I just came back from a 5 week vacation in Nigeria. I went home wearing two caps. I took the vacation to take care of some personal business and to check on the status of my Federal Pensions which were paid from 1986 but stopped in June 2010 because the Pensions Office in Abuja was more concerned now about the threat posed by a few ghost pensioners. The office has suddenly realized I might have been a ghost worker and they were not going to resume payment until I show my first letter of appointment issued some 51 years ago or produce the gazette announcing that appointment and my last promotion before retirement. Only God can tell how many pensioners like me including those whose entire life depends on that pension have been sent to their graves by our so-called transformational President and his incompetence, the failure of policies and the bureaucratic problems at the Federal Pensions Office in Abuja.
I just came back from a 5 week vacation in Nigeria. I went home wearing two caps. I took the vacation to take care of some personal business and to check on the status of my Federal Pensions which were paid from 1986 but stopped in June 2010 because the Pensions Office in Abuja was more concerned now about the threat posed by a few ghost pensioners. The office has suddenly realized I might have been a ghost worker and they were not going to resume payment until I show my first letter of appointment issued some 51 years ago or produce the gazette announcing that appointment and my last promotion before retirement. Only God can tell how many pensioners like me including those whose entire life depends on that pension have been sent to their graves by our so-called transformational President and his incompetence, the failure of policies and the bureaucratic problems at the Federal Pensions Office in Abuja.
I went home to find out for myself what is really happening at home on the so-called transformation pledge of President Jonathan when he took office raising so much hope of people like me who believed the President was going to make a difference. I was curious to know if the reports I read on the world wide web and the news media are really true or grossly exaggerated. I went there as a a correspondent and regular columnist with the Sahara Reporters of New York and the Chat Afrik News Forum based in Washington, DC and Maryland.
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I am talking of a President who swims in an ocean of contradictions. This President has been known to condone the promotion of his first lady to an absentee Permanent Secretary in Bayelsa State to boost her salaries and retirement benefits. His policies on hindsight, have denied millions of current pensioners who are not as lucky as his wife. Here is a President who has spent millions of Naira to bury his adopted mother-in-law and more millions on the wedding of his adopted daughter and several millions as ransom to free up his brother who was recently kidnapped. The President has woefully failed to get to the bottom of pension funds which are being looted under his watch. 234 students were kidnapped by Boko Haram and it has to take a public demonstration of parents and concerned citizens to rescue them.
The Government Jonathan has inherited as President successfully made arrangements to have Nigerian pensioners of British origin paid their pensions right there in the UK till now following such pensioners’ retirement from Nigeria more than 54 years ago.. This President has had no qualms denying Nigerian pensioners of their benefits and entitlements using the most stupid excuses. I could speak to these lapses as a Federal pensioner and a one time Head of the Pensions Unit and a one time Secretary for Staff Development under Madam Francesca Yetunde Emanuel as Permanent Secretary in the Federal Ministry of Establishments more than 40 years ago.
President Jonathan would tell you he is busy transforming Nigeria but what he would not admit is that Nigeria is worse off today than it has ever been under all of his predecessors in that office. Within a few minutes of my arrival at the Murtala Mohammed air port, I could see very little to nothing has changed in Nigeria. I started sweating profusely as soon as I got out of the aircraft. I got another rude shock as Immigration and Customs officials, Drug Enforcement agents and Aviation and Airline staff pounced on passengers who were therefore compelled to offer bribes and kickbacks in broad day light to just get past their barricades only to meet a crowd of touts and taxi drivers waiting outside the airport.
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The airport which is a carbon copy of the Schipol Airport in Amsterdam looks more like a motor park than an international airport. I took a few pictures on my camcorder not realizing that what I have seen was only a tip of the iceberg. The journey from the air port to my vacation stop at Oko Oba Agege which should normally have taken less than 20 minutes drive took close to 3 hours. I knew right there and then what I call a vacation was really going to be more than I bargained for. When President Jonathan and his loyalists talk of Nigeria, you will think they are talking about a different country when you compare the reality on the ground.
President Jonathan on assumption of office promised he was going to be a transformational President meaning he was going to make a special effect to make a difference. He surely has not delivered on that promise from all I was able to see. Around the time of my arrival in Nigeria, the news was everywhere that Nigeria’s GDP has suddenly risen above that of South Africa arguably the most powerful and the most economic vibrant country in the continent. I actually heard the Minister of Finance, Ngozi Okonjo Iwealla addressed a press conference in Abuja in which she gave the credit to herself and by extension to her President who strongly believes he is going to ride back to power in 2015 based on such empty propaganda and glowing reports of the Nigerian economy. If you believe that crap, you will believe anything. What is so scary in all of this is the President’s state of mind when he is ever so ready to make very false declarations on a transformation agenda that has caused more pains than relief for the silent majority of Nigerians I spoke to or came across.
