Pensioner’s Welfare Administration: The Shekarau Example

By

Hassan S. Indabawa

indabawa20022000@yahoo.com

Kano state staff pension trustees announced days back that the state government had spent close to 10 billion Naira to clear pension liabilities which the government of Malam Ibrahim Shekarau inherited from the previous government when he became governor in 2003, and for regular pension payment.

Executive chairman of the pension fund, retired AIG Bashir Albasu, announced mid April that the state pension department had paid out 6.74 billion naira while the local government pension fund spent 2.99 billion, bringing the total to 9.73 billion naira, the highest amount any state in Nigeria has committed to pension administration.

Albasu said the pension fund caters to 16,908 pensioners on government payroll, all of who currently receive their entitlements in banks of their choice, in order to reduce risks of cash movement and congestion during payment.

Government spends 105.5 million naira monthly on pension entitlements and has ensured that the pensioners collect the entitlements by the 20^th day of every month.

This rare magnanimity to pensioners has been widely rated as one of the several ways the Shekarau government has demonstrated unmatched commitment to the welfare of the masses. He has, for example, done more for the disabled, the destitute, Almajirai, as well as women and children in the four years he has been governor than all that his predecessors put together could sincerely claim to have done while they were where he is today.

Pensioners in Nigeria are generally among the worst treated. They are some of the poorest paid and are therefore among the poorest sets of people, all mainly because, since they are not in active service, they neither hold any government office nor are they represented in office. Government find it convenient to neglect them. This is the general state of things.

But the coming to be of the Malam Shekara'u government changed the story in Kano State where pensioners are currently some of the happiest people you can find.

From being forced into begging because of neglect from succeeding governments, pensioners in Kano whose messiah came in the person of Malam Shekarau in 2003, had recovered their self-worth and prestige sufficiently enough by last year to not only throw their new-found weight behind Malam to go for a second term, they also paid the five million Naira for the nomination form which Malam and every other aspirant needed to obtain the nomination form of All Nigeria Peoples Party (ANPP) for the parties gubernatorial primaries. Of course, it is old story now that Malam won the party primaries and went ahead to win the gubernatorial election that held on April 14.

For pensioners to mobilize themselves and contribute all of five million Naira, as a reciprocal gesture is to show how great a favour they have enjoyed from the subject of the gesture, Malam Shekarau.

Beyond the pensioners in Kano, Malam's decision not only to clear pension arrears and much accumulated gratuity which he met in 2003, but also to make pension payment a regular monthly exercise indicate that state governments which do not pay sustained pension have no genuine reason for such a failure. He shows that all which governments at all levels need do is to respect elders who served their fatherland in their prime and give to them all the entitlements they deserve and to do so in good time. He shows that this is possible if a chief executive has the intention and genuine commitment to do so.

Expectedly, not only pensioners in Kano state recognize what Malam has been doing for them. In an interview published by the New Nigerian of April 4, Kano State chairman of Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) Comrade Yunusa Danguguwa applauded Malam's noble gesture.

Comrade Yunusa said, "the first thing Malam Ibrahim Shekarau did on assumption of office was the payment of pension arrears in Kano. There is no pensioner that is being owed a kobo in Kano State, and government is not withholding any pensioner's money either at the local or state level, even the recent pension scheme that has been introduced at the federal level. The present Kano State government had joined hands with labour even before I was elected as the new leader in the state."

Yunusa disclosed that Kano State under Malam had worked out a policy by which it will be adding to what federal government is deducting from the worker's salaries as pension, "with the intension to make whatever the worker will take home at the end of his working career to remain as his full salary as he was receiving when he was in active service."

Can you beat that? Yunusa knows this much because he is in a committee the state government raised to work out a way to harmonize federal government's new pension scheme as it involves Kano State citizens in federal employment.

By being so devoted to the welfare of pensioners, Malam is showing that he is a man of his word, that he is the kind whose electoral promises are as good as done; and by extension, that he can be trusted to do whatever he promised during the campaigns for the April 14 gubernatorial election.

This is because he said clearly during the pre-2003 election campaigns and repeated it in his inaugural address he delivered during the ceremony in which he was sworn in on May 29, 2003.

Specifically addressing them, he said, "To my good friends, the pensioners, I pledge to, with effect from June 2003, pay their monthly pension before paying workers' salaries. We shall also endeavour to pay their back log of arrears in not so long a time."

He has since done all that and more to demonstrate his faithfulness to the people.

Indabawa lives in Kano.