Open Letter to Tinubu on How Pension Directorate Swindling ASCL Pensioners
By Bala Idris
POLITICS DIGEST- When on 29th May 2023 against the advice of the Presidential Transition Council Inaugural Committee, you took to the podium at Eagle Square to audaciously declare an end to the corrupted fuel subsidy regime in your first speech as President of the Federal Republic, you most certainly did not envisage an instant bushfire effect – a rabid fuel scarcity which immediately ignited intense economic hardship and food crisis across the country – even before you stepped down from that platform.
That singular phrase, “fuel subsidy is gone!” reverberated harshly and pummeled the nation into pulp with prices skyrocketing and people’s modest earnings suddenly becoming unbearably meager, spiking an agitation for a new salary and minimum wage regime in the country.
The situation took a deeper dive when you announced the student loan scheme with all the attendant uncertainties, causing another spike in tuition fees across universities and concurrent student dropouts. Then the Naira plummeted against the dollar further tightening the noose of survival for everyday Nigerians, effectively wiping out the middle class and creating a situation where even basic commodities like Maggie, Oil, Toothpaste, Garri to mention a few, was no longer affordable to “ordinary” Nigerians, particularly Pensioners.
All through this crisis, you have consistently demonstrated an abiding commitment to work harder in ensuring that life eventually becomes easy and meaningful for Nigerians. This is besides obvious mitigative measures like the recent NGN200 Billion Presidential Conditional Grant Scheme, effective monetary policies that made the Naira rebound in a record feat, and review of the student loan act with more enabling and lenient provisions, among other sustainable initiatives.
These have demonstrated that it is clearly not in your character or policy to deliberately perpetuate hardship or deprive the labourer of their wage.
As such, organs of government under your watch should not be used as a launchpad for inhumane onslaught by unilaterally degrading salaries and emoluments by heads of agencies, particularly at a time of huge price increase in the middle of the most severe cost of living crisis in Nigerian history.
Such is the situation that over 20yrs pensioneers of Ajaokuta Steel Company (ASCL) in October 2023 woke up to, a shocking unilateral decision led by the Executive Secretary of the Pension Transitional Arrangement Directorate (PTAD), Dr. Chioma Ejikeme to decapitate their emoluments by upto 33% under a “backend computation” pretext.
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In the wake of this onslaught, many woke up to payment alerts far below the existing minimum wage, moreso when their pension was already not adequate enough for the comfortable last days of a nation’s senior citizens who have spent the better part of their useful life in the service of their fatherland!
This is also coming at a critical time when the emolument had already been degraded by many percentages by spiraling inflation, now shrinking it to sub-existence level.
Mr President, it is important to point out that this inhumane act against our nation’s senior citizens by PTAD and it’s E.S. was carried out without any known authorising memo from its supervising ministry and without any known audit that points to the alleged descrepencies it claimed to have covered in the so called backend competition that equally lacked relevant stakeholders input.
While an existing court order has urged both parties to maintain status quo, PTAD has continously been in contempt of this order, still insisting on paying the degraded emoluments which has been found to be fraught with monumental errors. As a result, PTAD agreed to an out of court settlement agreeing to review the backend computation again with relevant stakeholders input.
However, this has proven to be an exercise in futility as it appears PTAD is only interested in stalling the court case as it has not lived up to its promise by reverting to the normal pension regime as at last payment in March 2024.
Meanwhile, these pensioneers are languishing in abject poverty, deprivation, hunger and some terminal ailments mostly unable to feed their family, pay the bills, purchase essential drugs or cater for school tuition fees.
Your excellency sir, your intervention in this matter in not only causing their right dues be paid to them, but enabling them benefit from upward reviews of salaries and minimum wage, will bring a relief to which the pensioneers will remain eternally grateful to you.
You may wish to recall that about six months ago, Federal pensioners under the Pension Transitional Arrangement Directorate(PTAD) have raised concerns over your re-appointment of Dr Chioma Ejikeme as executive secretary.
The pensioners also demanded prudent audit of the activities of PTAD under her leadership including 163 million naira monthly running cost, recovered looted pensions funds by both Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), the Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Commission ( ICPC) as well as the recovered 9 billion naira asset from Bot’s and insurance companies.
On this basis Mr President sir, I call on you as a compassionate father, to order the restoration to normalcy of ASCL Pensioners monthly emoluments and urgently invite the National Salaries Incomes and Wages Commission to advice the Federal Government accordingly on the true interpretation of the pensioners emoluments.
In other words Mr President sir, please call PTAD to order, declare an immediate probe into the situation, order reversal to status quo and follow the due process, let the “poor breath!”
*Bala is a concerned citizen and public affairs analyst, he writes from Abuja the Federal Capital Territory*.