I would be the first to admit that I could not in 5 weeks see and evaluate and judge every index of progress that the President may have been arrogating to his policies, but there are a few observations that any visitor to Nigeria could not miss. I am basing my assessment on those indicators and the situation at the Federal Pensions Office in Abuja where I visited every day for one week from Monday to Friday from the 6th to the 11th of April.
There are lots of things wrong with Nigeria other the pensions office. The state of national security in Nigeria is nothing to write home about as the Boko Haram bomb blast in Abuja has now confirmed that the Boko Haram insurrection and mayhem are no longer localized to Bornu, Yobe, Adamawa or some isolated parts of the North.
It is fast spreading to the nation’s capital and beyond and our Commander-in-Chief and his so-called powerful military which is known to have performed wonders restoring peace and stability to Liberia, Sierra leone and few of the ECOWAS states is totally helpless in performing the same feat at home under Jonathan’s command. You hear of random kidnap in the South/South and the Southeast and ritual killings in the Southwest. All the President could do is put all the blames on Governors of the affected states while exonerating himself and his Administration so to speak. The dog is supposed to wag its tail but in Nigeria the tail is wagging the dog.
Unemployment in Nigeria has reached double digits or more as we speak. I was there when many Nigerian youths looking for work were trampled upon and killed following a mayhem from a crowd of job seekers who had been invited to attend Immigration interviews but because of lack of crowd control at the venue, a lot of those job seekers were killed in a stampede that not even the President could explain. The President in his fortress in Aso Rock heard about it but he was in no position to reassure the nation about what was being done to forestall a recurrence. Nigerians dying or being kidnapped everywhere is a daily occurrence.
Power outages in Nigeria remain a constant problem everywhere you go in Nigeria including the air ports. A lot of money is being spent by Government at the federal level on the power and energy sectors with nothing to show for it. You listen to a debate on the Budget and Appropriations on the floor of the Senate and the National Assembly and you wonder if our senators and legislators fully understand the concept of public probity and accountability. The great majority of them wee elected or rigged into power not to serve the people but to feather their own nests and fill their own pockets with loot from the nation’s treasury.
Petroleum shortages and hoarding of petroleum products across the country has remained a major problem facing the people. The control price of gas at 97.00 Naira per liter is openly displayed at most of the petrol-filling stations. It was only in Lagos that you find some stations selling at controlled price. Elsewhere around the country petrol is still being sold at 130.00 Naira or higher per liter. You either buy it or leave it. The petrol attendants are not bothered about the possibility of being arrested or the fear that their filling stations could be closed down for breaking the law. In the midst of that scarcity, you could find hawkers carrying jerry cans of petrol for sale totally unaware of the fire hazards such activities could cause any time. Impunity has become the order of the day in Nigeria and very few seem to care about doing something about the situation. Everybody seems resigned to the shocking development. Take it or leave it. A President who cannot enforce his own country’s laws and guarantee the safety of his citizens does not deserve re-election.
My most pathetic experience on that trip occurred at the Federal Pensions Office which which still operates as a unit under the office of the Head of Service of the Federation like it has been for many years. Like I hinted earlier, I once served for a short time as Head of Pensions when the Department used to be under the Federal Ministry of Establishment in Lagos and before the relocation of the capital to Abuja. I served under 2 Permanent Secretaries namely, the late Grey Eronmosele Longe and Mrs. Francisca Yetunde Emanuel. I was for 3 years the Secretary Staff Development located at the Majekodunmi Building opposite Police Headquarters at Ikoyi under Francesca Yetunde Emanuel. As a retired officer, I therefore knew up close and personal how the Federal Pensions was supposed to operate and how much importance the Heads of State I served with, had attached to the smooth operation of that office because they all instinctively knew they would all retire some day to claim their entitlements as pensioners.
One of the worst injustices any responsible and self respecting Head of State could ever perpetrate on pensioners who had dedicated their lives and their prime to serving the nation to the best of their ability is for them to deny such officers of their benefits and entitlements all in the name of catching some fraudulent ghost pensioners the corrupt system has allowed to begin with. Only God know show many times Federal Pension Funds including those for Police officers have been looted in Nigeria under the leadership of President Jonathan. Only God knows how many times President Jonathan has set up committees and consultants to solve once and for all the looting of Federal Pensions with nothing to show for it. The President is seeking re-election in 2015 with this abysmal record in office. In more civilized countries, the President would not even run, if nominated or serve if elected. He would simply have taken himself out like has just happened in South Korea where a Prime Minister had to tender his resignation because he believed he bore some vicarious responsibility for the ferry disaster which took the lives of 300 Korean students.
