After wiping their tears following the change of government in Abia State last year, pensioners have started crying again over the same issue of unpaid pension arrears.
The retirees are also shedding tears profusely after they were told that their unpaid gratuities had been forfeited due a contentious memorandum of agreement(MoA) the state leadership of the Nigeria Union of Pensioners (NUP) signed with government.
Governor Alex Otti had in March 2024 during a pre-Easter event at Christ the King Catholic Church, Aba announced that he had cleared the pension arrears from 2014 to 2023 which his administration inherited.
Expectedly, he received loud ovations not just from within Abia but far and wide as people commended the governor for the great feat achieved in less than a year in office.
Though there were not so loud disputations of Governor’s claims among pensioners, the leadership of Abia NUP leadership kept a measured silence, nursing their pains and secretly making frantic efforts to remedy the bad situation.
However, on Thursday October 24, 2024, the Abia NUP State Executive Committee finally came out openly to declare that government has not cleared the unpaid arrears of pensions. They also maintained that they had at no time consented to the forfeiture of unpaid gratuities of retired workers.
So, it appears Abia pensionees have entered another season of agitations as NUP leaders vehemently dispute the state governor’s claims which was made seven months ago.
The NUP leaders are wailing and alleging that government “tricked and coerced” them to sign off gratuities of retired workers.
This disconcerting scenario tumbled out at the press conference with the Executive Committee of Abia NUP said became necessary having been “constrained by the turn of events to (finally) open up and state the true position on all that transpired”.
The Abia NUP Chairman, Chukwuemeka Irondi and Secretary, Uma Kalu have now, for the first time, come out to publicly dispute the governor’s claim on liquidating the inherited pension arrears.
Irondi stated that the NUP Executives had all the while resisted the temptation of going public with how pensioners were beguiled and cheated by government “due to the high regard” the union has for Governor Otti.
He further added that the NUP Executives had been exploring alternative means of resolving the issues because of its “determination not to, in any way, be party to tarnishing the image of government and reputation of our dear Governor, who has shown us love”.
In a 10-page position statement “on the purported clearance of arrears of pension and gratuity of Abia pensioners by government” read at the press conference by Irondi, the NUP Executive Committee insisted that the pension arrears totalling 45 months has never been cleared.
“All pensioners of Abia State and Ndi Abia in general should note and hear clearly that the Alex Chioma Otti-led administration did not clear a kobo of 45 months unpaid pension arrears of the previous administration as presented by the Abia State Council of the Nigeria Union of Pensioners.
“The present administration only cleared the arrears of 10 months (June 2023 – March 2024) which it incurred,” the NUP leaders declared.
According to them, what Otti actually cleared was the pension arrears that accrued between June 2023 and March 2024 when he was already in full control of governance, adding that the checkoff dues of pensioners deducted thereof has not been remitted to NUP.
Government had calculated the pension arrears to be be in the region of N30 billion but later announced that it had cleared everything with N10 billion hence the disputation by the pensioners. It has continued to insist the payment of the pension arrears to pensioners was “in full and final”.
The NUP leadership also vehemently decried government’s imposition on retirees to waive off their gratuities after NUP leaders were “coerced and intimidated” into signing “a unilateral agreement, secretly prepared” by government officials late in the night of March 25, 2024.
Recounting events leading to their endorsement of the contentious MoA, Irondi said that government officials beguiled the NUP leadership and obtained the union’s letterheaded paper, which was later used to draft the unilateral agreement.
“Without suspecting any foul play/evil intentions on the part of government, we innocently endorsed the MoA on trust thinking we were still in the same page with our dear Governor,” he said.
The NUP chairman said that after they discovered that they had been “deceived and cheated” the Exco tried to activate Article 7(a)(b) of the MoA which stipulates that ‘any disputes arsing from this agreement shall be resolved first by mutual negotiation between the parties’.
He argued that the MoA cannot be binding on NUP when government refuses to consider items 7(a) and (b) as contained in the document”.
The NUP chairman regretted that efforts made by the leadership to have direct discussion with Governor Otti were thwarted, adding that he even directed the Attorney General/Commissioner for Justice, Ikechukwu Uwanna to reply one of their several correspondences.
But Irondi stated that the choice of langauge used by the Attorney General in the correspondence was aimed at “bullying, intimidating, (making) false allegations and threatening” the NUP leaders.
He noted that Otti could have plotted an easy way out if he could not clear the inherited pension arrears and gratuities by paying the much he could and then leave the remainder to successive government(s).
“Nobody has the authority of imposing the waiving of gratuities on Abia pensioners for any reason,” the Abia NUP Chairman warned.
He regretted that instead of dialoguing with the officially recognised leadership of Abia NUP to resolve the contentious issues, government has been avoiding them like a plague.
According to Irondi, the Otti administration has shunned the NUP Executive Committee under his leadership and has “instead been hobnobbing with a group of pensioners in the state, who they know very well are dissidents”.