N21bn stolen by top civil servants makes life difficult for pensioners
“We brought him here, thinking that it was an opportunity for him to make claims for his entitlements,” a family member told Sunday Trust. “For many years now, he has not received his pensions, and he has to live on hand-outs from Good Samaritans. Meanwhile, the Federal Government is indebted to him in the region […]
“We brought him here, thinking that it was an opportunity for him to make claims for his entitlements,” a family member told Sunday Trust. “For many years now, he has not received his pensions, and he has to live on hand-outs from Good Samaritans. Meanwhile, the Federal Government is indebted to him in the region of millions of naira.”
The scene above contrasts with the discovery by the Senate. Over N21 billion out of the N24 billion belonging to pensioners, many of whom are members of the Nigeria Police Force, is believed to have been stolen and stashed away in several undisclosed bank accounts belonging to top government officials, while those who should live on the huge sum have become pitiable sights wherever they live in various parts of the country. Due to the acute penury, despondency and deprivation to which the nation’s retirees, the so-called senior citizens, have been subjected by those saddled with the responsibility of their welfare despite billions of naira annually appropriated for their pensions, there have been several cases of pensioners slumping at various verification exercises, while many others have reportedly died in silence. Those ‘lucky’ to be alive continue to lament thus: “Life is difficult for us. We’re hungry. We’re suffering. Is it a crime to be a retiree?”
The Senate, sometime late last year, mandated its Joint Committee on Establishment and Public Service and State and Local Government Administration to carry out a comprehensive investigation into the management of pension funds and payment of pensioners. Thereafter, the committee resolved to hold a public hearing across the six geo-political zones including the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), Abuja.
The public hearing, which is still ongoing, in the words of the chairman of the committee, Senator Aloysius Akpan Etok (PDP, Akwa Ibom North West), is aimed at, among other things, receiving pensioners’ complaints and grievances for redress, addressing the maladministration of pension funds, institutionalizing a legal framework on pension matters and permanently ending pensioners’ suffering.
Prior to the hearing, Etok told newsmen in Abuja that there was already a heap of petitions, 94 of which originated from the FCT alone, bordering on sharp practices in the administration of pension funds. He said heads would roll, saying “we will expose all corrupt practices in the pension fund management and subsequently jail the looters. Pension fraud is worse than armed robbery, and if we don’t jail these looters and fraudsters, people in the service would think they would be deprived of their entitlements when they retire, and they might want to help themselves out illegitimately before they retire. This will aggravate corruption. We will ensure that pension fund looters go to jail”.
According to him, while it is too early to fault the Federal Government’s claim of N3 billion monthly expenditure on pensions, it is, however, ridiculous that a large number of retirees are yet to get their entitlements despite the government’s claim to have so far paid over N2 trillion to an unspecified number of pensioners under the new pension scheme since 2007.
“The Senate desires a complete overhauling of pension fund administration. We are against a situation where the cost of running pension funds is not known. We want to know the exact number of pensioners in the country and their wage bill. We want to ensure that workers and pensioners are paid the same day. We will also ensure that salary review applies to pensioners too. The endless verification exercises have been cumbersome. To reduce the stress pensioners undergo during various screening exercises, we are looking forward to ensuring there is only one verification exercise and possibly recommending an electronic payment system”, he said.
Describing the accumulation of pension arrears as a time bomb for the nation, Etok said, “This committee has also noted with deep concern the complaints and appeals of so many Nigerians who served during the colonial days as civil servants. They served for years, and that should have qualified them for pensions and gratuities, but they had their careers terminated as a result of the Civil War. These people are pleading that those years in which they meritoriously served the nation before the Civil War should not be in vain”.
The memoranda submitted and the presentations made so far at the public hearing have underscored what observers describe as startling revelations of a huge fraud scandal in the administration of pension funds in the country.
The Federal Government, the committee contends, has been discovered to be indebted to many states vis-à-vis the disbursement of pension funds. Lagos and Kaduna States have informed the committee that the problems of pension payment surfaced after the Federal Government took over the payment of federal pensions in 2002. Corroborating this assertion, various other state chapters of the Nigerian Union of Pensioners said they were being owed huge sums as arrears of the so-called federal share of pensions.
Most of the pension unions, in their separate presentations, accused the desk officers at the Office of the Head of Civil Service of the Federation of being inaccessible, arrogant and brutal; while pensioners from the various Ministries, Department and Agencies (MDAs) said the taskforce inaugurated by the Office of the Head of Civil Service had exacerbated their plight with the wrong use of salary structure as well as improper and erroneous computation of terminal benefits paid to disengaged staff by the Bureau of Public Service Reform.
