By Johnbosco Agbakwuru

The controversy over President Bola Tinubu approval for the implementation of the Steve Oronsaye committee report has continued unabated.
For the Nigeria Union of Pensioners, NUP, the plan to scrap the Pension Transitional Arrangement Directorate, PTAD, and return the payment of members’ pensions to the Ministry of Finance, would not only quicken the death of members, but force many to return to sleeping under the bridges and other public places.
In this interview, NUP President, Pa Godwin Abumusi, gives insight into members fears among others.
Excerpts:

What are your thoughts on the plan to return the payment of members’ pensions to the ministry and scrap PTAD. How did your members fare before and during the establishment of PTAD?

If you have noticed for a very long time, you did not hear the voices of pensioners complaining about mistreatment since PTAD came. Before PTAD, the Nigerian pensioners suffered unbearable suffering and hardship. I remember that I traveled several times for my location in Enugu in night buses to come to Abuja for what the Federal Head of Service office called verification or if you wanted to settle anything regarding your pension. If you had issues, you had to come to Abuja and in doing that; you had to take night buses.

Many of us lost our lives in the process of coming to Abuja to settle pension issues. We usually arrive very early, around 4 a.m. or 5 a.m. And we slept at the corridors of the federal Secretariat. When they, the pensioners were messing up the place, they ejected us. We began to sleep under the bridges. That was our experiences before PTAD.

It was the handling of pensioners’ problems in the ministry that created the likes of Rasheed Maina, who is now in prison as a result of alleged embezzlement of pension money. And that is what the pensioners fear in hearing that we are been sent back to the ministry. As a matter of fact, no pensioner wants to go back to the ministry because pension problem is not a small problem. It needs a separate entity like PTAD to deal with it.

We have been impressed and very happy with the performance of PTAD in dealing with pension issues. We don’t want to go back to Egypt. We are not saying that merging of ministries and parastatals by government to reduce cost is not good. But we are saying that there are certain areas where they ought not to merge.

Such area is PTAD. But if they say they must have to put PTAD somewhere, we are urging that they should send us to the National Pension Commission, PenCom, that deals with pensioners. In this case, PenCom will deal with Defined Benefits Scheme, DBS, and CPS, Contributory Pensions Scheme. PenCom has the capacity to handle the job instead of sending us to ministry.

What does NUP intend to do?

We intend to write to government and appeal to President Bola Tinubu. But we are not going to protest over the issue because we believe that it is by negotiation that we can achieve this. We will explain to government why we do not want to go back to the ministry.

Not long ago, you raised the alarm that some state governments pay pensioners as low as N450. You cited the case of Enugu, can you expatiate on it?

Section 173 of the Nigerian constitution 1999 (as amended), says that pension shall be reviewed every five years or with the federal government review of its own workers salary which ever is earlier. That section of the Constitution is not being implemented. In fact, all the sections relevant to pension are not being implemented.

If the government increases pension every five years, the pensions of our members will be adjusted. If our pensions have been adjusted I can tell you that some of our least earners would have been receiving N100, 000 that we are now demanding as minimum pension.

Our struggle is that the government should deal with pensioners in line with the constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria.

But this has not been done by various states and that is why pensioners in states like Enugu and others are earning less because their pensions over the years are not being adjusted. Each time there is salary increase, the pensioners are left out while the workers keep on earning bigger salaries.

It is the duty of the federal government to enforce this provision of the Constitution. Pension is item number 44 of the exclusive legislative list of the federal government. So no state government can talk about pension.

What is the casualty rate of members over this poor pension payment?

A lot of us have died. Do you know that many people depend on pension to live? There are people who cannot be able take their medication unless they get money.

Some people say pensioners have their children abroad. The people who have their children abroad are not the people I’m talking about. I’m not talking about the permanent secretaries, I’m not talking about directors. They are our members too, but I’m not talking about them. Which other group of pensioners can send their children overseas?

“Our children are not overseas. We don’t have anybody sending money back to us. We don’t have and by the time we leave the service, we are elderly and aged. Even farming becomes difficult. Sometimes to farm you need capital. These pensioners are not able to access avail money set aside for farmers. They are not able anymore to till the land and cultivate.

