Payment of pensions to former governors and deputies

According to Section 124, Sub-Section 5 of the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria 1999, “Provisions may be made by law of a House of Assembly for the grant of a pension or gratuity to or in respect of a person who had held office as governor or deputy governor and was not removed from office as a result of impeachment; and any pension granted by virtue of any provision made in pursuance of this  sub-section shall be made in a charge upon the consolidated revenue of the state.”

It is the aforementioned constitutional provision that the governors have, since May 1999, relied upon to use their respective state assemblies to approve outrageous pensions for themselves and their deputies.

Those who crafted this provision and inserted it in the 1999 Constitution were ignorant of an enabling circular, Reference No. B. 63216/S.I/XT/8 dated July 22, 1992 from The Presidency, Office of Establishments and Management Services, Federal Secretariat, Phase II, Ikoyi, Lagos.

According to the said circular on the review of pension benefits, “The period of qualifying service for pension is reduced from 15 to 10 years.” From  the quoted circular, it can be inferred that there is no governor or deputy governor  that is qualified to be paid any pension whatsoever for serving any state of the federation. The maximum number of years a governor or deputy governor may serve is eight years. Mathematically, eight years is not equivalent to 10 years.

According to the law of Nigeria, governors or deputy governors and other appointed or elected political officers are only entitled to severance allowances approved by the Revenue Allocation Mobilisation and Fiscal Commission.

A newspaper reported in 2017 that President Muhammadu Buhari had told state governors that the obnoxious pension law enacted by state assemblies “must go if Nigeria must survive, describing the outrageous pension as scandalous.”

According to Nelson Mandela, Nigerian “leaders have no respect for their people; they believe that  their personal interests are the interests of the people they claim to serve.”

For how long shall well-meaning Nigerians tolerate our leaders in the different arms of government to do whatever they desire and get away unchecked? It is high time Nigerians stopped folding their arms in allowing the wealth of the country to be in the hands of a few while the country as a whole is left to bear the economic woes created by the kleptomaniacs who govern the country.

The payment of either pensions or gratuities to past governors, deputy governors or legislators at the state and national levels is an aberration that should stop forthwith. Ironically, public servants who genuinely and patriotically served their respective states for not less than 10 years are being denied their approved pensions and gratuities by state governors who have approved pensions for themselves.

It is the defective 1999 Constitution of Nigeria that has created the loophole which the state governors have exploted to the detriment of the people they have claimed to serve in their respective states.

Unless the offending Section 124, Sub-section 5 of the 1999 Constitution is expunged, the state governors and their deputies will continue to milk their states dry at the end of their respective tenures.

Deacon Dapo Omotoso,

Ado –Ekiti