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NIGERIAN PENSIONERS AS WALKING CORPSES

BY: UBA AHAM

ubaaham@yahoo.com (08033217953)

It’s really tear-evoking watching them feebly agitate for their retirement benefits. It’s agonizing enough seeing them frailly embark on peaceful protests just to call attention to their plights. Men who, in the prime of their lives, had contributed in various ways towards the development of their country!

Most Nigerian pensioners virtually live in hell. Owed arrears of retirement benefits and pensions months on end, these senior citizens earn neglect instead of respect. At the moment, pensioners of the Nigeria Railway Corporation (NRC) readily fall into this endangered category of the country’s retirees. Dennis Iweanya, chairman of Nigeria Union of Pensioners (Railway Branch), Eastern District Council, recently made a shocking revelation, saying that between 1996 and this period, over 10,000 railway pensioners in the country have had to die out of frustration, hunger and starvation.

And in a recent protest march in Enugu, South-East Nigeria, the pensioners, in their hundreds, lamented the on-going mass deaths of their colleagues as a result of the inability of the authorities concerned to pay them their benefits.

Findings show that Nigerian government’s total indebtedness to the affected railway pensioners, numbering over 20,000, is in excess of N3.8 billion. The breakdown shows indebtedness of 25 months pension arrears to pre-1996 retirees, 18 months to post 1996 retirees and 15 months to September 2005 pensioners.

But non-payment and irregular payment of terminal benefits is just an aspect of the ill-treatments being meted out to the retirees. More pathetic is the situation that railway pensioners receive the least stipends among all federal establishments and civil servants in the country. This is because the retirees, for inexplicable reasons, have never enjoyed any revision of their pensions for the past 20 years, unlike their contemporaries in the army, police, prisons and a few other federal parastatals who have, on two occasions, 2003 and 2005 respectively, been granted 121/2 (twelve and half) and 15 percent pension revision to meet with inflationary trends in the country. Thus railway pensioners currently receive monthly pensions as low as N3, 000, 00! This amount does not, ostensibly, match the present day cost of living. The scenario painted here, in fact, applies to some other categories of Nigerian pensioners, who are being treated less reverently than cattle by the authorities that are supposed to protect them.

In particular, the origin of the problem of these railway pensioners is traced to indiscriminate rationalization/retrenchment exercises in the Nigeria Railway Corporation over the years by successive administrations, both military and civilian. Such rationalization/retrenchments, which drastically whittled down railway workers from 36,000 to a paltry 6,000, were done six good times- 1984, 1988, 1993, 1996, 2005 and 2007 respectively. The retrenchment exercises, of course, involving compulsory retirements expectedly swelled the number of retirees who are entitled to monthly pensions and other retirement benefits. Non-payment and or irregular payment of retirement benefits has, therefore, become the natural consequence of these unguided rationalization/retrenchment exercises of the past.

There is, as it were, a more disturbing reason for the current travails of this set of senior citizens. According to available evidence, two million pounds railway pension funds, lodged overseas, specifically, in the United Kingdom, a couple of years back to tackle pensions of retirees, somewhere along the line, suddenly developed wings and mysteriously disappeared into private pockets.

“The federal government’s liquidation of railway pension fund in the UK from where funds would have been sourced to pay these arrears is catastrophic and unwise”, Iweanya, the pensioners’ leader, stated in a press statement he co-signed with Louis Chinze, Secretary of Nigeria Union of Pensioners, dated March 12, 2008.

Iweanya testified that, as a former national auditor of the union, he was part of a decision way back in 1984 to withdraw the fund for prompt payment of pensions to retirees from London where it was lodged. And the fund, according to him, was, subsequently, withdrawn by the Federal Ministry of Transport with Ebenezar Babatope as minister then. But till today, the whereabouts of that two million pounds railway pension fund remains unknown, as it was never channeled towards payment of pensions and other entitlements to railway retirees.

Still, the sudden privatization of the NICON Insurance Company by the past government of Olusegun Obasanjo constitutes another problem in the payment of benefits to the retired rail workers. For instance, the fund for gratuity and pension of a section of the indebted retirees, that is, the post 1996 pensioners, was deposited with NICON that 1996, although the actual payment commenced in 1999. But the payment got stopped in 2004 when Obasanjo suddenly sold off the company to a private entrepreneur. Most unfortunate, this sale was done without any provision for payment of pensions, especially, for workers that were retired from September 2005. And, only Obasanjo can explain this absurdity.

Heart-rending is the fact that among these indebted old pensioners are men who constructed the 400 miles rail-road from Kuru to Maiduguri without any foreign assistance! Why should people that laid the foundation for the economic development of Nigeria be so exterminated with hunger? What offence have railway pensioners in this country committed? Hunger and deprivations are usually deployed in warfare to weaken a recalcitrant people, and ought not to have been employed against honorable and vulnerable citizens like pensioners, who are ideally entitled to best treatments.

Aside from the huge indebtedness to these beleaguered retirees, the crippling of the railway is definitely an offensive against the ordinary citizens of Nigeria. The rail system got crippled following these mass retrenchments in which over 30,000 workers, over the years, were booted out of the establishment. Where is the wisdom in retrenching that staggering number and transferring them to pension pay-role and incapacitate the railway? Difficulty in payment of pension/gratuity of retired railway workers started in 1984, shortly after military incursion in politics. Before then, railway management was effectively handling railway retirement issues, and pensioners, less than one thousand of them at the time, were promptly paid their entitlements.

It is, in deed, regretful that past governments had allowed Nigerian Railway Corporation to decay in such a manner that it has, today, lost relevance within the transport sector in the country. Rather, the interest of successive Nigerian governments has been in air transportation because ‘big men’ ride on air. Road transportation has, also, been important to those who pilot Nigerian affairs because of windfalls from road contract deals, and the movement of their Mammy Wagon business vehicles.

Our leaders have not, unfortunately, cared to spare a thought on the usefulness of the railway to the man in the street. Apart from cheap transportation which railway provides for the people, a revived railway system in Nigeria will offer employment to our large number of unemployed youths. And by extension, the soaring crime rate across Nigerian cities will be reduced. Railway, equally, offers good environment for small and medium business activities.

It is high time Umaru Musa Yar’Adua government intervened to alleviate the sufferings of pensioners in this country, especially, the railway retirees. Though thousands among these senior citizens have died, the federal government should give succor to their families by immediately releasing funds to pay up arrears of pensions and other benefits owed to them.

Also, President Yar’Adua should not ignore the issue of the mysterious disappearance of the two million pounds railway pension funds which disappeared from its London lodgment. Let an inquiry be launched into this, with a view to finding out what actually happened to the fund. There cannot be any other auspicious moment to investigate this than in this era of fight against corruption in the country. Whoever must have been found culpable should be brought to justice.

And not to be left unmentioned is the need for this government to revive the railway in order to reap its invaluable gains. Olusegun Obasanjo government made pretences at reviving the railway for the eight years it lasted, but it was all a hoax. Yar’Adua should, as a matter of priority this time around, restore the rail system in Nigeria for the good of the majority poor, at least. The rail will prove an invaluable asset to the country, especially, now that our roads do not survive two seasons. Again, the roads can no longer cope with the volume of motor traffic across the country at present. So, like he did with the energy sector, Yar’Adua should declare a state of emergency in the nation’s rail sector. Only by so doing will the railway, which Nigerians still remember with nostalgia, be restored.