Date: 2014-02-20

Chief Omoniyi Bidoja is the secretary of the Nigeria Union of Pensioners, NUP, branch in Kwara State. In this interview with Pension and You Correspondent in Ilorin, Kwara State, Demola Akinyemi, the septuagenarian spoke on the living condition of pensioners in the state among other related issues. Excerpts:

What is the state of pension payment now in the state?

Money for the pensioners is not readily available from the federation account to the states and local governments. The money they gave in December which was shared in January was very small. The amount available to the 16 local governments was not enough to pay pensions and meet other social responsibilities of the retirees. So, to bail them out of the predicament, the state government gave the local governments N300million to be able to pay workers salaries, pensions, and primary school teachers. It directed that the money should be paid immediately.

What about the local government pensioners?

As far as payment of pensioners in local governments is concerned, it has just reached 2008 and because of a shortfall in the money the state government gave the local governments to pay pension. These days, pension is high because emoluments of retired officers are high. In particular, pension to retired primary school teachers is high because primary school teachers now reach up to level 15 or 16.

They equally spend about 35 years in service and so their pension is on the high side where an individual can earn between three to four million naira as gratuity.

How many pensioners are we talking about at the state and local government levels?

Well, as of January last year, they were 5,441 for the local government primary school teachers. The state is also high, it is over 5,000. The secretary of the pension board should be able to give exact figures because retirees are coming in every month so the number keeps increasing. But because of better health facilities, the death toll is not as high as the number of people retiring every month.

So, you have reduction in the death toll now because of better health services?

Yes.

Are no other benefits awaiting payment?

There is no other problem, monthly pension is paid as at when due. For sometimes now since the days of Senator Bukola Saraki as the governor, the longest delay we have had since 2003 is not more than one week as far as state pensioners are concerned. The local government pensioners have been having problems because of the nature of their own.

When the federation money is received, the local governments do not have their cheques given to them immediately because there is a committee that sits to decide how much to be given to them. They call that Federation Account & Allocation Committee, FAAC or something like that. The 16 local government chairmen are part of the committee, then the commissioners for finance and his counterparts in local government and others. So, all these people have to meet and talk about these things. We have been holding some meetings and it led to an announcement recently that the state government has augmented the payment of Local Government pensioners by N300 million.

Will this development have any effect on pending court case?

I cannot talk about the court case because we are not involved and government is not telling us anything about it. Let me tell you, we were party to the agreement that was signed with the state government when this money was paid far back in 2008. The people who went to court did not involve us in the court case. Even up till now we have not been called as witnesses or any other thing either by the people concerned or by government.

Any issue of non payment?

As far as the state pensioners are concerned, their gratuity is not delayed like that of the local government. Now the concern we were having before both the state and local government pensions board was that people used political patronage to side-track and that is still happening, though not as much as it was.

The pension union came on board and we wrote memos that when somebody retires, perfect his or her papers and pay his or her pension immediately after retirement. We have appealed to the secretary that when people retire , let them line up according to their years of retirement so that even if you are going to favour some people, it would be minimal. So, you won't leave out someone who retired in 2010 or 2011 and pay someone who retired in 2013 that will be injustice. We were able to sort that out with the state government and the local government service commission.

So there are no serious challenges now?

The challenges we are having is that we are appealing to the state government to increase the amount of money being set aside every month for payment of gratuity so that the payment can be accelerated. It is quite unfortunate but there is nothing we can do about it. We have witnessed people dying on monthly basis without taking their gratuity. That is a very pathetic situation.

I retired 24 years ago. When I was retiring at that time the gratuity was not much. I retired on level 15 after 35 years of service and my gratuity was less than N50,000, my monthly pension was less than N2,000.

What advice can you give your members?

If government can increase the subvention from the present N50million to N100million, it would help. For example sometime last year198 people were retiring and their gratuity amounted to N251million.