By Ishola Balogun
Olusa Ayodele, who slumped and died while waiting to be screened in Akure, Ondo State,  recently would probably have been alive if the process and system of pension administration had been better.

The 80-year old pensioner who was brought to the venue of the screening exercise by his 30-year-old son Deji, collapsed and passed on before he could be rushed to the hospital. He had stayed on the queue in order to have his documents checked and his biometric captured when the unexpected happened.

A frail grandfather, Adelakun Oguntoyinbo, 85,  was left in “excruciating pain” after he tried to rise from where he was sitting to respond to the call by a pension administrator.  He was said to have injured his back in the process of collecting a meager sum of his monthly pension fund.

Ayodele’s death last year was a painful addition to a number of other deaths recorded among pensioners who had to pass through the rigorous verification exercise and payment of pension. This unending sorrow that over the years has become synonymous with retirement is now compounded by the different stories of fraud in the administration of pension funds in the country.

Some pensioners at a meeting over their plight in Lagos

To many retirees like Adebanjo Olaosebikan, they have worked and saved fairly enough not to depend purely on family or charity to live, but to live by the fruits of their labour at the time when the bones become weaker for further labour. They held their retirement dreams with passion and that was only what they hoped for.

To some of them, the dream has become a dashed hope as a result of their inability to access their pension funds.  At retirement, they still have to  find a means of livelihood, in some cases, taking menial jobs or being at the mercy of charity.

After 30 years as a worker at a perennially struggling textile company in Lagos, Olaosebikan retired with the hope of living on his pension fund. But nothing prepared his mind that the fund might not come after all. For two years, Olaosebikan now 67, moved from one office to the other to pursue his pension fund. It was a story of ‘come today, come tomorrow’. He had to depend on what his wretched family can put together for him.

The dream of having all his children as graduates is now put on hold as he cannot afford to pay the bills. Some of them had to engage in menial jobs to continue their education. To him, life is like living on charity as he had to wait for other members of his family to give him stipends before he meets his few financial obligations. “It is like killing the retirees before their deaths” Olaosebikan says.

Olaosebikan who retired two years ago could not be able to access his pension funds managed by one of the popular firms. He stated that while his pension administrator insisted he had to consult his dwindling former employer for necessary update, his erstwhile employer said the pension administrator was responsible, thereby putting him in a state of confusion and uncertainty on what he should get as his pension fund supposedly coming in two forms – a lump sum and monthly payment pension funds.

“You just look at the whole system of corruption and you cry, ‘this is killing.’ How can somebody sit on the fund meant for those who have diligently served in one way or the other?” In this country, we don’t have special funds for the elderly or the aged like they have in some countries abroad.

There, the aged live on government’s account or at least on allowances that will take care of them till their death. But here, there is nothing like that; even the one worked for are not given to them. Some people somewhere will sit on it and nothing will happen sending the retiree victims to their early grave.” he said.

Another pensioner, Alhaji Ibrahim Alade said: “it is very, very agonizing to see these people who have worked all their lives to try and get a pension  and, all of a sudden, it falls apart.” This is one of the major causes of deaths of some of these pensioners because they develop abnormal blood pressure that leads to their death.”

Alade stressed when he was working, his salary was poor, he managed through to send his children to school and managed to buy a plot of land and had hoped to use his pension benefit to gradually build a home for himself where he desired to be buried after he died but lamented that he could not achieve all that because the funds were stuck 30 months after he retired.

“I have my bond certificate but I don’t know what is happening. They have shattered my dreams. I suffered while working and now I still have to suffer to collect my monthly pension payment. They have given another date in April.  For how long would I have to suffer?” he lamented.

How do they survive?

Since ten years ago, arising from the change in policy on retirement and pension, government establishments, corporations and private firms have turned the risk over to the employees, to provide for their own retirement security through saving part of their wages and investing in their retirement while the employers add up a specified percentage. One wonders that even the fraction saved by the worker for his retirement cannot be accessed by him let alone the added percentage by his employer.

This development has forced many retirees to resort to selling their homes and going back to work in order to put food on their table. Is this what your retirement will look like? Olaosebikan who spoke to Saturday Vanguard said he had to sell his only property located in a sub-urb of Lagos and relocate to the village where he would spend the rest of his life. “I thank God that two of my four children are out of school.

My problem is how I am going to pay the fees of my other two children who are in the university. Those ones that are out are still searching for jobs. I had planned to use part of the fund to complete the education of my other two children and use the other part to start a farm business.”

Pensioners belong to a segment of the population that should be highly revered and cared for due to their age and of course for their long years of labour to build the nation but it is disheartening to see them now suffering neglect at the time they are most vulnerable.

They can no longer assume they will retire with security of their funds. The situation not only shows that pension crisis is looming; but we re already contending with it indirectly, agonising the elderly ones who have worked up to a certain time are unable to get their benefits.  Everything should be done to repel this crisis.

With the aid of computerisation, it should not be difficult for the government to determine how many people are entitled to pension instead of subjecting them to harrowing verification exercise, staying on queue too long before payment. The elderly citizens who have laboured for the country deserve better treatment.