By Samuel Oyadongha & Emem Idio

Despite spending their productive years for the common good, the nation’s senior citizens have continued to wallow in penury.

Gov. Dickson

The picture of haggard-looking pensioners collapsing on queues for their pensions during verification exercises speaks volumes about the inherent rot in the nation’s pension system, especially the defunct Defined Benefits Scheme, DBS.

A pensioner, who identified himself as Sampson John, noted with sadness that retirement, which ordinarily should be embraced with joy, has become a source of sorrow and frustration to him and many others.

Bemoaning his fate, he said: “In an ideal clime, having put all my life into active service, I should not be seen struggling to collect my gratuity. It has been a trying period for me and my family in the last two years after my retirement.”

Like his contemporaries who are anxiously waiting to collect their gratuities, he relived his experience and serial frustrations.

“I was employed in 1977 in the then old Rivers State. By the nature of my job, I was posted to Government House. I served governors throughout my working career as a photographer. Now I am retired after 35 years of meritorious service in April 2012. I am yet to collect my gratuity. There are others who retired in 2008, 2009 and have not been paid their gratuities. Some have died due to frustration and lack of care. As an old pensioner, you need to take care of yourself and that is the money (gratuity) we banked our hope on to take care of ourselves and family.

I have children’s school fees to settle and I am struggling to survive. I was involved in a very serious accident before I retired from service and as you can see I cannot walk like others because of the injuries I sustained. I am always indoors hoping that my gratuity will be paid so that I can take care of myself.

I am lucky I have a roof over my head. Some of my contemporaries have died out of frustration. Their landlords evicted them because they could not pay their house rent. Even when they returned to their respective villages, many do not have homes of theirs to go to.”

NUP speaks  

Speaking, Chairman of Nigeria Union of Pensioners, NUP, in the state, Chief Emmanuel Namatebe, said: “When the Governor came in 2012 and upon his resumption, he promised to offset the gratuities of all pensioners that will be retiring from 2012.

That is, nobody would retire without being paid. But when he started work, the story changed. Before he came in, he had set up an eight-man committee to look into the plight of pensioners.

The committee was headed by a retired permanent secretary, one Philip Daunemigha. The committee commenced work in March 2012 and submitted its report to government in April, 2012. The committee recommended that about four billion Naira as at March 2012 be set aside for the payment of gratuities.

After the submission of the report, the governor did not look into the report and he said all the pensioners involved would be paid. So, the pensioners were anxiously looking up to government but government refused to take action with the committee’s report. “After six months, the pensioners held a press briefing on November 22, 2012. After the briefing, the governor was very angry and accused me of coming to disturb his administration.

“I had told the governor categorically during the press briefing that the rights of pensioners are constitutional and that he, as a lawyer, should respect the constitutional rights of pensioners. I also quoted Section 201 and subsection 3 of the 1999 Constitution which clearly states that pensions should be reviewed every five years in line with the civil service salary review in the country.

“Thereafter, the governor set up another six man committee headed by the present Head of Service, while abandoning the work of the Daunemigha committee. He also appointed me to be a member. He released N500 million to the committee to commence payment of gratuities and pension arrears. We exhausted the first N500 million in January 2013. By April 2013, he released another N500 million for us to pay. The issue is that the retired permanent secretaries go home with between N30 and N40million naira as gratuities, so the N500 million is inadequate. By the time two to three retired permanent secretaries are paid, the rest are left to suffer.”

lWatch out for Governor Seriake Dickson and former Governor Timipre Sylva’s views on pensioners’ woes on this page in the weeks ahead.