Pensioners and the rainy season
As the Nigerian pension industry grows in importance and gains the recognition of real investors, financial predators and even international fraudsters, it is appropriate to evolve and apply strong mechanisms to protect the pension assets against theft.
A report in the February 27, 2019 edition of the Punch Newspaper, part of which is quoted below, justifies the advisory.
“Justice Darius Khobo of the Kaduna State High Court has convicted and sentenced a pension consultant, Mohammed Sodangi, to four months in prison for alleged N65.5m fraud.”
“The judge also directed the convict to refund N55m through a bank draft to the Kaduna State Pension Bureau through the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission,” the report added.
It runs further: “Sodangi’s road to jail began when the EFCC received a petition by a group, the Movement for Better Future, which alleged massive fraud in the Kaduna State Pension Bureau.”
Although securing the pension assets worth over N8 trillion, which is owned by 8.41 million contributors was raised in the first few paragraphs of this item, the rainy season and and how the pensioner can benefit from it, is the subject matter for today.
Pensioners and retirees ought to be aware of the impending onset of the rainy season, with all its furry and countless blessings.
The rainy season presents an opportunity for pensioners to fully get involved in rain-fed cropping activities for the production of food for their families and some cash crops to supplement their monthly pensions.
A pensioner does not have to own a piece of land to cultivate. It can be hired, or borrowed from an owner who wants to leave it fallow in the approaching rainy season. So, lack of land is largely an assumed problem. It can be solved easily by asking around among neighbours, colleagues and farmers.
Another assumed obstacle for pensioners interested in farming could be access to affordable, genuine and safe agricultural imputs such as fertilsers, pesticides, seeds, land-clearing machinery and above all, finance. There is a solution for each of these assumed obstacles.
For access to safe pesticides, certified seeds, unadulterated fertilsers and tractors for land preparations, inquiries in the Ministries of Agriculture in the 36 states and the Federal Capital Territory’s Department of Agriculture can produce the right answers.
As for finance, there are several sources, ranging from personal savings through borrowing from a commercial bank, or the numerous low-interest agricultural finance schemes offered by both Federal and state governments and cooperative societies.
Members of a pensioner’s family, friends or associates, may find it thrilling and fulfilling to lend financial support to the senior citizen of the clan to engage in a productive venture. In many instances, this option is the most practical and popular.
The pensioner-farmer may find it worthwhile to include a few ridges of leafy vegetables in his mixed cropping plan. Such crops will basically be for home consumption.
Beyond subsistence farming by a low-pension earner, hundreds of pensioners are engaged in commercial agriculture, which has positively turned around their economic, social and financial fortunes. Some of them would even suggest that, had they known that farming is so profitable, they would not have stayed long in salaried jobs.
Agriculture is so potent as a source of economic solace, if rightly practiced as organisers of Muslim Pilgrimage to Saudi Arabia observed that majority of those paying for the trip for two consecutive editions, were mostly rice farmers. They gainfully produce rice to meet national demand in a seller’s market.
Beside the production of crops such as rice or millet, other opportunities in the agricultural sector include processing and packaging, marketing and livestock farming. All these segments of the sector can be joined with a capital base of anything within the N50, 000 to N100, 000 range. It is always prudent to start such ventures small and grow it gradually over time.