Addressing Nigeria’s Pension Crisis

For few decades now, pension administration in Nigeria has been bedevilled by three major cankerworms – maladministration, mismanagement and corruption.
The effect of this is manifestly evident in the tales of woes and agonies being told on daily basis by retirees and pensioners whose excruciating experiences in the pursuit of their entitlements usually end up in frustration and, in some cases, sudden death.
The ugly scenario is replicated daily in civil, military and para-military services of the nation’s public institutions, where most retirees who spent their productive lives in service now languish in penury over delay or non-payment of their retirement benefits.
Sadly enough, except for the Organised Private Sector (OPD), precisely in the oil and gas sector of the economy, all the three tiers of government are defaulters with the Federal Government as the worst culprit. The media is awash with news of non-remittance of pension funds to the pension administrators, especially the Nigerian Pension Commission (PenCom), that is statutorily empowered to manage such funds.
Just recently, PenCom Management Limited said that the Federal Government and its agencies are indebted to it to the tune of N140 billion. This implies that the Federal Government and its agencies have not been remitting their workers’ contributory pension as at when due.
PenCom expressed fears that the commission’s agenda will be truncated if urgent actions are not taken to reverse the trend by paying off the debts.
Similarly, the situation is replicated at the state and local government levels where virtually all states, except Lagos State, default in the pension scheme remittance.
The Tide is particularly saddened by this development, especially as we continue to hear cases of pensioners dying of hunger and illness due to their inability to access their retirement benefits.
We consider it inhuman for any employer to deny its workers their retirement benefits. It is even criminal for such an employer to deduct certain percentage of workers’ salaries as contributory fund only to fail in remitting same to the pension administrator.
It is unimaginable and unacceptable for a retiree to stay for one to three years after retirement without gratuity or pension, especially in the present economic situation. If a worker’s salary can not take him home in this hard time, we wonder how retirees without pension would survive.
We think that non-remittance of the contributory pension fund to PenCom and other pension managers by government constitutes the height of insensitivity and man’s inhumanity to man. It does not encourage productivity, but only breed corruption amongst the working class.
It is quite disheartening that the government watches retirees and pensioners suffer untold hardship in a country where past presidents, vice presidents, governors and their deputies, and other category of political office holders who were in office for short period of four to eight years receive millions of tax payers’ money as pension.
Worse still, some erstwhile governors and their deputies are serving senators and ministers with huge salaries and allowances, and yet receive their pension entitlements as at when due.
Government at all levels must, therefore, re-invent the essence and philosophy behind pension by appreciating retirees who had put in the youthful parts of their lives to serve their states and country.