The double pension jeopardy
When asked what he would do with press freedom shortly after violently toppling Shehu Shagari’s government in 1983, General, now President Muhammadu Buhari promised to tamper with press freedom. Those were the days when men make promises and ran ahead to fulfil them. They promulgated Decree 4 and to show that they meant business, they […]
When asked what he would do with press freedom shortly after violently toppling Shehu Shagari’s government in 1983, General, now President Muhammadu Buhari promised to tamper with press freedom. Those were the days when men make promises and ran ahead to fulfil them. They promulgated Decree 4 and to show that they meant business, they made Tunde Thompson and Nduka Irabor pay for their defiance of the law. Publications such as Newswatch and Concord were shut down. Today, news outlets and social media (imported by President Jones) are doing incalculable damage to the psyche of Naija. If care is not taken, they may incite the people against government or powerful individuals.
If you want to live well, steer clear of social media that turns everybody into publishers, thereby narrowing the definition of who is a journalist. With a timeline, publishers pick their stories from beer parlours and hang around open markets, for headline gossip. Just last week, Pius Adesanmi was threatening those who are obsessed with Davido’s latest car or Linda Ikeji’s latest handbag to steer clear of his inbox. Now, Adesanmi is a prodigy as they come, a full-fledged professor before 45 and winner of several literary prizes. He combines this with being the first black director of the Institute of African Studies at Canada’s Carleton University. But I do not know anyone who has named his or her children after him, Wole Soyinka or Okey Ndibe.
In future, I prophesy, with Johnson Suleiman accuracy that immigration officers might have trouble finding out which one is the authentic Dangote, Otedola or Alakija. One guy in Oyo even proudly named his child after Osama bin Laden. I guess the logic is that if you can’t join the moneymakers, you could at least let your name strike fear in the heart of Americans!
Where am I going with all this? Well, I just read the front page of Daily Trust on Monday. It’s lead story captioned Double pay for ex-governors now senators, ministers is the stuff for which Pulitzers are earned in America. In Naija, if the NUJ or the guild gives you recognition, it won’t be worth more than the legendary pre-Jega ASUU-pay. For those who are too young to know, it was said that ASUU pay was not enough to take its receivers to the bus stop. Things have since changed although my friends in the academia insist they are not laughing – yet! Its not that the Daily Trust story told us anything new, it joggles our memory in a manner that could make conscientious society to start asking questions and demanding answers. But in Naija, touch not our politricians and do our ruiners no harm.
According to the story, most insolvent and semi-solvent states are fleeced monthly by the governors they have retired and the deputies they have sacked but who negotiated – usually without their approval for the most generous severance packages in public service history. But since they are not tired, they are serving as sinnators or minusters and are bound to go out of those positions even doubly richer and financially positioned to determine who they want as successors. Unknown to Barack Obama who thinks that Sai Baba is doing a good job with fuel scarcity and zerowatt electricity generation among others, these severance packages would make him green with envy now that he is a quarter to retire and bound to face the IRA – not the Irish Republic Army, but the Internal Revenue Agency – silly!
The innuendo here is what I find seditious – that while public servants in these states are not guaranteed the salaries they’ve worked for, those who put them in that stage smiles to their banks coute que coute. It is not a story that an unpaid pensioner sleeps on without the help of soporific medication. This is what is meant that from those who have not, even the little that they have shall be taken away.
In what I think is an omission, rather than deliberate mischief, the writers of the report did not start with President Muhammadu Buhari, a member of this privileged class. They also omitted vice president Yemi Osinbajo, who retired as a commissioner. If commissioners are exempted from these generous packages, I hope this wakes them up to assemble more SAN’s than Rikey Tarfa to fight the discrimination.
When Sai Baba charged those who cannot afford to send their children to schools abroad to withdraw them, it was not because he could pay his own with estacode from his junkets, but perhaps the principle of pension double jeopardy. Now, if you have no power in your phone, nor fuel to power your generator, you are unlikely to go to social media mobilizing for Naija Spring. This is Decree 4 through the backdoor and I believe we are very happy with it. By the way, how many state governors are sole administrators, operating without commissioners?