Why torment pensioners?

UNLESS there has been a complete loss of humanity, all Nigerians must be concerned about recent reports on the plight of pensioners who are being owed pension arrears and gratuities running into billions of naira across the country. It cannot be a thing of joy that while politicians and political appointees are fairly well taken care of, pensioners have been living from hand to mouth. According to reports, pensioners in some states have not received their entitlements in the last three years, and hundreds of them have died waiting for Godot as it were. These hapless citizens besieged government offices but got no reprieve. Untold numbers of pensioners suffering from various ailments have no money to buy the drugs they must take to stay alive. The message is clear: the authorities do not care if they die.

To say the very least, it is galling that across the country, retirees are being treated like hostages and internally displaced citizens. They are subjected to endless rounds of screening that do not lead to credit alerts on their phones. They are wearied with excuses and given the million promises that the poet, Christopher Okigbo, warned would never fill a basket, many years ago. The situation is sad, bad and mad. According to the leadership of  the Nigeria Union of Pensioners (NUP), not even the regular protests staged by the senior citizens to draw attention to their plight have yielded positive results. Some state governors have even been credibly accused of creating parallel unions to weaken the NUP. However, it is not all a tale of woe as the union commended the Lagos, Oyo, Anambra, Plateau, Kaduna,  Kwara and Niger State governments for taking the welfare of pensioners as top priority.

If anyone is unaware of the plight of pensioners across the country, such a person must be unconscious. The pensioners are literally everywhere, asking for their dues. It has become a ritual for military pensioners from various states to storm the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), Abuja, protesting their shabby treatment by the country they served for the better part of their existence. Only in December last year, commercial activities at a section of Ladipo International Auto Spare Parts Market, Lagos, were temporarily brought to a halt when pensioners under the aegis of Concerned PHCN Pensioners protested non-payment of 33 per cent increment in their pension. Prior to that, there had been protests by pensioners in various states of the country. The federal and state governments seem to be united in their utter disdain for what the Nobel Laureate, Wole Soyinka, calls “the cottonhead of age.”

Why would a society not be bothered by the plight of its senior citizens? Is that the way to reward them for their labour of many years? How is it that there is so much money to steal but none to pay pensioners? The country needs to cultivate a more positive attitude to the welfare of pensioners considering that they are now frail and do not possess the kind of energy they used to have, meaning that they are hardly in a position to fend for themselves. Their productive years were spent in service in the hope that when they retire, there would be something to fall back on. They believed that the state would fulfill its obligations to them. Sadly, however, that hope has been dashed and they are being treated like beggars.

We commend the governments of states like Oyo and Lagos for putting a smile on the faces of their senior citizens. That is how it should be. We call on governments at all levels to address the plight of pensioners. In particular, legislatures at state and federal levels must drop their docile outlook and take on the executive, where necessary, to give pensioners a lifeline. It is an eyesore for an elderly person to sit or stand endlessly under the sun and in the rain waiting for money that they had worked for. We are extremely saddened by this phenomenon and call for speedy change. Pay the pensioners their dues. Pay them, please.

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