The New Nigerian pensioner must have come to accept this ugly truth. The Reaper is the only faithful friend he has got because go with him he/she must. In his present life of unmitigated penury, three things will happen. He will face a health challenge, often life threatening. He will walk himself to a hospital, will be admitted but he won’t be able to pay the bill. His pensioner union will place a notice on its social media platform, asking fellow pensioners to make donations. While this is happening, the Reaper comes and leads him away. The union again announces his passing and funeral date. That is the New Nigerian pensioner.
For him, a train of death inmates is already waiting. In the last few months, as many as 10 pensioners had boarded the train: Isaiah Abraham and Aliyu Modibbo Mai Borno, both of the editorial department. There were two from marketing and lately Abubakar Yusuf, who was head of marketing in Abuja when I arrived from Lagos. He held the marketing job and at the same time was studying for a law degree. He would later become company secretary at head office, Kaduna. Before then, over a hundred others had departed while “waiting for Godot”, according to the pensioners’ union. And we are still counting. Just last Wednesday, another of us, we were told, was down with diabetes complications, needing an expensive eye surgery that he couldn’t afford. Once again, we were implored to make contributions. Pray he recovers fully to continue the pension struggle.
There are two pension layers at the NN, one the responsibility of the federal government and the other the 19 Northern state governments that pressured the former to return ownership of the NN to them. That was in 2005. In 2019, the federal government paid gratuity to retired and retiring workers on its list, followed by arrears of pension. Even so, the payments were based on computations discarded long ago. Pensioners are pursuing what they call “harmonisation” to bring them at par with those enjoying “much improved” pensions. When and if this will happen only Heaven knows.
The bigger headache is the state governments which rushed to retake possession of the newspaper house but have not occupied it. Now it has fallen into disuse, the premises today an eyesore. They have stripped the company of its assets with the excuse to pay pensioners their money, which, according to union estimates, is N2.1 billion. The effort to get the money led to a court case that festered for almost a year. It ended only last March when both parties undertook to “settle out of court.”
Last week, a newspaper [The Nation] carried a news story based on an exclusive interview its correspondent in Damaturu, Yobe State, had with the governor of Gombe State Mohammed Inuwa Yahaya, who heads the Northern Governors Forum. The story quoted Yahaya as saying money had been approved to pay NN pensioners. “We have approved that payment already and on a serious note, the payment will be soon. This is the only information I can give you on this matter,” he said. How soon is “soon” begs an answer. Will Mike receive his to pay his “N600,000 eye surgery bill? I hope many will smile like the old NN pensioner who received her federal pension check on her sick bed. She held it up to her forehead, smiled and without uttering a word, handed it to one of her children, gave a deep sigh and then was gone.
