Excitement greets birth of Nigeria’s centre for senior citizens
Pensioners and experts have greeted the birth of the National Senior Citizens Centre Act, 2018 with excitement.
Recently, President Muhammadu Buhari assented to the National Senior Citizens Centre bill passed by the National Assembly into law.
The Centre, now backed by law, was crafted to cater for the needs of the elderly in the country, including designing different programmes and other activities for improving the lives of senior citizens.
From the Act, the Centre is mandated to promote research, documentation, and dissemination of information on matters affecting senior citizens.
The centre is also expected to provide community-based care and support services for the elderly in the areas of recreation, sports, health, housing, and finance as well as facilitating policy formulation on issues affecting senior citizens.
The centre, when fully operational, will serve as a liaison between national, regional, and international institutions that work on similar issues.
A retiree, who is a member of the Nigeria Union of Pensioners (NUP), Carls Ozoemena, said this is the best achievement of the present government.
“Mr. Buhari has shown that he is indeed a senior citizen. He knows where the shoe has been pinching us,” he said.
On what the Centre means for senior citizens, Ozoemena said, “the Centre is home for us. This one is our own.”
Another pensioner, who is also a member of NUP, Mrs Rosemary Ajaki, said the news of the new centre excited her.
However, she said it was not yet time to celebrate until the Centre takes off and their activities prove to be the solution that senior citizens have been looking for.
She said she would want the centre to address issues of delayed pension permanently and go beyond pension issues.
Speaking on the development, a pension expert, Mr. Femi Afolabi, said such an agency has been long overdue.
Mr. Afolabi said the agency would serve as a relief to pensioners and elders in general in critical issues that affect them.
“In Nigeria now, the only social security senior citizens enjoy is pension. That’s not enough. What happens to elders who did not have the privilege of working for neither the public sector nor the private sector? These are the issues the Centre can address for the start,” he said.
Daily Trust observes that unlike in many parts of the world where senior citizens are accorded high level of care, in Nigeria, there are very few homes for the elderly and virtually no social security.
Retirees enjoy some retirement palliatives in addition to their retirement benefits in some countries in order to ensure their happiness, good health and longevity.
In Nigeria, such retirement palliatives do not exist and retirees are left to struggle and survive on their own.