Hurdles ahead of FG’s planned diaspora pensioners’ verification
The plan by the federal government to carry out a diaspora pensioners’ verification after the nationwide exercise is concluded is a welcome development but a task that may prove challenging.
Recently, the Executive Secretary of Pension Transitional Arrangement Directorate (PTAD), Mrs Sharon Ikeazor, disclosed that the directorate was set to start verifying Nigerian pensioners in the diaspora.
Speaking during a call on the Senior Special Assistant to the President on Foreign Affairs and Diaspora (SSAPFAD), Mrs Abike DabiriErewa, in Abuja, Ikeazor said the verification would capture and add to the payroll retirees who had worked in the country and were due for pension but did not collect it before moving abroad.
The PTAD boss reportedly told her host, “You know that we have a lot of pensioners in the diaspora. I am hoping that we can partner to get all the data on our diaspora pensioners.”
The diaspora verification will be as important as it will be challenging and Daily Trust has identified five hurdles which the PTAD is likely to face in executing the project.
First, it is important to consider the interface that will enable the verification to take place and there are concerns on whether it would be conducted on face-to-face basis or it would be computermediated.
While the details of the planned exercise remain sketchy, identifying the interface is the first hurdle to be surmounted. However, computermediated verification is unlikely considering that the nationwide verification was done on face-to-face basis.
A pension expert, Peter Udoka, told Daily Trust that if the federal government will adopt face-to-face interface for the diaspora verification, then the task ahead is huge and will prove a difficult bridge to cross considering the large number of countries to cover worldwide.
Secondly, inter-agency collaboration within and outside Nigeria is needed to ensure success but making this happen is a huge hurdle for the exercise.
For instance, PTAD will have to work with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and all the 119 Nigerian foreign missions in order to build a database and possibly reach the retirees physically. However, even this would not be enough as there are countries that Nigeria has no missions but where Nigerians are living.
For the exercise to be successful, agencies of foreign countries must also key into the exercise.
There are indications that PTAD has started action with respect to inter-agency collaboration with the recent visit to the Senior Special Assistant to the President on Foreign Affairs and Diaspora, Dabiri-Erewa.
The president’s diaspora assistant committed to help in the exercise as she described the development as “interesting news to the diaspora.”
She reportedly told PTAD that, “We will look forward to capturing every Nigerian in the diaspora who had served the country.”
Meanwhile, whether PTAD plans to use a portal for the verification or face-to-face interface, it is important to note that creating global awareness and taking the news to retirees across the world is a serious hurdle to be surmounted if the exercise is to turn out positive.
The tyranny of space, boundaries and time stand in the way of the exercise and the only way a pensioner in the far end of China can get to know about this development is for the government to embark on global awareness campaigns.
The federal government should also consider that there could be unforeseen challenges and these could pose a hurdle.
For instance, many of the retirees in the diaspora may have left their documents in Nigeria before travelling overseas and may require travelling back to the country to produce such papers.
Finally, the resources, both human and material, may pose huge challenge to a project as huge as this.
It will require commitment from the side of government to make available the huge resources needed for the exercise but it is believed that no amount of commitment is greater than the labour committed by elder statesmen in building Nigeria.