The Pontiff, Pope Francis, last Wednesday, raised a potent issue considered as renewal of one of his strident calls for social justice. Speaking during an audience with Catholic-linked Italian trade union, the Pope said that older people should be made to work less or retire early, to create employment for the younger ones.
The Pope said, “There is an urgency for a new human social pact…that should reduce working hours for those at the end of their working lives; to create work for the young, who have a right and a duty to work.”
In this hallowed homily, it would seem that the Nigerian situation was not in consideration, as the Pope apparently addressed his speech to organised societies, where the aged citizens are well taken care of.
Truly, an aging worker should look forward to his superannuated years with broad smiles, without fearful thoughts of failing to get his pensions and gratuities as and when due.
Thus, the Pope had advocated that the older ones should be discouraged from overstaying on a job, apparently to allow the younger ones get employed or move up in the rungs of career leadership.
In Nigeria, living a blissful life in retirement is no more than mere dreams or the thoughts of the hereafter, especially for the millions of elderly citizens who had been retired out of old age or as a result of long period of service. Thus, many of them approach the twilight of their career with trepidation, unsure of what life holds in retirement.
Still, many retiring public workers in the country are cocksure that in retirement lies untold hardship, bare-face suffering and abject poverty, as their monthly pension would either cease or get paid irregularly, while their gratuities needed for old age investment would be held in abeyance.
Across the country, elderly citizens, among them retirees from the public and private services, live in squalid squalor. While some are at the throes of death, owing to excruciating hunger and various ailments, others have turned to beggars, dotting the streets of cities, towns and villages.
Only last week, an 83-year-old retiree with the Federal Ministry of Works, Pa Joshua Osunsanmi, told The Point that he was being owed 15 months’ pension and that despite his old age, he had been forced to join the younger ones to hustle around as housing agent, to eke out a living.
In the last 20 years, news headlines in the Nigerian media had been replete with stories of elderly retirees slumping to death while on queue to receive maybe, one out of 10 months’ arrears of unpaid pensions. Gratuities too, which ordinarily should be paid in lump sum, are now being staggered, usually under excuses such as “there are no resources.”
Perhaps in an attempt to justify why it had been unable to meet its obligations to its retired workers over the years, the Federal Government, last January, explained that it was hamstrung by its inability to cash back retirement benefit bonds currently in the vault of the Central Bank of Nigeria.
The scenario is a slap on the face of a nation reputed as the giant of Africa; a country where public funds are being siphoned and stashed in foreign accounts of seemingly immutable politicians and other top public servants. Yet, those who worked hard and ought to eat from their sweat are only shoved aside, bearing the brunt of a country’s malady
Leaving out the previous administrations, the current administration at the federal level is owing its former workers accrued rights from January 2016 till date. Accrued pension right is a term used in describing what the Federal Government owes its workers who had been in service before the commencement of the Pension Reform Act, 2004.
All Federal Government workers were “retired” and then reemployed to join the service and their pension funded monthly according to the Pension Reform Act, 2004. The money the Federal Government now owes its workers before the commencement of the act is recognised in form of an amount acknowledged through the issuance of Federal Government Retirement Benefits Bonds.
Upon retirement of an employee, the bonds are to be liquidated and added to the balance of the retirement savings account of the employee, to get the total amount he or she is entitled to. To ensure that government settles backlogs of accrued rights, Pension Fund Administrators are not allowed to gain access to the workers’ retirement savings, until the Federal Government releases the accrued rights’ component.
Thus, through this ding-dong approach embedded in Nigeria’s administrative bottlenecks, the hapless pensioners, who had served their fatherland conscientiously, are left to suffer for no fault of theirs.
Across the states, the pensioners are suffering. Reports indicate that at least 22 states are owing pensioners for six months, a year, and some, three years! For instance, in oilrich Bayelsa State where pensioners are owed eight months’ pay, three elderly citizens recently slumped, while waiting on a queue at a so-called verification exercise point.
The scenario is a slap on the face of a nation reputed as the giant of Africa; a country where public funds are being siphoned and stashed in foreign accounts of seemingly immutable politicians and other top public servants. Yet, those who worked hard and ought to eat from their sweat are only shoved aside, bearing the brunt of a country’s malady.
The time has come for a national reflection on this burning issue, towards a change of heart.