“We need money to buy our drugs. You cannot buy drugs and you can see the prices of drugs have skyrocketed. A drug I take Amlodipine for my High Blood Pressure, BP, I used to buy it N6000 and above  a sachet. It is now N35, 0000 and above. And my daughter said to me, look, daddy, you have to go back to your doctor and ask him to change the drug. I said no. This is the drug that keeps me alive. When I take it, I relax I won’t have any problem.

In fact, I don’t have any more pressures. I sleep very well. If you ask me to change this drug, what it means is that you are cutting my life shot. I will continue to take the drug but I have to go to government and say there are many pensioners like me, at least if they cannot give us food, they should give us our drugs so that we wait until our creator calls us.”

Which states pay the least to pensioners?

They include Enugu, Osun, Abia, Cross Rivers, among others.

Does the federal government owe pensions arrears or gratuities?
By the creation of PTAD, the federal government has done very well in the payment of our pension. This is not to say that some cadres of the federal government pensioners are not owed pension.

Nothing can be done to wipe out in its entirety what is being owed to pensioners whether it is the federal government or the state government. But what I m saying is that the federal government has done very well in the payment of pension and gratuity through PTAD. There must be some cadres who are being owed something. It is our responsibility to discover such cadres and fight for them to be paid.

Now, the federal government has paid civil servants and public servants their N35,000 wage award for palliative but they have not paid pensioners. The government said it would pay pensioners. What it should have done was to take the two jointly. Why they are paying workers, they are paying pensioners.

In other climes, pensioners and the elderly people are paid first. When the white man was here, pensioners were paid before workers. They pay judges first, after paying judges, the pay retirees.
In fact, at that time, we knew when we were going to get our salary when I was in the civil service. It was  only when the pensioners had been paid. But now, the whole thing has  been turned upside down.

If by next week or next month you did not receive your palliative as promised by the government and PTAD is scrapped, do you think you will still get the palliative since it is PTAD that has your payroll?

Look, I have a letter here. This letter is from the Nigeria Union of Pensioners, South-west urging upon me to organize a protest against the proposed scrapping of PTAD. That is why we are saying, please leave PTAD. If there is anything there which government does not want, the government should remove it and leave PTAD alone to cater for pensioners.

With the amount of work they have done, it has not been possible to take care of all the demands of pensioners talk less of what is going to happen when they are sent back to the ministry. We don’t want to go back to the ministry. If the government doesn’t like the name PTAD and it wants to give it a new baptism and thinker with it anyway it likes,  we want an agency that will deal specifically with pensions.

We don’t want somebody who will be doing a b c d and take the huge responsibility of paying pension. Pension will not be paid; we don’t want our people to die by accidents coming to Abuja because these things will come back again. During that time, pensioners died on long verification lines conducted by Maina and his group. This time, you don’t hear of pensioners dying on verification lines anymore. In fact, you can stay in your room and do verification.

Through the I Am Alive platform?

Yes, though the I am alive has no problem. The problem with I am alive is that when it comes to the position of  you shaking your head, the thing will not capture your head. Those ones are technical issues that can be solved.

What are the problems senior citizens are facing and what should be done to tackle them?

The first need of any human being is to feed. If you want to punish anybody, hunger is a form of punishment to those people who have been hungry before. I have experienced hunger . I didn’t come from a rich family. I remember in my younger days in Calabar. I carried heavy loads on my head to supplement the feeding money of my mother when my father travelled out because my father was working with the Nigerian Surveys and he was rarely at home. When the food stuffs finished,  I would take one of her rappers, go to the beach in Calabar and carry load to earn money. In fact, that was how I became a trade unionist.

The second need is medical attention. Abroad and elsewhere even in sister countries like Ghana, elderly people are better treated. They take them to hospital, the hospital’s treatment is halfed. To give the impression that anybody who is sick has the money to pay for his treatment is wrong.

I am urging that Nigeria  should turn to a welfare state. This should be done targeting the poor, and the pensioners and not the rich. So that food, healthcare and housing (shelter) are affordable. These are the three needs of the pensioners.

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