FG, please do not scrap pre-retirement empowerment programme

Human life is all about transition from one stage to another, with each of these stages coming with its own challenges and opportunities. What every stage is supposed to teach us is the way of exploring opportunities inherent in it with the hope of overcoming its challenges. To an average civil servant, the most feared […]

Human life is all about transition from one stage to another, with each of these stages coming with its own challenges and opportunities. What every stage is supposed to teach us is the way of exploring opportunities inherent in it with the hope of overcoming its challenges.

To an average civil servant, the most feared stage of life is the one after retirement or post-retirement stage. This life too, is not immune to this universal truth about life as the prospective retiree is about to make transition from the stage he spent the substantial part of his life.

Retirement provides another opportunity for people (civil servants) to correct their mistakes in life and become more productive. In fact, records have shown that there are many people who attained fulfilment only after they retired from paid or salary employment.

Most people find it difficult to live after their retirement because they failed to plan for it. And, the best way to plan is by establishing a business to keep the retiree busy, more productive and financially stable.

It could be set up either individually, by networking with other retirees or with existing businessmen.

It is against this background that over a decades ago, the federal government initiated a pre-retirement individual development and empowerment programme, which is aimed at providing practical entrepreneurship training for prospective retirees to venture into any business of their choice.

The essence of the training is to help retirees prepare to better adjust to the challenges of life after retirement, for them to have personal understanding of financial planning, help them appreciate the types of business opportunities that are open to them, as well as provide them with guides on how they can access their terminal benefits.

This is particularly important because it will help the retiree to cope with extended family pressures he became so used to during his service years and even sustain them. It is also good for his personal health and wellness, because idleness may seriously harm the body that has been actively working for over 30 years.

The programme is good for the retiree, his family, his immediate community, the government, and the country.

However, the federal government was recently reported to have been mulling the idea of scrapping this project despite its benefits.

This will, of course, be counterproductive to the success of the project being celebrated as the messiah of civil servants’ post-retirement life.

It is still not too late for the government to have a rethink on abandoning this good policy due to its benefits.

To conclude with the words of Warren G. Tracy, “Entrepreneurship is living a few years of your life like most people won’t, so you can spend the rest of your life like most people can’t.” For any civil servant who aspires to retire soon, the best way to live the life of his dream lies in his ability to fully plan and utilise his retirement period business-wise.

Aliyu Umar, is the Principal Information Officer, Bureau of Public Service Reforms