WHEN THE PENSIONERS PROTEST…

Pensioners’ benefits should be paid promptly

Last Tuesday, some retired military personnel staged a protest at the Ministry of Finance headquarters in Abuja, demanding the immediate payment of their pension arrears. Wielding placards the protesters barricaded the ministry’s entrance with canopies and chairs, asking the federal government to settle their long-overdue benefits on which they have been agitating since December. The retirees are demanding several benefits, including palliatives covering October 2023 to November 2024, a N32,000 increase in their monthly pensions, and a refund of deductions from soldiers who were medically discharged. Though the ex-military men started receiving payment alerts right from the protest ground, it is hardly so for other categories of pensioners across the country, many of whom die without collecting their entitlements.

Ironically, one major attraction in public service, despite its poor remuneration package, is the

 benefit of receiving pension after retirement. But over the years, such prospect has become problematic and uncertain.  The failure of government to meet the pension expectation of retirees ends up shattering the plans of many. At different times, many senior citizens who had no other sources of income had collapsed and died while on queues waiting for their pensions. And this has worsened the woes of retirees, particularly with the current economic challenges. 

It was in a bid to move beyond this tragic situation that the Pension Reforms Act of 2004 was enacted. It was, as the name suggests, designed to address the failures of the old scheme—the Defined Benefit Scheme (DBS). In its place, the Contributory Pension Scheme (CPS) was introduced wherein both the government and the workers themselves are to save up a given amount of their earnings towards building up an accumulated funds reserve which the worker can fall back on after retirement.

It is noteworthy that the National Pension Commission (PenCom) has not only helped to grow the funds but has been largely prudent in its management. However, there are still issues that are yet to be resolved by the government regarding many retired senior citizens.  From teachers to judicial officers to Customs personnel, many concerned authorities have defaulted in picking up their bills promptly. It is even more painful that the monthly stipend to many of the aged men and women is so meagre and could hardly purchase anything of value.

Complications in meeting up with the pension obligations had arisen fundamentally with the failure to link those in the old scheme (DBS) with those in the new scheme (CPS). But even after it seems to have been done, the federal and many state governments fail in remitting deducted sums from workers’ salaries to the Pension Fund Administrators. The result is that neither government contribution nor workers’ deducted sums are credited to the accounts of the workers with the Pension Fund Administrators (PFAs). The problem is more prevalent in the private sector where many companies do not remit their counterpart deductions to the PFAs as required by the Pension Act.

The provisions of the act had demanded that the government issues bonds in favour of retired workers, which will be redeemed to the PFAs who will credit same to the accounts of the individual staff. Therefore, the non-remittance of the deductions of staff is a clear breach of the provisions of the Pension Reforms Act and that perhaps explains why pension liabilities in the country today run into hundreds of billions of naira.

While we urge the federal and state governments to keep faith with their obligations to pensioners, we also call on PenCom to apply stricter measures in enforcing compliance with the provisions of the Pension Reforms Act by the PFAs. Retired persons including military personnel who staked their lives to secure the country should not die in need.