Uyot, announced in a communique signed by them on Tuesday, that Federal Government, at a joint meeting held with the NLC and TUC, had accepted to restore the check-off dues of the NUP which had been withheld for a year.
The case of NITEL staff
Three years after disengagement, hundreds of ex-workers of the Nigerian Telecommunication Limited (NITEL) and its mobile arm, M-tel, are left in the lurch over non- payment of their pension entitlements. Life has not been the same for the retirees.
Mr. Oghevbode Otaghogho cannot understand why he was being denied his entitlements after serving the country for 28 years. “The psychological trauma I’m going through is beyond imagination. Before I left Bauchi where I served, I was engaged in petty trading that was fetching me money to feed my family. But insecurity has forced me to relocate to Abuja. I have exhausted the little capital for petty trading on feeding due to high cost of living in Abuja. In fact, I’m contemplating returning to my village in Delta State. For how long will I continue to depend on people to survive?”
Mr. Amos Alagbe retired in 2005. His plan was to use his pension entitlement to complete a house he was building in his home-town Ogbomoso, Oyo State. He’s living in a two-room apartment in Bauchi with his family.”Even if I decide to go home now, where will I stay? The joy of a retired worker is to have a roof over his head. It has been hectic for me and my wife to survive in the last eight years. The treatment being meted on us by government is unjust.”
Mr. Enong Okey relived his experience: “It has been very tough living without pension. I thought they would pay immediately going by the content of the letter stating our pension entitlement. Since 2010, it has been promises upon promises. At a time, we were told that the money had been paid to the bank. We went to the bank for confirmation. To our surprise, the bank said there was nothing like that. The bank officials said we should demand a copy of pay mandate from the Accountant General of the Federation’s office if it is true they have paid. But the officials in AGF’S office said they can’t release it because it is an official document. When I was evicted by my landlord, I have to squat with my relations together with my wife and children. It was a clergy man in my church that gave me N100,000 to secure accommodation out of sheer sympathy.
‘The money could pay for six months. The rent will expire next month. I don’t know what to do. I hope those who are making life difficult for retirees realise that one day they will retire from the civil service and they would not pray to undergo this kind of experience.’
Mr. Igili Gregory Edekin served in Jalingo, Taraba State, before his retirement. He lost his wife recently because of lack of medical care as he could not afford to pay hospital bills. Even after her death, Edekin could not foot the burial bills of his beloved wife. Now, he has been evicted from his residence owing to accumulated rents. He was forced to relocate to his village in Edo State.
Similarly, Mr. Ahuka Lawrence Iheanyi may be ejected by his landlord who is tired of stories that he is awaiting his pension to be paid. His children have stopped schooling because of unsettled fees. His concern is how to raise money to send his children back to school.
For Mr. Umana Umana, the only regret he has serving NITEL is the failure of the management to pay him his entitlements after serving the country for many years. The non-payment of his pension is affecting his family. He finds it difficult to feed his wards let alone paying his children’s school fees. This is not how to reward people that have used their productive years in serving their fatherland, he said.
Investigations by The Nation revealed that the 7.5% were deducted from the staff salaries as pension contribution between 2007 and 2010. Both the employees’ contribution and the other 7.5% to be contributed by the management as required by the new pension scheme were not remitted to the Pension Fund Administrators. Hence, the accounts of some retirees at their respective PFAs show they have not contributed anything.
Whereas, when the workers were laid off in 2010, they were issued letters indicating how much each of them is entitled to as pension. The packages, according to our findings, were worked out by the NITEL management, the Bureau of Public Enterprise (BPE) and the Office of the Accountant General of the Federation (AGF).
One of the affected retirees said: “NITEL retired about 90% of its workforce in 2010. We started contributing to pension scheme in 2007. Deduction for pension contribution is reflected in our pay slips. The management through a letter informed us that our pension benefits were to be drawn from our PFAs.
“On the strength of the letter, I went to my PFA- IBTC with the hope of getting paid. To my surprise, my account and that of other colleagues show that we have not contributed anything. That is to say that our accounts were not funded by NITEL. In IBTC alone, 1,031 retirees are affected; IBTC is just one of the PFAs that manage the pension fund of NITEL workers.
“We learnt that IBTC had written NITEL that some of the accounts were not funded by it. Since 2010, we have been struggling to get our entitlements. The questions we keep asking are: What happened to our pension contributions? Where are the government’s contributions?”
Expressing displeasure over the development, the National leader of the Association of former Telecom Employees of Nigeria (ATEN), Mr. Godwin Alajemba, told our correspondent in an interview that “there is record that all staff of NITEL between 2007 and 2010 paid their own quota of the 15% contribution (being 7.5% as specified by the PFA requirement). This is so because these monies were deducted from source before the salaries were paid or collected by the staff. But one is sad to note that although that of the staff were deducted and some paid to their respective PFAs, the other 7.5% that is to be contributed by NITEL was not inclusive in the monies so far remitted to the PFAs, that is in the case of those who have been paid, let alone those yet to be paid.
“On several occasions, the Association of Former Telecoms Employees has taken up the matter with NITEL and the AGF’s office with the occasional results of the AGF paying a few numbers of persons and once again putting on hold the payments. With this action, it is clear that the AGF’s office is responsible for the delay in payments”.
