Ex-Governors’ Pensions Are Illegal and Immoral

to make any pension law for the Governor and his Deputy, or any public officer named in the provision.

In 2019, after 5 years of adjournments, Justice Mohammed of the Federal High Court ruled that the suit ought to be have been filed at the National Industrial Court of Nigeria, and transferred the suit there. At the same time, a similar case was instituted by the then Attorney-General of Adamawa State challenging the legality of the Adamawa State Governors' Pension Law passed in the previous regime of the State House of

Assembly. This was the case of Mr Bala Ngilari v Adamawa State Government

Suit No NICN/ABJ/356/2015. Both the NGOs case and the Adamawa case, were decided together in 2020. The President of the National Industrial Court, Kanyip J, dismissed both suits, and held that the pension and allowances of former Governors or their Deputies do not form part of their remuneration, because remuneration only covers salaries and allowances of a public officers while he is in office, while pension refers to payment made when the person is out of office. The court further held that the RMAFC's mandate only covers remuneration of public officers while they are still in office. In other words, the pension that a public office holder is to earn upon his retirement or leaving office, is not part of the remuneration of that officer upon employment or assuming office, and thus, does not fall within the jurisdiction of RMAFC. The State

Governors' pension laws are therefore, valid, according to his Lordship, who

stated, to our utter shock, as follows: “… the Claimants’ case is that the 1999 Constitution gave the 74th Defendant, that is, the Revenue Mobilisation Allocation and Fiscal Commission (RMAFC) the exclusive power to set the remuneration of Governors and Deputy Governors, and that pension is part of the remuneration of public officials. Therefore, any law especially by the State Houses of Assembly that stipulates pension of such public officials already covered by the constitutional mandate of the RMAFC is ultra vires, null and void. The question, therefore, arises whether pension is part of remuneration as the Claimants argue. We cannot answer this question, unless we first understand what ‘remuneration’ and ‘pension’ mean. The New Oxford American Dictionary defines remuneration as ‘money paid for work or a service’ and the Thesaurus gives the alternate words to be ‘payment, pay, salary, wages, earnings, fee(s), rewards, compensation, recompense, reimbursement, contingency, fee, formal emolument(s). The same Dictionary defines pension as ‘a regular payment made during a person’s retirement from an invest

“Pensions and gratuities, are earned. Once there is no law preventing a person from aspiring to serve at more than one level of the three tiers of government - Federal, State and Local Government, any law made to interfere with earned pensions and gratuities, will not be a law validly made”