By Emeka Mamah, Vincent Ujumadu and Chinonso Alozie,

THE motto of the Nigerian Union of Pensioners, NUP, is “Rest is sweet after labour.” However, this is far from reality. The Nigerian pensioners are treated like outcasts instead of like the senior citizens they are. In most of the five states of Abia, Anambra, Ebonyi, Enugu and Imo which make up the South East zone especially, retired civil servants and primary school teachers are now literally eating their own vomit as they have not been paid their gratuities and pensions in the last 16 years. A survey by the South East Voice showed that some of the pensioners received sums as low as N450 a month as pensions after 35 years of meritorious service to their fatherland.

This was even as state governors who served for between four and eight years in the area received their full salaries and all their entitlements with full compliments of security men, vehicles and other domestic staff for services rendered   to their people. In Abia, the state government had not paid gratuities and pensions of some retired workers in the last 16 years,   just as the Enugu State government is owing over 8000 retired local government staff of over N25 billion in arrears of pensions and gratuities since 2002. The retired 8000 local government staff not include about 2000 retired primary school teachers who have not been paid gratuities since 2002. It is the same situation in Imo.

In Anambra State the situation is a little bit better as the government had made efforts to clear the arrears in the past.   One of the good things the present administration in Anambra State has sustained is regular payment of pensions and gratuities to retired workers in the state. The regular payment of pensions and gratuities in the state started during the administration of Mr. Peter Obi, who off set the arrears owed retired workers for many years.

Except for the paper work and other documentations that usually take some time to complete, anybody who retires from the Anambra State civil service and the teaching arm of the service, is sure to receive his gratuity within six months of leaving office and his monthly pension is assured regularly.

Pension and gratuity

However, the situation is not the same for retired workers in the state-owned media outfits namely, the Anambra Broadcasting Service, ABS, and the National Light Newspapers. Ask any of the retired workers in the two organizations about pension and gratuity and the outpouring of emotion that follows is usually pathetic. The Association of Retired Workers of the two organizations have, over the years, fought for treatment as civil servants in the core ministries and the teaching service, but the Civil Service Commission and the office of the Head of Service has often explained  that as parastatals, their retired workers do not qualify for pension and gratuity.

The argument had always been that the organizations should evolve ways of paying retirement benefits to their retired workers but the problem has lingered to date. A former state chairman of the Nigeria Union of Journalists, NUJ, Mr. Dom Ekpunobi, who retired from the National Light Newspapers, argued that there is no justification for the discrimination against retired workers of the state –owned media houses because they too served the state diligently. In fact, no retired worker in the national limelight had collected any gratuity since the creation of new Anambra State in 1991, not to talk of receiving monthly pension.

Though ABS had an arrangement for paying retired workers, its sustainability became a problem following the decline in subventions from the state government. The result is that many people who retired in the organization in the past few years have not been paid their retirement benefits. Various commissioners for information who served the state would always promise doing something about the retirement benefits of the two media organizations, but when they went into the real detail of what it would require and the conditions of service as obtainable there, they would have no choice than to talk less of the issue.

Like previous commissioners in the ministry, the present commissioner for information and communication strategy, Ogbuefi Tony Nnacheta has promised to seriously look into the issue of pensions and gratuity for the retired workers of ABS and National Light. Whether he will succeed in changing the situation before he leaves the ministry will be seen in the course of the life of the present administration.

ENUGU

In Enugu State, there are over 2000 retired primary school teachers and another 8000 local government council pensioners, whose fate hangs in the balance, following the inability of the state government to settle arrears of their gratuities and pensions since 2002. It was learnt that arrears owed the ex-workers since 2002 amounted to about N25 billion.

The names of the retired primary school teachers were however, yet to be brought into the payment schedule of the state’s pension board.  The “Voluntary Teachers Scheme” introduced by the state government to ensure availability of qualified professionals in its primary schools has collapsed.  This is because most local governments in the state have stopped paying their stipends of N18,000 even as those still paying were reportedly owing them between six months and eight months’ arrears.

The “Voluntary Teachers’ Scheme” was introduced during the former administration of Sullivan Chime, when “retired but not tired” teachers were re-engaged to teach children on monthly stipends in a bid to fill the vacuum   created since new teachers had not been recruited in the state over the years. The voluntary teachers were now said to be leaving their jobs in droves due to irregular payment of their stipends.

It was however, said that due to the current economic meltdown, the state government had not been finding it easy to pay the salaries of its regular workforce, how much more paying the voluntary teachers their stipends.

One of the affected ex-teachers, Mr Christopher Eyaja said, “We have been suffering since we retired from service. When they retired us, they introduced the Voluntary Teachers’ Scheme for those retired but not tired and fixed a monthly stipend of N18,000. They have also stopped paying the stipend even though we go to schools daily. They have also not paid our pensions, even as they keep asking us to go for one screening or the other either at our respective local governments or Enugu metropolis, with the attendant high cost of transportation.

“Many of us have died while waiting for their gratuity; those of us who did not complete training their children before retirement, are passing through difficulties to feed. It is a pathetic situation. We are dying in parts,” he said. Eyaja said that he retired as a teacher over 12 years ago, adding that “our hopes were raised when the state government announced its readiness to receive the bailout fund from the Federal Government, not knowing that our pensions were not part of the fund.”

However, apart from local government staff and retired primary school teachers, workers in the Enugu State Transport Corporation, ENTRACO were being owed over 40 months arrears of salaries just like those of some other parastatals.

IMO 

The only time retired workers had upward review in their pensions was during the regime of Achike Udenwa as governor, between 1999 and 2007. This was even made possible through the “harmonization process” at that time.  If retirees from other arms of government establishments talk of having received some pension, it is not so with the Imo Broadcasting Corporation, IBC, pensioners who are owed gratuity for between 36 months and 10 years now.

Dwindling resources

According to a communique by the Chairman and Secretary of the IBC Pensioners Association, Comrades Chidi Madu and Richard Nwoko respectively, “our total arrears of pension is 36 months,” and “this has brought untold hardship and miserable death on many of our members.” The IBC workers, however, ruled out the dwindling resources of the state government as excuse to starve to death, while other government activities and projects were duly funded.

“The issue of harmonization of pension for pensioners who retired between 2000 and 2010, in line with the harmonization policy of six percent, 15 percent and the last minimum wage, which attracted 33 and a half percent increase, involving 138 retirees has been ignored. This has kept the monthly pension of most pensioners below N15,000. Sadly, many of those affected retirees have died without receiving their due pension, arrears and harmonization.”

While saying that they have exhausted all avenues to get the state government to address their worsening plight, the famished senior citizens therefore resolved to stage a peaceful protest within Owerri Capital Territory on Wednesday, June 22, 2016, to press home their demand for the payment of their long overdue gratuities and pension arrears.

According to their report the most outstanding periods were “in 2012 (9 months), 2013 (12 months), 2014 (1 month), 2015 (9 months), 2016 (5 months) which they said, totalled about 36 months.” In the same vein, while civil servants in Imo State were last paid 70 percent of their salaries in January, pensioners cannot even remember when they were last paid.