Pensioners in Kwara State yesterday called on the Chief Justice of Nigeria, CJN, Justice Aloma Muktar, to compel the state government to pay the arrears of their gratuities amounting to N1.68 billion.

The pensioners under the auspices of the ‘Kwara State Concerned Pensioners' staged a protest, saying that the nonpayment of the arrears of their gratuities and pension had subjected them to dehumanizing conditions.

Speaking through the Secretary of the association, Comrade Ayobami Ajibola, the pensioners appealed to the CJN to give the appeal filed by the state government against a reprieve they earlier got at the lower court an accelerated hearing.

The Court of Appeal sitting in Ilorin had on June 30, 2010 delivered judgement in favour of the pensioners and ordered the state government to pay them their arrears, which the then government of Senator Bukola Saraki allegedly refused to pay, but rather appealed against it at the apex court.

Ajibola told journalists that the affected pensioners have suffered a lot of untold hardship while some had died in the process as a result of the nonpayment of their arrears.

According to him, many of the pensioners have died because of lack of adequate health care; others were bedridden while many of them have turned beggars in order to make ends meet.

He therefore appealed to the chief justice to determine the case urgently in order to rescue his members from further imminent death. Ajibola accused the state government of politicising the payment of the arrears of pensioners' gratuities and pension.

According to him, government's decision to use the remaining N1.6 billion pensioners' money for developmental projects amounted to infringement of their rights.

He recalled that they discovered in 2006 that there were some backlogs of pension and gratuity arrears the state government owed Kwara pensioners to the tune of N3.36 billion.

He said Kwara State Concerned Pensioners came into existence when the Nigerian Union of Pensioners continued to fail to champion the cause of pensioners in the state.