On Ambode and LASPOTECH retirees

YOUR Excellency Sir, it is with sadness and a heavy heart that I am writing you this letter on behalf of about 150 retirees of the Lagos State Polytechnic, whose pensions have not only been suspended for the past one year, but whose outstanding gratuities have remained unpaid in the last seven years. You will recall that these retirees had, in early March this year, sent a save our souls (SOS) message to you over the same issue. Since those affected are ordinary folks, helpless retirees, and as such were not able to meet Your Excellency in person to explain their case to you despite many efforts to do so and despite many letters sent to your office, they resorted to writing about their plight in the media, and they are unsure whether their last message in the media reached you or not.

This set of retirees who retired from the services of the polytechnic in 2010 decided to bring to your notice once again their plight for three reasons: One, by the end of this month, May 2017, it would be exactly one year since they and their families were thrown into hunger and penury when their pensions were stopped;  two, because of a statement in the press credited to the State Commissioner for Establishment, Training and Pension, Dr. Akintola Benson, that the Lagos State government, was not owing pensioners in the state, and three, the death of one of the pensioners only last week.  One would have whole-heartedly endorsed the message as that was the situation with the 2010 retirees of the Lagos State Polytechnic too until their pensions were stopped in June last year, while parts of their gratuities still remain unpaid. Sadly, another of these pensioners, one Mr. Lai Oyerinde, was buried on Saturday 13th May, 2017. His death was occasioned by the hardships  he had been passing through in the last one year. Your Excellency sir, you are no doubt an exceedingly busy man but by the time you multiply 150 by ten dependants, the figure grows bigger. Sir, I will seek your indulgence to appraise you once again of the genesis of the plight of these innocent senior citizens.

The genesis of the mass retirement of both the academic and non-academic staff from the polytechnic began 2007 when the Lagos State government, under our able Asiwaju Ahmed Bola Tinubu, passed a new pension law, the Pension Reform Act/Contributory Pension Scheme of 2007 in the state. The law stipulates that workers should enroll with private pension providers whereby a monthly deduction would be made from their salaries with equal contribution from the state government into each individual employee’s account with the private pension providers. There was, however, a caveat to the law which states that civil servants who were eligible to pensions under the old scheme, but who did not wish to participate in the new pension scheme have the option of exiting from the service in three years after the promulgation of the act i.e. 2010. The then polytechnic management wrote to all staff that such employees who wished to continue with the old pension scheme were expected to leave the service of the Polytechnic by June 2010, and they were advised to write letters individually of their intention to exit the polytechnic in 2010. All those who wanted to go with the old pension scheme with the State government wrote letters of retirement to the then management which were duly acknowledged by the management.

However, because of the usual unstable academic calendar in the polytechnic, as in other higher institutions in Nigeria, the then management wrote the retirees that since academic engagement rules stipulated that lecturers could not leave before the end of a session, all academic staffers were mandated to defer their exit till November 30, 2010 when the academic calendar for that year would end. It’s on account of their exit in November 2010 that the retirees are now being victimised and unjustly denied their pensions and part of their gratuities because they did not exit the system in March or June 2010. Several attempts had been made in the last six or seven years to stop the pension payments of the 2010 LASPOTECH retirees, especially on the orders of the Lagos State Pension Commission without success because there was no legal basis for such action, except that the academic staff among the retirees were agitating for the payment of gratuity and pension arrears owed them.

• Owolabi is based in Ikorodu, Lagos State.