At Arewa House in Kaduna where the North-west zone of the hearing held, members of the committee, in their intermittent bursts of surprise, pilloried the Director of Pensions in the Office of the Head of Civil Service of the Federation (HOSF), Mr Vesley Zaki, for having no answer to any of the probing questions raised, particularly on the non-payment of the federal government share of pensions which Kaduna State Head of Service Mrs Hannatu Ugah said had not been disbursed to the state’s retirees since 1999.
The director of pensions, who represented the Head of Civil Service of the Federation, further angered the committee when he said he was not involved in the payment of pensions since a task force was set up in 2010. He also said he could not account for the shortage of five percent of the Federal Government pension contributions to the retirees that served with it in the old Government of Northern Region. Zaki also claimed no knowledge of the number of pensioners in the country and those in his care.
Taking on the director of pensions, the visibly angry chairman of the committee exploded, “Do you know we’re lenient for not sending you to jail today for telling us that you have no information or records about pensioners in the country and for collecting money for the job not done. As the director of pensions, if you don’t know the number of pensioners in your care and the time the appointment of the task force lapses, then, what are you directing? We’re aware that an assistant director of the task force has about 25 policemen guarding him in order to deny pensioners access to claiming their entitlements. It is either you get us the records needed or we retire you by Friday. We’ve the power to arrest, detain and send you to jail”.
A member of the committee, Senator Mudashiru Husain (ACN, Osun West), who also flew into a fury, quizzed the pension director, “Don’t you know that pension issues affect the entire country? There is no family in this country that does not have at least a retiree. You’re telling us you don’t have any answer to all the questions we’ve raised. So, you think we are joking here?”
Registering their own grievances, the staff of the Kano State chapter of the defunct National Agricultural Land Development Authority (NALDA), in their petition dated February 26, 2012 signed by their counsel, Barrister Aliyu Ahmed, told the Senate committee that NICON Insurance Plc had refused to settle N71.35 million accrued pension entitlements and death benefits owed their retired and deceased colleagues from June 2007 to December 2011.
They said from June 11, 2007 to December 2010, NICON had deprived their colleagues of N19.9 million gratuities, N37.4 million pension arrears and N10.39 million outstanding death benefits. “The committee may also wish to note that there was a healthy balance of N134.4 million on the defunct NALDA Deposit Administration account plus Endowment Account maintained by NICON Plc from which the pensions and benefits of NALDA staff are paid”, the petition read in part.
They therefore urged the committee to direct NICON “to immediately settle all the outstanding claims and order the Head of Civil Service of the Federation to take over the payment of pensions and death benefits to their staff and simultaneously engineer the closure of NICON accounts while recovering the outstanding balance locked with the company, stressing that “this alternative we prefer as it will relieve the risk of accidents encountered by the beneficiaries in making fruitless journeys to Abuja”.
In its own presentation, the Kaduna State Council of Federal Pensioners said it was unfortunate that some pensioners, though physically seen and captured during verification exercises, had to engage the services of solicitors before they could be paid their benefits.
The council, therefore, among other things, called for the delegation of power to the representatives of the HOSF in the states to deal with pension matters at the state level, the decentralization of pension payment that would request states to pay and get reimbursed by the Federal Government, the release of payment schedule to state branches of the union to enable them detect wrong account numbers and omitted names of pensioners in the payroll, the constant review of pension in line with sections 173(3) and 210(3) of the constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria which provides for pension to be reviewed every five years or together with any federal/state civil service salary increase, and punishment for corrupt pension officials.
Kaduna State Governor Patrick Yakowa commended the Senate committee over the hearing, urging it, however, to come up with recommendations that would sanitize the management of pension funds, saying “the quantum of money involved is large, and there must be a proper system of pension fund administration that would ensure that pensioners get their dues, while ghost pensioners are phased out”.
The committee said apart from having resolved to conduct a full scale investigation to determine the total amount of money released to the Office of the Head of Civil Service of the Federation for pension payment and how the money was disbursed, it had also summoned various state heads of service, accountants-general, auditors-general and finance commissioners to appear before it in Abuja. This, according to the vice chairman of the committee, Senator Kabiru Ibrahim Gaya (ANPP, Kano South), is necessary as some government officials have been found to be holding files and documents crucial to investigations. The committee, he added, “would also request the scrapping of the Federal Pension Board because it has failed to discharge its responsibilities”.
Will the pension fund investigation, like several other probes in the past, also end up with no result? Senator Gaya responded, “No! This public hearing is very important because it seeks to expose those stealing people’s money, unlike other probes that sought to expose those stealing government’s money. The executive will have to implement our recommendations to show its commitment to the fight against corruption.”
Only time will tell if the Senate will succeed in putting the suffering of the nation’s pensioners to a permanent end.