Still on the plight of pensioners in Nigeria

The biggest blessing of old age is that people who have lived long and fruitfully are able to see out their last days in peace, untroubled by the torments of   broken promises and injustice. Nigeria is plagued by insecurity. It is not just insecurity expressed in the booming bombs of Boko Haram or the murderous […]

The biggest blessing of old age is that people who have lived long and fruitfully are able to see out their last days in peace, untroubled by the torments of   broken promises and injustice.

Nigeria is plagued by insecurity. It is not just insecurity expressed in the booming bombs of Boko Haram or the murderous rage of  herdsmen or the chilling audacity of bandits. There is also economic and financial insecurity, which ensures that parents are unsure of what the  future holds for their children; there is also  social insecurity, which ensures  countless  Nigerians  perch precariously on the breadlines with  nothing to hold on to and nothing to hope for.

There is job insecurity. Clairvoyance is no criterion to know that unemployment is a big problem in the country, and that many Nigerians who are supposedly employed work under very difficult conditions.

The Nigerian civil and public services employ countless Nigerians, many of them breadwinners in large families. These men and women who serve the country in different capacities usually form the core of different Ministries, Departments and Agencies of government. They are recruited in their prime and they go on to give their best to the country for many years, with little or nothing to show for it. Then, when they reach the mandatory retirement age, they go on to retire. For most of them, it is upon retirement that the agony begins, blowing a chilling armada of questions their way.

They retire with nothing and to nothing but a bevy of needy and eager   dependents. Thus suddenly, after many years of working their socks off, they are left staring down the drain of economic hardship at an age when their bones are getting frail and their minds dwindling.

The entire province of pension is underpinned by proactivism. The idea which is not short of many pearls of wisdom is that after years of work, men and women who served with all their hearts are able to retire with dignity and decency. For those who have diligently served in Nigeria`s civil and public service, pension is some guarantee that when their days are winding up, they will find some warmth, and wages to make their last days a tad comfortable.

Thus, it can only be scandalous that for most of them, retirement only sounds the whistle for the rat-race to secure their immediate post-retirement future. Most of them already aging and ailing have to leave their houses all over the country and embark on arduous journeys to beg cap in hand for what is theirs.

Of course, just as with everything else in Nigeria, the administration of pension   has been compromised by corruption thereby leaving a lot to be desired. Of course, other factors like bureaucracy may share the bulk of the buck, but notable mention must go to the corrosive corruption that besets national structures and institutions in Nigeria, laying waste to the integrity of men and matter.

Pension is supposed to be the prize for many years of painstaking efforts put into service. Yet, the hurdles placed on the paths of pensioners in Nigeria make many ask the painful question of whether the country is worth serving at all.

In recent times, terribly ugly scandals have erupted, engulfing those charged with the direct administration of pension in Nigeria. In court, staggering amounts of money belonging to Nigerian retirees have been cited  in charges against defendants charged with dipping their fingers into the pension till.

There is also a nagging sense of frustration with the way the government has failed to preclude the pillage of what belongs to those who effortlessly served the country for years.

The long arm of the law must now arise not only to secure the post-retirement future of those who serve Nigeria in different capacities but also to dish out just deserts to those whose specialty is to reap where they did not sow.

 

Kene Obiezu, Abuja