Retired civil servants (pensioners) in Niger State staged a peaceful protest on some major roads in the Minna metropolis after which they proceeded to the main entrance of the Government House to register their grievances over the alleged non-payment of their monthly pension arrears and gratuities on Monday.
The pensioners who carried various placards to press home their demands defied the early morning heavy rainfall as they took off from their union’s secretariat.
Governor Abubakar Sani Bello was said to have been unavoidably absent in the office as of the time of their arrival at the Government House around 11:35 am.
The aged pensioners carried varying placards with inscriptions including “payment of pension in percentage not acceptable”, “Pay us our gratuity now”, “Pensioners lives matter”, “no gratuity no pension, no vote in 2023”, “we shall occupy Government House Minna until the Governor pay us our benefits” among other demands.
Comrade Ibrahim Mahmud who spoke on behalf of his members to the Secretary to the State Government, (SSG) Alhaji Ahmed Ibrahim Matane, at the Government House Conference Hall, noted that they had lost many pensioners as a result of a lack of funds to offset their medical bills whenever they fall sick and are taken to hospitals for medical treatment.
He added that the state government was insensitive to the plights of pensioners in the state, highlighting further that they have been abandoned despite several bailouts and Paris Club Funds from the Federal Government.
He stressed that the state government despite recipient of these huge sums of money had abandoned the pensioners.
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According to Comrade Mahmud, “the state government has received Paris Club Funds and bailout funds and we did not benefit anything from it. You have made mouthwatering submissions and you expect us to go home and wait, how long would we wait?”
“We will no longer accept payment of gratuities on a percentage basis. Our brothers, sisters and parents are dying. We are also dying and we have no money to feed our families, pay rent or treat ourselves when we are sick. The government has abandoned us. We lost two of our pensioners this (Monday) morning because they have no money to treat themselves and feed themselves.
“We have over 10,000 pensioners on the ground and we will occupy Government House until we are paid.”
In his reaction, SSG Ahmed Ibrahim Matene, however, denied the government’s knowledge of any pensioners who had not been paid their pensions and gratuities, stressing that the government was looking for means to generate funds to settle pension issues since the advent of the Governor Abubakar Sani Bello-led administration in 2015.
He thereby assured that the pension issue would be resolved before the end of the month if government’s sources money, “not from the agreement reached from the 16-man committee that was set up by the state Governor Alhaji Abubakar Sani Bello to raise money from Internally Generated Revenue (IGR) to settle pensions and gratuities.
He also concluded that ”there are a lot of anomalies in the pension Sector in the state and local governments, but we are trying to resolve the issue since 2015”.
He admitted that there were ghost pensioners, adding that there were pensioners who were underpaid and those that were receiving more than what they were supposed to collect.
Matane noted further that there were pensioners who were collecting more than they were supposed to as well as there were those who have retired but haven’t collected pension and there was non-availability of adequate data on pensioners at the local government level.
He assured that the government was not deliberately hurting pensioners, saying “the government is doing its best within the available resources at its disposal. If there is any surplus money, the government would put it into payment of gratuities.”
The SSG thereby appealed to the aggrieved pensioners to kindly give the governor more time to address their issues, stressing that probably before the end of September government will address all issues related to pension and gratuities of the state and local government pensioners.
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