I cannot help but compare and contrast in this piece President Jonathan performance with the performance of few of the A.P.C. Opposition Governors in Lagos, Edo,Osun, Ogun and Oyo and Ekiti states of Nigeria which I have followed for quite some time. The one that readily comes to mind is that of Governor Rauf Aregbesola of Osun State who is being challenged for second term by former PDP senator Omisore of Ife, the rabble-rouser who describes himself as “Ajanaku” but whose track record even as senator is as empty as his overblown ego and manifesto. Most states, as I found out on my trip, do not have the same kind of problems the Jonathan Administration currently has with Federal pensioners.
Governor Aregbosola, like his other colleagues in the Southwest, is busy turning things around and carrying out initiatives and imperishable legacies that qualify him for re-election as achievers of no mean caliber. Governor Aregbesola’s introduction of smart card identification for public servants in Osun State is a novelty that a President Jonathan can learn something from. Governor Aregbosola’s concern for the plight of pensioners in Osun marks him out as a big thinker and as a potential presidential material in Nigeria, if we take all sentiments aside. I don’t care about your party label or affiliation as a politicians, if you perform and deliver for the people, you deserve re-election just like Governor Fashola and Governor Oshiomhole of Edo and Governor Segun Mimiko of Ondo state.
The smart card Aregbesola has introduced in Osun is electronically personalized with biometric features to each of its users. Taking such a step is an effort on the part of Aregbesola to preempt the kind of mess that President Jonathan and his Civil Service has created in the Federal Pensions in Nigeria where many of his officers currently managing the office have no clue about what to do. They are more or less saying that pensioners who cannot produce their initial letters of appointment or last promotion even if the appointment and promotions were earned more than 40 to 50 years ago must be denied their pensions or just presumed dead. The pensioners could take the Federal Government Pensions to Court but how could they afford the legal fees to do that in a country where only senior advocates with their exorbitant charges now prosecute most cases in Nigeria if the litigants wants to succeed.
Across section of the officers in the Pensions Unit would advise you to go submit an affidavit of loss of such documents in the hope you will be denied a chance to swear to such an affidavit. If you succeed in getting the affidavit, they question how you were able to get it and their Auditor would still refuse to process your benefits even after you have submitted retroactive statements from your Bank showing they have been paying your pensions for years. They tell you it is President Jonathan policies they are carrying out. If the President does not know this is happening, I am writing this article to let him know just in case he or any of his aides stumble on this write up. The President should have known some of what I am writing here if he is a proactive President who is in touch with the plight of the people he is elected to serve and protect.
You can clearly see the Jonathan Administration is more interested in causing the pensioners more pains and hardship to a point that they will just have to give up their right and entitlements. It could also be a ploy to force them to offer the officials kickbacks or bribes which could be 50 or 75 per cent of what they were expecting to get if their pension were eventually paid. I have never seen a more retrogressive and unreasonable Department in my life.
Who should have a permanent record of Government gazettes other the Government that issued the gazette? Rather than admit it was nearly impossible to expect most pensioners to produce such gazettes, the Unit should be the one producing such documents to separate the ghost pensioners from real pensioners. The Unit is passing the buck to helpless pensioners who are either too old and arguably too senile to keep such records. If they are in any doubt about the validity of employment records they ought to subject any pensioners showing up to prove under which Permanent Secretaries or Directors they served and when. They are not interested in such questions. All they are doing is to disqualify as many pensioners from being able to claim their entitlements and benefits so their looting of Federal pensions would never receive public scrutiny or forever swept under the carpet. How many ghost pensioners have been identified and jailed in Nigeria under Jonathan’s Administration? I did not hear of one.
Many of those pensioners I am talking about depend on their pensions for survival. When you take it away from them you are sending them to their graves earlier than ordained for them. I actually witness a few old and sickly pensioners dying in the Pensions Office or in motor accidents on the death traps most of the Nigerian roads leading to Abuja have become. It was the most wicked position for any President or Government to take but it is all happening under President Jonathan, the first Ph.D southerner to be elected President of Nigeria.
I am fully aware that this kind of write up may not change anything but it becomes part of the public record for whatever it may be worth. I personally sought audience with the current Director of Pensions, a gentleman named V.A Safi who was very gracious and kind enough to grant me audience and to give me a listening ear when he got to know I was once the Head of Pensions more than 3 decades before him. He was ready to help and he did help, but the officers below him were hell-bent on upholding a policy that makes no sense at all but serves their own selfish interest. Somebody has to speak up for those pensioners.
Need I say more?
I rest my case.
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of SaharaReporters
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