BY ALBERT AKPOR
PARA-MILITARY pensioners are demanding for the sack and probe of the activities of Pension Reform Task Team led  by Acting Director of the Customs, Immigrations and Prisons Pensions Office, CIPPO, Mr. Abdulrasheed Maina, accusing the team of compounding their pains and suffering.

The pensioners who staged a rally at the premises of the Nigerian Prisons Service,NPS,  Isale-Igbehin, Abeokuta, Ogun State,  to protest alleged injustices, irregularities and hardship inflicted on them by the Task Force and  office of  Director of the Customs, Immigrations and Prisons Pensions Office CIPPO, demanded immediate removal of Maina .

Operating under the aegis of the National Association of Retired Para-military Officers, NARPO, South- West zone, the aggrieved retirees displayed various placards  with inscriptions such as “Maina Must Go; EFCC Probe CIPPO Director; GEJ, please Help Us Get Our Money from Maina.”

They claimed the protest was induced by the alleged false information from CIPPO that all gratuities, allowances and other benefits had been paid to the retirees.

Narrating their woes, the pensioners claimed that several circulars directing the CIPPO to pay them with the new salary package like the ‘Harmonised Public Service Salary Structure’ HAPSS and ‘Consolidated Para-Military Salary Structure’ COMPASS were not used to compute their gratuities, monthly pensions and allowances, rather the old UPSS salary scheme was still being used.

According to them, a letter written by then CIPPO, through one Bassan Saleh dated November 10, 2008, when Maina was still an Assistant Director in the office to the National Incomes, Wages & Salaries Commission, seeking clarification on retirement benefits for retired/right-sized officers of the three services, was duly replied through a letter dated 28 November, 2008.

They claimed the response to the letter by one Chike N. Ogbechie, cleared the air over what the CIPPO office should pay.

The protesters alleged  that “though the standing rule in civil service is that once any new salary package emerges, retirees will automatically be entitled to a certain percentage of any new salary scheme, however, we have been denied of all these by CIPPO.”

Chairman of the Ogun state chapter of NARPO, Adekunle Abiodun Adesanya said, “If after this warning, nothing happens, we will march on Abuja. Petitions have been written but it appears that they do not go anywhere or if they do, some people trade the petitions for cash and tearing them off. But in the papers everybody will see and know.”

Another retiree, elder Onyema Obi Nze who served 23 years in the Immigrations service before retiring in 2006, said he had suffered untold hardship in the hands of CIPPO, lamenting that “I have not been able to train my children the way I want. Even my house project I started has not gone half way. It is now covered by the weeds. All my entitlements are only half paid. My gratuity was short-paid and this affected my pensions and all other increments.”

But reacting on behalf of Maina Mr. Ladan Salihu, spokesperson to the Pension Task Force described claims by the retirees false.

According to him, “I want to tell you that the allegations against the CIPPO director could not have been truth. May be people do not know that the Federal Government that made Alhaji Maina chairman of pensions task force realizes that he was a role model for other heads of pensions offices.

That was why he was picked. I believe because of the good works he is doing, the cabal that he is fighting are the ones behind the so-called protest. If the protesters are genuine retirees of the three services, then let them come forward to present their case and we shall address them accordingly.”