PEOPLE AND POLITICS BY MOHAMMED HARUNA

 

Still On “Citizen Buhari Vs. UBA”

ndajika@yahoo.com

 

The first text I received from a reader on my admission last week that I wrongly accused the United Bank of Africa of mistreating its pensioners was one of unrestrained gloating. The reader who did not give his name – let’s call him Mr. X – sent his text from his GSM phone. The text came in at 9.12 on the morning of publication.

           

Mr. X was apparently beside himself with glee that I could make such an inexcusable mistake. “So u (you),” he said, “who is so fond of searching 4 (for) d (the) blunders of other journalists and publications could commit this type of hara-kiri that even a rookie should not have made. This is allah’s (sic) way of disgracing u (you) 4 (for) wanting to share d (the) glory of perfection with him (sic).”

           

Mr. X is of course right to say my mistake was inexcusable. The first time my friend, Abdulraheem Buhari, told me of his predicament with his former employers, which was mid last year, I asked him to send me copies of all the correspondences on the matter. He did so by email but I insisted on hard copies for ease reference. I kept those hard copies with me for more than three months before I finally wrote the piece on February 11. Some of the correspondences had AFRIBANK written boldly all over them. So I had no explanation whatsoever for mistaking AFRIBANK with UBA, even though both have the word Africa in common.

           

However, inexcusable as my mistake was I thought Mr. X overdid his criticism of me by saying first, that I was fond of searching for the blunders of other journalists and publications, and second, that in so doing I wanted to share the glory of perfection with God. First, I do not go searching for anybody’s blunders. I only comment on them when they surface and are relevant to the subject in question. Second, it is obviously fallacious to assume that to criticize others is to claim perfection.

           

Of course we all strive towards perfection even though we all know we will never be perfect. We do so because we know without such striving – and, of course, the criticisms of the status quo that go with it – society will never make progress.

           

So I found the reader’s charge that I was pretending to be perfect or even fond of criticizing others truly amusing. Even more amusing, however, was his conclusion that my mistake was God’s way of punishing me for my supposed pretence to perfection.

           

Needless to say I did not see things that way. And I was not alone in my view. A text from one, Mrs. Ajileye, from Ibadan, said in effect that my error was God’s answer to her prayer of nearly 10 years for a remedy to her own predicament as a retiree of UBA.

           

“God bless you Mr. Haruna, God answered my prayers for almost 10 years now through you”, she said in her text from 08060221960. “This maltreatment of UBA retrenched staff by this organization is quite unfortunate. I am a victim too of this callous man’s inhumanity to man. Some died in the process especially couples who were both in the system. Over 1000 of us were affected and the so-called pension paid to us vary from as low as N1000 plus a month for some category of staff. I have been praying hard that God should visit our case. How do you survive in this case? Thanks.”

           

Another reader, Mr. Adegboyega E. Olagundoye, who said he is the chairman of the South-West Zone of a pensioners association when I returned his persistent calls after sending a text from 0703888444, said Buhari’s case was even better compared to those of UBA retirees. He claimed to have petitioned the House of Representatives on behalf of his association several years ago but nothing came out of the petition.

           

As I said in my article of February 11 neither AFRIBANK nor UBA is alone in this alleged maltreatment of retirees. I received texts from pensioners of other banks including 1st Bank, Unity Bank, Bank PHB and Agric Bank. This prompted me to speak with the authorities at the Pension Commission and to Honourable Sani Sha’aban, the Kaduna State ANPP governorship candidate in the 2007 elections and chairman of the House of Representatives Pension committee when the Pension Act was enacted in 2004.

           

Both said the retirees of not only some of the banks but those of most private sector companies have, for long, had a raw deal. Most private sector employers, they said, have been reluctant to execute the Pensions Act essentially because it removes their control over the pension funds and gives it to pension administrators.

           

This, in effect, has made the Pension Act an idiot law – a law the authorities seem unable or unwilling to enforce.

           

Obviously things cannot go on this way. The authorities have no choice but to enforce the act assuming, that is, that it is an improvement on past practice. Only this way can pensioners begin to enjoy the fruits of their labours past.

           

I do not share Mrs. Ajileye’s optimism that my mistake in mixing up UBA with AFRIBANK will end her ten-year ordeal as an UBA retiree. I do hope, however, that it will prompt both AFRIBANK and the UBA – which, unlike AFRIBANK, has demonstrated admirable sensitivity about her image by bothering to respond to my article – and the federal authorities to re-exermine the treatment of our pensioners by their former employers. If this happens, my inexcusable mistake would have turned into a blessing in disguise.

 

The Bauchi mayhem

           

Even as the dust from the Jos religious genocide of November 28 last year in Plateau State in which hundreds of lives were lost was yet to settle, another religious mayhem took place last Saturday in Bauchi town, the capital of neighbouring Bauchi State. As usual the authorities there blamed every one else but themselves.

           

Like Governor Jonah Jang of Plateau State, Governor Isa Yuguda tried to pin the blame on his so-called political detractors. “The development has nothing to do with religion, but (was) politically motivated to achieve selfish interest,” said Yuguda in a state broadcast on the day the violence occurred.

           

The truth is it had everything to do with religion and both Yuguda and the Muslim leadership of the affected neighbourhood are mainly to blame.

            

Media reports say the remote cause of the violence was a broken down vehicle near a Juma’at mosque which diverted all traffic to a route adjacent to a nearby church. Naturally members of the church were unhappy with the encroaching traffic especially on Fridays when it was heavy.  Their attempt to block it led to further build up of tension. This was enough warning for the authorities to have removed the obstructing broken down vehicle. Instead they did nothing.

           

Last Saturday the Muslims in the neighbourhood in question woke up to find one of their mosques on fire. The violence that ensued was predictable but not inevitable. It was predictable because the Muslim leadership, just like its Christian counterpart, has yet to discharge its responsibility of teaching its flock the virtue of never taking laws into one’s hands. Otherwise the Muslim youths who went on a killing, maiming and burning spree because a mosque caught fire would not have done so, no matter how suspicious the circumstance.

           

Religion may not be the underlining cause of the spiral of violence we have witnessed since before the return of civil rule in 1999, but many politicians and religious leaders have apparently found it a useful weapon for controlling the rest of us. And unless we rid ourselves of this malaise of manipulating religion for our selfish ends, no number of panels, judicial or otherwise, will stop these needless killings and destructions.