Aminu Muhammad was looking forward to retirement after 35 years of service in the Kano State Urban Planning and Development Authority (KNUPDA). He planned to use his gratuity to take care of important needs such as wedding ceremonies for his daughters. He would then use his monthly pension to ensure his survival, or so he thought.
His hopes turned into a nightmare when for eight years after his retirement, he could not get his gratuity and his monthly pensions when paid suffered huge deductions.
Mr Muhammed’s experience is similar to that of thousands of his fellow retirees in the state.
Retirement, which is a phase in life filled with a sense of fulfilment and happiness in many parts of the world, is a nightmare for many in Nigeria. “It’s been a terrible situation,” Mr Muhammad said.
“I suffered partial paralysis after retirement, if not for God’s intervention and my old classmate, Garba Diso, who is assisting me with monthly assistance to buy drugs, I don’t know what life would have been like today,” Mr Muhammed said.
“I also have family responsibilities. I gave five of my daughters in marriage while waiting for the gratuity that didn’t come on time,” he added.
In an economy characterised by high inflation, with hardly any other form of state support for senior citizens, many like Mr Muhammad rely on their pensions to survive.
However, Mr Muhammad is among the thousands of retired civil servants in Kano who exited service without getting their benefits for several years. “Some have died and others are helpless battling old age-related illnesses,” he told PREMIUM TIMES
Thousands of workers in public services in the states of the country retire without being paid their pensions and gratuities for more than a decade. Many have slumped and died in endless queues while undergoing a series of verifications and documentation for the payment of their entitlements.
The ill-treatment, running through the 36 states of the federation, affects not only the pensioners but also their family members and dependents.
On 2 December, Kano State Governor Abba Yusuf narrated how one of the retired civil servants died after bribing an official of the state government in an attempt to get his entitlement paid.
The governor said the pensioner who was in dire need of money for his daughter’s wedding expenses was asked by the officials to forfeit one-third of his gratuity if he wanted it to be promptly paid.
“The pensioner got his daughter’s wedding prolonged unnecessarily because of his financial inability. He sought his retirement benefits in the previous administration but they demanded that he must pay one-third of his gratuity.
“He struggled and provided the amount but still, he was denied his right. That is how he got a heart attack and died. Today we paid his heirs his entitlements,” Mr Yusuf said while flagging off the payment of N6 billion gratuity and death benefits of over 5,000 pensioners in the state.
At opportune moments such as the 1st of May, the Workers’ Day, these senior citizens, who spent 35 years of their lives in active service to the nation, some of whom are now in fragile health, demonstrate in front of Government Houses and other places to draw public attention to their plights and get their entitlements paid.
While rounding off his career in the state civil service in 2015, Mr Muhammad was hopeful of getting his benefits on time.
“I had pressing needs at that moment and I was forced to collect bank loans to cover the wedding expenses of my first daughter and do other things,” he told PREMIUM TIMES.
The retired civil servant said he was only paid his gratuity a few weeks ago when the Kano governor released the first batch of N6 billion for the retirees.
“All retired civil servants will get their gratuity and will be receiving an intermittent monthly pension,” the governor said.
According to Mr Muhammad, “Life after retirement has been terrible without our gratuity because I have grown-up children and an array of responsibilities piling up. I am blessed with female children, most of whom got married with the financial support of family members and friends.”
He said aside from the fact that their pensions were not regularly paid under the administration of former Governor Abdullahi Ganduje, the government was also deducting a “minimum of N10,000 and a maximum of N15,000 from their pensions monthly without any justifiable reason(s).”
This point was also made by the Nigeria Labour Congress chairperson in Kano, Kabir Minjibir, who said over N3 billion had been deducted from the meagre monthly pension of retirees between January 2021 and October 2022.
Mr Minjibir said this in the wake of a demonstration by distraught pensioners in October last year, outside Government House. The retirees protested the backlog of gratuities owed, alongside the deductions from and non-harmonisation of pensions.
“Things were not really like this while I was in active service,” Mr Muhammad said. “Retirees in the state got their benefits three months after service.”
“But things deteriorated at the twilight of Mr Kwankwaso’s administration in 2015 when he used the pensioner’s funds and built houses. Those houses were later abandoned, this and other reasons were responsible for the challenges pensioners are having in the state as their accounts were depleted,” he added.
Kano ex-governors get billions as pensions
While retirees in the northwestern state suffer, former governors and deputies get largesse regularly from state coffers. Citizens have wondered why Kano ex-governors and their deputies, who at most served for eight years, enjoy largesse while civil servants who worked for decades are paid poor and irregular pensions.
In 2007, the state government passed a law that provides the incumbent’s salary for the former governor, a 30-day vacation within or outside Nigeria, and free medical services for the ex-leaders and their immediate families.
Ex-governors and their deputies are respectively entitled to “well-furnished” six-bedroom and four-bedroom apartments plus an office, two drivers and a personal staff not below the rank of a principal administrative officer and an aide not below grade level 10.
Civil society groups like the Socio-Economic Rights and Accountability Project have repeatedly condemned the largesse paid to ex-governors and their deputies from public coffers in many states including Kano. But the practice persists.
While former governors enjoy their largesse, succour appears to have come for retirees like Mr Muhammed.
He told PREMIUM TIMES that his gratuity was in millions of naira when Governor Yusuf’s administration paid them this month.
“I used most of it to settle debt and our pension is being paid as at when due without any deduction,” he said. “May the Almighty reward Governor Yusuf for bringing succour to our lives. I have lost hope of ever going to get my gratuity. Many of my colleagues have died without benefiting from theirs.
“My life will never be like before, now nobody owes me a dime, and I will die a freeman without debts, all the debts I incurred during the wedding of my daughters have been settled after I received my gratuity.”
