The rejected Imo pension deal

LAST week, retired public workers in Imo State rejected the 40 percent partial payment of their pension arrears proposed by the state governor, Chief Rochas Okorocha. The rejection was based on the state government’s proposal that the workers should forfeit the remaining 60 percent of their pension entitlements. The state government had reduced the outstanding pensions to 13 months and indicated that only 40 percent of the entitlements of those months would be paid. The workers, who were reportedly given forms to sign indicating that all their entitlements had been paid, however insisted that writing off 60 percent of their pension entitlements would amount to denying them their rights.

According to the state chairman of the Nigerian Union of Pensioners (NUP), Chief Gideon Ezeji, the state government had, by November 2016, accumulated pension arrears of 76 months of various categories of retired workers. “The Imo State government has not harmonized pension increases since 2010. Gratuities have accumulated since 1998 for all categories; civil pensioners are owed 21 months, local councils 22 months; retired primary school teachers, 31 months; IBC pensioners, 42 months; permanent secretaries, 21 months and Alvan Ikoku College of Education, 76 months. What we are saying is that if he has one or two months of our pensions and gratuities, he should pay us 100 percent and not partial payment,” he said.

Given the recession in the country and the burden placed upon him by his predecessors’ failure or refusal to pay workers’ pensions, it is easy to see and empathize with Governor Okorocha’s plight. Had his predecessors, including those who ruled the state before the return to civil rule in 1999, lived up to billing, he would certainly now be confronted only with paying the pensions of workers who retired under his watch. However, since governance is a continuum and since the pensioners are being owed by the Imo State government and not the governor in his personal capacity, he is bound to address their plight, particularly in the light of the harrowing experiences that many of them had reportedly undergone in recent times.

It is commendable that the governor decided to address the plight of pensioners in the state by coming up with a formula to offset outstanding pension arrears. It is however crucial to ask what input the pensioners, through the NUP, made into the deal which has now been roundly rejected by them. Beyond asking what input (s) the pensioners made into the rejected deal, however, there are salient issues that touch on the systemic absurdities within the Nigerian polity. For one, underlying the rejected deal in Imo is a rather cavalier attitude by the country’s state governors to civil servants and their matters, including entitlements. There is a feeling that civil servants are expendable, if not useless, which would explain why they could be asked to forfeit their legitimately earned entitlements. Just how can people write off their sweat?

There is, in our view, no merit in reducing pension arrears to 13 months and asking pensioners to sign an undertaking indicating that they had received their full pension payments when they had not. If the funds at Governor Okorocha’s disposal could only cover 13 months, he should simply have paid the workers for those months and determined to pay them the rest whenever the state’s finances improved. If, by the end of his four-year tenure, he is unable to offset the entire pension entitlements of workers owed since 1998, he would still be appreciated for the part he played in addressing pension issues. Governance being a continuum, whoever takes over from him would be under obligation to pay the outstanding pensions.

All too often, the impression is given by government at all levels that there is no conscious recognition of the social contract entered into between the state and workers. We insist that contractual agreements entered into by any government should not continue to be subjected to the vagaries of politics; otherwise, the integrity of the state would be at stake. We are also worried by the fact that, whereas governors are justly worried by the corruption and inefficiency in the civil service, they themselves are actively contributing to the rot in the service. For instance, Governor Okorocha recently gave the confounding information that his wife controls four ministries in the state. It would be legitimate to ask where a governor’s wife derived the power to supervise state ministries, but it is important to realize that Governor Okorocha’s action is typical of governors in the country, and deserves to be sharply rebuked not only for its patent unconstitutionality but for its brazenness.

To be sure, whoever does not recognize emotional power is uninformed. But emotional power should not displace actual power, and that is where the issue of a governor’s wife running a state touches on the fate of the country’s institutions. Where the state governors are themselves trifling with the civil service, how can they drive the expected change within it?

We call on Governor Okorocha to shelve the rejected pensions deal and to interface with the Imo pensioners on the modalities for offsetting outstanding pensions. We also urge him to be more painstaking and friendly in addressing issues relating to workers.