President Muhammadu Buhari is generally perceived as a clueless leader who lacks the charisma to run the world’s most populous black nation and Africa’s largest economy. However, even Buhari’s enemies admit that he would go down in history as the hero of Nigeria’s army of distraught pensioners. He has rescued more pensioners than all former presidents put together.
Olusegun Obasanjo slapped together the contributory pension scheme that distributed the burden of funding pension between employers and employees.
Under the new pension scheme that came into force in the dying days of Obasanjo’s administration, workers now contribute eight per cent of their monthly salaries while employers add 10 per cent to save a total of 18 per cent of a worker’s monthly pay for the rainy day.
Obasanjo introduced that noble scheme but did practically nothing to rescue thousands of federal government pensioners languishing in abject poverty as government refused to pay their pension.
In a rather unfortunate twist of events, Obasanjo added thousands more to the list of retired federal workers who were owed pension by their employers. The former President liquidated Nigeria Airways by an executive fiat and threw thousands of workers into the streets without severance pay.
The late President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua inherited the insolvent pensioners from Obasanjo. Unfortunately he was too sick to have time to address the pension crisis he inherited from Obasanjo. Yar’Adua died in May 2009 and was replaced by Goodluck Jonathan. Like Yar’Adua, Jonathan maintained a deafening silence on the plight of Nigeria’s impoverished pensioners.
At last, it was Buhari that cleared the mountain of pension rubbish left by his three predecessors. Buhari started with the promise to pay Nigeria Airways pensioners their gratuities and years of pension arrears.
Many would have dismissed his promise with a wave of the hand given the preponderance of Buhari’s predecessors to sweep the crucial issue under the carpet. In the first three years of Buhari’s administration it appeared like there was no hope. Nigeria Airways workers had no reason to expect anything. They were familiar with empty promises by their leaders.
Buhari finally broke the jinx in 2018. He released funds for the payment of Nigeria Airways distressed pensioners. By the time the President’s intervention machinery came alive, hundreds of the former workers of the liquidated national carrier had died.
The President ensured that heirs of the deceased workers were paid the entitlement of their departed loved ones. Some collected as high as N30 million.
Buhari was equally generous with the former workers of Nitel. Nitel, Nigeria’s telecoms monopoly for decades, could not cope with competition when the federal government opened the industry to private investors. Even the 0804 network allocated the government firm during the auctioning of GSM licenses could not be maintained for one year. The government telecoms company sunk under the crushing weight of corruption and inefficiency. Some insiders contend that government officials who had holdings in the emerging private GSM firms deliberately killed Nitel for the private firms to survive.
It is difficult to confirm that allegation. The truth is that Nitel collapsed and no one was willing to touch its massive assets even with a 10-foot pole. The fall of Nitel was a disaster for its workers. They simply joined the long queue of pensioners who had no hope of ever getting their pension.
The difference between Nitel and Nigeria Airways workers was that Nitel workers collected their gratuity when their company sunk. Nigeria Airways workers were not that lucky. They lost both gratuity and pension.
Buhari changed all that. More than a decade after the collapse of Nitel, the President released funds for the payment of Nitel workers’ pension arrears. Today, the workers are getting their monthly pensions after three Presidents who ruled Nigeria during the peak of its oil revenue ignored the suffering of the destitute pensioners.
The suffering of Nigeria Airways and Nitel pensioners pales into insignificance when measured against what Pa John went through. I have told the story of Pa John a couple of times in this column. However, let me bore everyone once again with his story.
Pa John (full names withheld) entered service in 1962 as an electrician with the Federal Ministry of Works. He retired in 1997 after 35 years of meritorious service to the father land. After retirement he was paid pension for four months before the payment stopped. He toiled for 22 years without pension. Last month, Buhari’s pension largesse reversed the 22 years of suffering. Pa John finally got the alert. It covered his pension for 2010 to April 2019.
The 78-year-old went into ecstasy. He doled out N10, 000 to each of his grandchildren. His wife has been eking out a living through petty trading on the road side. With the largesse from the President to her husband, she is now trading in the comfort of a rented built-up shop.
Pa John’s gratuity and pension from 1997 to 2009 is still outstanding. However, with what the President has done so far, he is convinced that he would get all his entitlement.
The rulers of Nigeria have been very cruel to pensioners. Even the contributory pension scheme has failed to end that cruelty. The situation is worsened by the fact that the recalcitrant states that owe pensioners are now tying down the money deducted from the pensioners’ monthly salary. It is different from the days when government was the sole contributor to pension funds.
Right now, more than 24 states are not remitting their workers’ pension deductions to the relevant pension fund managers. Several states are heavily indebted to their pensioners. The most horrifying situation is that Lagos State, the richest federating unit in Nigeria is heavily indebted to pensioners.
Workers who retired in 2015 from the services of the state are still waiting for their gratuity. No one is even talking about listing them in the monthly pension pay roll. A nurse who retired in 2016 on salary grade level 14 is deep in penury. That is the cruelest thing a rich state like Lagos can visit on those who served it meritoriously for 35 years.
Last week, I met a civil engineer who was two years my senior in school. He worked for Lagos state for 35 years and retired into penury in 2018. He is now living on the pittance he ekes out from marking scripts for the West African Examination Council (WAEC) and the National Examination Council (NECO). He lamented that those who retired in 2015 are just being listed in the pension pay roll and that it might take four more years to get to his turn. That would be four grueling years for a man who retired as an assistant director.
Even Akwa Ibom State, with its massive oil wealth, is equally indebted to pensioners. My late cousin, Asuquo Akpan Udoh, a level 16 officer in the state civil service, died on October 2016. He was billed to retire on November 11, 2016. Three years after his death, nothing has been paid to members of his family. They are now in abject poverty.
I met one of my primary school classmates who retired the same year as my late cousin. When I complained that members of my cousin’s family were suffering as they had not been paid their father’s entitlement three years after his demise, the man wondered how the dead would be paid when they, the living are still being tossed around. Pensioners are endangered species in Nigeria. Those still in service are aware of that hard fact.
From all indications, the unmitigated looting of public treasury might be encouraged by the way government treats pensioners. Those in service are just looting to hedge against the inevitable long wait for their gratuities and pensions.
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