Police Pensioners Raise Alarm over Alleged Fraudulent Activities
The Nigeria Police Force (NPF) retirees under the Contributory Pension Scheme(CPS) have raised the alarm over fraudulent activities in their pension fund.
The NPF retirees under the aegis of Concerned Stakeholders, made the allegation in a statement signed by its spokesman Ismail Adekunle.
According to him, the Police retired officers have every right to ask for this because the federal government is unable to fulfil its obligation in the first place. And so this circumstance, the National Pension Commission (PenCom) should exhibit a human face in its regulatory and supervisory activities.
“Some of the retirees die without enjoying the fruits of their labour on the back of the commission’s claim of waiting for accrued rights. While waiting for accrued rights, PenCom should allow PFAs to pay retirees from the balance in their RSAs. By the time a retiree is paid for a year, the accrued rights are paid and then the PFA can regularise and pay the balance. The question of exhausting the balance in one year as argued by PenCom is not tenable because a retiree cannot exhaust his or her balance. There is always return or interest from investment of the pension fund made on behalf of the retiree by his or her PFA. When the retirees are not paid because their employer, the federal government has not paid accrued rights, does PenCom consider that they have responsibilities to their children and other members of their family,” he said.
Arguing further on the need for PenCom to approve the payment of the available retiree’s money, Adekunle said: “Should the retiree die waiting? Does PenCom remember that they were bread winners of their homes before retirement and now you stop them payment for more than one year from earning a living because you have not received their accrued right. How are they going to survive? Even if it is N1 million that they were able to contribute into their account, allow the PFA to spread it, so that there will not be sudden cut of income to zero. If an officer was earning a N100,000, it is better he or she earns N10,000 per month as pension than nothing,” he argued,
The retired police pensioners’ spokesman argued further that from his research, the Pension Reform Act did not state that a PFA should wait and consolidate accrued rights before a retiree can be paid.
“It is being imposed by PenCom based on administrative convenience on their own part. It means they have to give approval twice and for the commission, this is additional work,” he said.
On the implication of the seizure of their money by both federal government and PenCom, Adekunle said:”But President Buhari and PenCom should remember that these people have been armed people all their lives. You have taken away their career, you have taken away the salary, can’t the human mind think of criminality to survive? The President should remember that we have trained them in arms and weapon handling. This is a significant security challenge to the country because a hungry man can do anything to survive. Allowing them to retire without paying them any pension benefit nor placing them on low monthly pension is a disaster waiting to happen,” he cautioned.
The Police pensioners also said the recent reversal of the template used to calculate pension payments by PenCom had further caused some negative issues with the system, adding that because of this, the Police retirees had pinched their tent against their PFA, the NPF Pensions Limited and were agitating that they wanted to exit the CPS entirely.
According to him with nonpayment of the Police retirees benefits, they believe that NPF Pensions is tampering or fraudulently dealing with their pension payment.
When THISDAY contacted PenCom, on their view on the issues raised by the NPF retirees, the commission’s spokesman Mr. Peter Aghahowa simply said: “The issue is what we all know about, it’s the accrued rights issue.”
Accrued rights are pension entitlements of federal government workers before the commencement of the CPS in 2004. While the federal government is expected to make budgetary allocations every year to clear accrued rights, each yearly allocation has always been inadequate to pay up all accrued rights.
Between 2016 and 2017, reports said that federal government was owing about N300 billion as outstanding accrued rights and out of the amount present for that year’s budget N3billion was cut off by the law makers while N54 billion was paid.
At a recent retiring workers workshop, PenCom expressed hope that the workers whose accrued rights were still outstanding would smile soon as the law makers did not cut anything from what it presented to government for the accrued rights in the budget.