The Director-General of Lagos State Pension Commission (LASPEC), Mrs. Folashade Onanuga,  in this interview with Favour Nnabugwu, talks on Lagos State pension for retirees, their welfare  and other issues
Excerpts

HOW does Lagos State treat its retirees? 

If you were in service before April 2007, there is a certain aspect of your entitlement that ought to be paid up by government which is called accrued right. This commission ensures that the accrued right is credited into the  Retirement Savings Account, RSA  of the individual. In Lagos State today, we have two sets of retirees but we have been able to separate them.

Some are under the old pension system, the Pay As You Go scheme while others are under the Contribution Pension Scheme, CPS. Before we commenced with the CPS, an exemption period of March 31, 2010 was given to some workers who may want to retire as at that time. This is why you cannot see anybody going into the Pay As You Go Scheme anymore because the exception period is over as at March 31, 2010. So from April 2010, anybody retiring is under the CPS.

Let me also state that we have two sets of retirees under the CPS. We have those with accrued rights and those without accrued rights. The set with accrued right are those who were in service before March 31, 2007 when we started while the set without accrued rights are those recruited from April 2007. You were asking how do we now treat them?  

Folashade Onanuga, LASPEC DG

What about the menace of ghost workers and retirees in the state?

The issue of ghost retiree cannot happen again in Lagos and this is the beauty of the CPS. Unlike the Pay As You Go entitlement  which is pension gratuity and obligation which is paid by the State to individuals, in the new dispensation we don’t pay to any individual but into the RSA accounts of workers.

It then becomes the responsibility of the PFAs to pay entitlements. So the issue of ghost workers does not arise as it has been totally eradicated in Lagos. Let me also say that the CPS has been running in the country for about 12 years and there has not been any incident of fraud recorded because of the way it has been created. You cannot open two accounts because we maintain a database of all retirees with PenCom.

This is one of the successes that we have been able to record in the State and even in the country at large. So in terms of paying entitlement, we have made payment till date. We’ve been paying pensions in the past but there has been an increased tempo. In the last one year the tempo has increased drastically.

Before this administration we used to pay pension in terms of accrued rights on a quarterly basis but since the government of Akinwunmi Ambode we have been paying it monthly from August 2007. The accrued rights are paid into the RSA managed by their PFAs. So in essence the state government is totally removed from the process of paying retirees for life. Under the CPS we don’t have any business with pensioners.

How do you articulate pensioners under the ‘Pay As You Go’ and how many of them do you still have?

We cannot because we can’t envisage when the last person will die until it happens. We have different agencies in the State under the old scheme. We have Teachers Establishment Pension Office (TEPO) with over 6,000 retirees. We also have the main stream and local government retirees. In total, we have about 13,000 retirees under the old scheme and what that means is that government will continue to pay them pension.

If pension increases from the federal government, it has to be domesticated in Lagos state. The fact that federal increased by 53 per cent does not automatically mean that Lagos must also increase it. It has to be domesticated and must be in line with the resources of the state. If we have money we may even pay more than that but the fact remains that whatever is done at the federal is not automatically binding on a state government.

In terms of increases, yes Lagos state has been increasing pension packages like we just did the 15 per cent and 6 per cent. But the new one that is just taking effect at the federal level is yet to be implemented in the State. But we are currently looking into it, looking at something that is adequate and commiserate, taking into consideration the inflation and state of our economy and of course the power of the naira. All of these are being looked into right now for the Pay As You Go pensioners.