Borno Pensioners Groan

By Bashir Maimalari
As Governor Kashim Shettima prepares to leave office after almost eight years at the helm of affairs of the Boko Haram ravaged state, one of the ugly legacies Shettima is leaving behind is his failure to settle backlog of retirement benefits and pensions arrears, despite billions of naira and intervention funds at the disposal of the government.

Government employees who retired five and six years ago are yet to be paid. According to DESERT HERALD investigations, hundreds of pensioners have died either due to frustrations or sicknesses due to the condition they had been subjected to by the government.

The failure to settle retirement benefits and other entitlements in Borno State is happening when other privileged government appointees have became instant millionaires due to uncontrolled corruption in the system. During the week pensioners in the state were reported to have barricaded the entrance of the state secretariat to protest their unpaid entitlements.

It is because of these unfortunate development and the failure of the government to fulfill its promises that the pensioners took to the streets. Children of the helpless retirees no longer go to school and can hardly eke out a living. The only option left for the neglected retirees was to storm the premises of the state secretariat. All pleas by government officials, especially by permanent secretaries, for the pensioners to allow them gain access to the secretariat fell on deaf ears.

The aggrieved pensioners said they had not received their pensions and gratuities for two years. According to them, their travails started since 2016 when the state government commenced the verification of its workforce using biometric data capturing of all serving and retired workers. Though the exercise had yielded government’s desired results of pruning ghost workers and saving millions of naira, it has however left many whose biometric data could not be captured in sheer penury and increased difficulty.

The protest monitored by our correspondent has caused heavy traffic gridlock along Kirikasama road, which is the route leading to Maiduguri’s major commercial centre. The state deputy governor, Usman Mamman Durkwa, arrived the gate of the secretariat at about 1pm to plead with the protesters but to no avail.

He told the protesting pensioners that a meeting with the labour leaders had been concluded. The meeting, according to a source close to the government, became necessary because of the political implication of holding such a protest and demanding their legitimate right, a right the government failed to settle despite several empty and failed promises. The source maintained: “It seems the retirees took maximum advantage of the political period and how APC governorship aspirants mostly appointees of the outgoing governor wasted over N470 million to buy governorship nomination forms at a time citizens particularly those in the IDPs are suffering from the worse form of poverty, squalor and economic crisis”.

“We know you are all aggrieved, but there is not much we could ask of you than to further solicit for your patience and also to let you know that His Excellency, Governor Kashim Shettima, personally asked me to come here and beg you all for patience,” Mr. Durkwa told the protesters.

Babagana Biji, a spokesman of the pensioners,, lamented: “Our plight started with the so-called biometric exercise that denied many workers and retirees their emoluments. We have widows who have not received their deceased husbands’ gratuities and related benefits. Our agitation is genuine and we have vowed to pursue it to its logical conclusion till our demands are met”.

A civil servant with the Borno State Agency for Mass Literacy, Muhammed Jidda Saleh, told ous paid salary was in October 2016. “I concluded my verification exercise on the 28 July 2016, and after then I got my salary for three months then it stopped,” he said.

The Borno State Government in May this year said it saved N5.5 billion which would have been used to pay 11,876 ghost workers and pensioners. The credit was given to the verification and biometric data capturing exercise of serving and retired workers. Prior to 2016, the state government said it had a total workforce of 27,971 with a monthly wage bill of N2.2 billion.
While the BOSG apparently due to political expediency associated with 2019 election has started engaging the pensioners with the hope that this time around the government will act to alleviate their sufferings, pundits lamented why a government that produces several millionaires among its appointees will have to stay that long and until after its inactions recorded significant number of avoidable casualties before it will reluctantly act under pressure and threat of losing the much needed support it needed ahead of the next general election.

The meeting initiated with the Labour leaders espectedly and due to the renewed threat of the workers was done as scheduled with Governor Shettima presiding over. The governor during the meeting disclosed that the biometric exercise embarked upon by his government had assisted the state government to uncover 12,000 ghost workers on its payroll and save N500 million monthly.
Shettima who spoke at the emergency meeting with the State Chairman of the Nigeria Labour Congress(NLC), Mr Titus Abana and executive members of Nigerian Union of Pensioners at Government House in Maiduguri said the exercise has achieved the desired result.

“More than 33,000 workers were on the payroll of Borno State Government for many years, resulting in government having to pay more than N2.5 billion every month on salaries,”he said.

According to the governor, after the biometric exercise, 20,154 have been identified as genuine workers, adding that 2,000 of the figure are already preparing to retire from service.

The governor explained that savings from the exercise were being deployed to other sectors while the recruitment of 1,000 teachers and other workers had commenced.

Shettima said with the development, his administration had lifted the embargo on employment which was in force since the early 90s.

The governor described the biometric exercise as “very complex’’, saying some persons benefiting from fraudulent activities ‎through pension payments were using different tricnsion payments were using different tricks to frustrate the process.

He explained that the committee had also uncovered some individuals collecting millions as pensions aside from their salaries but failed to disclose the action or otherwise taken by his government to return the money and to prosecute the the scammers.

According to him, more than 9,000 pensioners have already been cleared and enrolled through the biometrics and now receiving their pensions.

He noted that only 500 pensioners had cases with their biometrics, saying that 171 had been cleared by the committee but the affected pensioners failed to submit bank statements to ensure their enrollment.

The governor directed the state’s civil servants biometric verification committee to address the cases of 500 pensioners pending before it within two weeks .

It seems from the outcome of the meeting, the pensioners have acted at the right time and that since the BOSG was able to save over N500 million from ghost workers there shouldn’t be complain any more to delay their entitlements.

With the victory Governor Shettima recorded by installing his anointed candidate, Prof. Zulum, after so much suspense and intrigues, coupled with his ability to contain the intra party crisis that nearly consumed the APC in the state and his victory over the faction of his former boss, Sen. Ali Modu Sheriff, it is expected that notwithstanding any political challenge including that of the opposition PDP and the issue with pensioners, the governor who despite all odds managed to secure his second term and about to exhaust his mandate is on his way to get elected into the red chamber. For now and probably until after he is no longer in power as the governor, Mr. Shettima owing to his shrewdness and ability to manage crisis with highly attractive rewards and offers like he has recently done to his bosom friend and incumbent Sen. Baba Kaka Bashir Garbai who stepped aside for him to contest the senatorial seat of the zone, remains the undisputed god-father of Borno politics and will remain so until probably when Prof. Zulum who many predicted is the next Borno governor has consolidated himself in power.