On whether there was fraud in the management of the pension funds, the ATEN leader said: “I would want to be careful asserting fraud here on the reasons that from my findings, the AGF directed that monies (released in October 2012 to banks who were in turn to credit the account of the respective PFAs) be returned to the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) in November 2012; their reason being that some banks were under merger process.
“Our concern now is that the merging process has long been completed and so the monies should have been released to the banks for onward transmission to the PFAs. Largely affected was Access Bank and unfortunately, they are the bank paying or remitting to IBTC. We are getting information that the banks have been contacted to produce proof of their remittance to CBN so that they can be repositioned to receive the money back for the PFAs within the next few weeks. We understand IBTC has written NITEL on the delayed payment.”
Alajemba, however, attributed non-payment of retirement benefits to various factors such as submitting wrong account number, error in computation of peoples data at the Accountant General’s office, omission of names both at NITEL and AGF ends and wilful withholding of money transfer as directed by the AGF.
Frowning at the bureaucratic procedure, Alajemba said: “it is quite a pity that a lot of people placed in government offices are there not really putting their best even when they know that the life of others is largely affected by their unserious attitude to work. Most of the pensioners in question served NITEL for 35 years, thus giving out the most useful part of their lives for the service of their fatherland. If the economy is in good shape, we would not rely on pension money. By the circumstances of their age, most of them are no longer relevant in the labour market. Government should expedite action on this matter.”
Enquiries at the AGF’s office, however, confirm that the pension deductions of NITEL workers were paid to their respective PFAs in August 2011, two years after the disengagement of the workers. An official, Mr. Sunday Adamu, explained that those who have not received their pension are those who have problems with their accounting details.
He said the pensioners are not helping matters by storming AGF’s office in pursuit of their pension. “It is a breach of protocol because the AGF’s office does not recognise individuals but the PFAs. It is the responsibility of PFAs to come and find out the cases of their clients not individuals.”
Adamu said NITEL and BPE are responsible for computing their pension details not AGF. They are still compiling names. As soon as they are through with the compilation and forwarded to the AGF’s office, they will be paid, he said.
A spokesman of IBTC, Mr. Magnus Ekwueme, told The Nation: “We pay former staff once NITEL sends their names along with Retirement Savings Account (RSA) and Pencom Pin Number as well as the amount due to the Office of the Accountant General of the Federation. They have been doing this in batches.”
Asked how many have been paid, Ekwueme said quite a number have been paid, emphasising that as long as the ex-staff provide the statutory documentations Pen Coms approval would be sort and the client will receive their pay.
What Pension Commission Act says?
The National Pension Commission Act stipulates that all pension funds and assets shall be transferred to licensed operators.
Section 39(1) of Pension Reform Act 2004 which deals with penalties for non-compliance with funding of existing Pension Scheme states that the pension scheme has to be fully funded by the employer at all times and any shortfall to be made up within 90 days.
After the expiration of 90 days and there is no compliance, the commission will write a letter of advice to the defaulting employer. One month after, the recalcitrant employer gets letter of caution. Thereafter, a fine not more than N250,000 and N500,000 is imposed every month, Section 44-46 0f the Act provides that all pension funds and assets shall be transferred to licensed operators.
The revised regime of sanctions and penalties for non-compliance states that: “Upon discovery of non-transfer by the commission letter of caution will be issued. Two months after, letter of advice will be written. One month after, letter of warning. A month after, letter to pay fine of N250,000 for every month of default will be issued.
Pension system encourages corruption
An expert in pension administration has described the pension system in the country as lacking care and respect for the senior citizens. Mr. Kunle Ajibade told our correspondent in an interview that except pensioners receive fair and prompt treatment, the country is unwittingly strengthening the temptation of civil servants to be corrupt.
According to him, any society that cannot treat its elderly citizens with care and respect advertises its disregard for values. Stressing that retirees should be paid their entitlements without any stress, he said the present practice where civil servants at both federal and state levels have to wait for four to five years before they get their gratuity is not ideal.
He noted that some ministries are notorious; they seem to derive pleasure from the hopelessness of retirees. Proper records are not kept. Unscrupulous officials demand different documents from bewildered retirees.
On the new pension scheme, he said: “The expectation was that the private sector-driven national pension scheme introduced by the Obasanjo administration would fast-track payment of pensions to retired civil servants and that the emergence of Pension Fund Administrators (PFAs) will eliminate inefficiency and corruption in the system; this has been counter- productive in some cases.
It’s not because the new scheme is not good but the Nigerian factor is at play. Many employers have circumvented the Pension Act by deducting pension contributions from the salaries of employees without remitting them and the employers’ mandatory contribution to the pension administrators. It is when the employees disengage and approach their PFAs for their pension entitlements that they realise that there is nothing in their accounts.
“The employers particularly in the private sector breach the rule with impunity. Despite the prescribed sanctions in the Act, how many employers have been brought to book? It is because we don’t value the contributions of retirees in this country. In other climes, the welfare of senior citizens is accorded high priority.
“The pension payment system, with regard to retired civil servants who are not covered by the new system introduced by the Obasanjo administration, must be reviewed. Humiliating and maltreating persons who had spent a better part of their lives serving the country is unacceptable. It is curious that the usually discourteous pension payment officers, who derive joy in humiliating pensioners, hardly realise that they would also end up as pensioners some day.”
