Madam Eunice Songowawa is a retired pensioner having put in 40 years of her working life in the various cadres of education. She expresses disappointment and disapproval at the way and manner the exercise is being handled.

Madam Songowawa

At 85, Madam Songowawa appeals to religious leaders in the country to pray for pensioners and for all the three tiers of government in alleviating the sufferings of pensioners. In this interview with Patience Saghana in Maryland, she says government can improve on its efforts. Excerpts

What informed your request to help pensioners in prayers?
The suffering pensioners in the country are going through every now and then, gives me great concern and my heart bleeds each time pensioners go through agonising experience just to collect the pension.

Every human being has his or her own problem but when you see others whose problems in life are greater than one’s own, we cannot help but give God thanks. It is only those who are alive that could collect their pension if at all they are able to get it.

That is why l will always thank God for the peace He granted me even at my old age. He bestowed me with an immeasurable favour. Some of my mates are not alive today to receive their pensions while some have had to wheeled hospitals because they cannot walk on their own save for the help of their children to collect their pension as a result of pension board slogan of ‘I’m alive’.
Pensioners have to be physically present to collect their pensions. But like soldiers of Christ, pensioners are matching on. I have been a widow for many years yet God has been there for me all my life.
The last one and half year has been torturous for many of this country’s pensioners; we have heard that many pensioners who depend on the little stipends they get from their retirement have not been paid. This is so sad.

We live in a country where we have continuously failed to protect our vulnerable population, how in the world do we expect many retirees who served this country with all they had and are not in the best health conditions to go through the rigours of “I’m alive”  as required by the pension board?

It is obvious that our pension system is broken and it needs to be fixed as a matter of urgency. The process of verification is outrageous and ridiculous.

You need to go to one of the verification centres yourself to see what pensioners go through. They are kept in the scorching sun for hours whilst many of them were unable to gain access into the main hall for recertification; the experience is heartbreaking and each time l remember the hallowing experiences of pensioners, it beats my imagination how a country treat its old citizens.

I know we can to do better as a nation. My husband’s sister who is over 70 left Lagos by flight for her pension only to get to Abuja and was told that they could not find her file. What could be more heinous!

Are you on pension in this country or outside the country?
I went overseas but l did not wait to work there. I had to come back home because of my children. I had worked in the education sector for 40 years before l retired. I went through the primary, secondary and what have you hence receive my pension in Nigeria.

I would not say my pension is regular but l thank God. Though, it comes late yet l still receive it. I have a burden in my heart over pensioners plight particularly for those who had retired for so many years yet have not been given their gratuity talk worth of their pension.

For the grace of God, l did not go through that rigour as my gratuity was paid within three months after my retirement. More so, when the increase in pension takes place, it does not go round to all pensioners. There was an increase of 142 percent in 2000 which really did much for us as pensioners but harmonisation of the increase did not start until after two years yet there were heap of  arrears for those months.

What I wish the government to do is to regularise pension system whereby every pensioner in the country is settled and rectified in an ICT system so that we can also beat our chest that we have what other countries have. My junior sister worked in Britain for many years and later took her son there to work but decided to work for a while so she went to where she had worked in the late 70s in the 80s  and within a twinkle of an eye, all her record was downloaded from their computer.

They did not looked for any file for her but just punch at a keyboard and her record was downloaded there and then There were not searching for her file. They did say her file was missing. And that was how she was again absorbed into the civil service system of that country.

She was there till retirement and since retirement, she had not left her home to attend any verification exercise because that country have elderly comfort scheme for aged people. They also provide old people with a pass to go anywhere free of charge.

What do you think the government should do?
Government should apply technology. I think they are making effort at doing that now because when will go for pension these days, you see the machine in front of the officials but that can be improved upon by computing all the record of pensioners. They are trying to ease the plight of pensioners and also decentralising.
The government is trying but l still want the church and religious leaders to pray for the to improve pension system to that standard of comfort and ease which other countries are enjoying. We have a listening God and listening government and we hope that someday and sometimes soon, pensioners will rejoice.

I am happy about the pension scheme going on now that whilst you are at work, you are contributing that the government too is contributing so that when you retire, it will be easy to get your pension gratuity.
Government still needs our prayers because the Bible says the prayer of the righteous availeth much