Cash director is blocking our pension – NNN pensioners
Six months after the Pension Transitional Arrangement Directorate [PTAD] conducted their verification exercise and weeks since Minister of Finance Kemi Adeosun approved N2.1billion to pay them, Director of Cash Management in the Finance Ministry Mr. Samson Arowojolu has blocked the payment, Nigeria Union of Pensioners [NUP], New Nigerian Newspapers Branch cried out in Abuja yesterday. The pensioners’ leaders Malam Idi Sule and Albert Iweka made the charge in a letter addressed to the director, which was copied to the Ministers of Finance and Education, Attorney General of the Federation, Secretary to the Government of the Federation [SGF] and Chairman of the Northern States Governors Forum, NSGF.
They said Mr Arowojolu refused to release the payment on the grounds that the Federal Government settled all its liabilities to the NNN pensioners in 2013, when it paid them N1.2 billion. In the letter dated April 5, 2018 the NNN pensioners said the moribund newspaper company is listed in the Second Schedule of the Pension Act Cap 346 Laws of the Federation 2004 as one of the parastatals whose staff are entitled to pension. They are the staff who served the company in 1975 to 2006 when the company was owned by the Federal Government before it was transferred back to ownership of the 19 Northern states.
They complained that they are being owed more than 100 months of pensions and 170 of their members have since died waiting for their pension to be paid. Others, they said, have been subjected to untold hardship for many years and just when they were about to receive their pension, the Cash Director blocked it with an untenable argument.
They referred to Federal High Court FHC/KAD/CS/137/ 2011 ruling which ordered the Federal Government to pay them N5.8billion in accumulated pension from January 2000 to March 2014. They said the government paid N2.1bn in partial compliance with that order but that the pensioners got only six months’ arrears of their dues. The pensioners’ leader Idi Sule told Daily Trust that “whereas the humane and compassionate administration of President Muhammadu Buhari and his equally compassionate Finance Minister Mrs. Kemi Adeosun have taken bold steps to correct the injustice meted out to us for over a decade, Mr. Arowojolu has brought every wicked bureaucratic red tape he can find to ensure that we and our families continue to suffer and die needlessly.”
They called on the President, Finance Minister, National Assembly leaders and all well meaning Nigerians to prevail on the Director of Cash Management to speedily end his cruel rear guard tactics and pay their pension.