is one of incredulity. It simply can't be true, one declares.
Such was my reaction last week when I saw a report in the Guardian newspaper.
The
report, written by Charles Ogugbuaja, was titled "Imo Pensioners Owed
Over 20 Months Arrears." For a few minutes, I just stared at the
headline, unable to come to terms with the sheer absurdity of it all.
Was it even possible that a government, any government, would leave
pensioners in the lurch for so long, without any income?
Would such a government not simply collapse under the weight of its
own contradiction?
Would the abused pensioners and their supporters not stake out the
grounds of Government House, daring the delinquent governor to step
out of his office?
Eventually, I was able to shake off the initial shock. I began to read
the report. In an instant, my reaction went from disbelief to disgust
to outrage
"As many pensioners and unpaid workers were groaning, the Imo State
Governor, Rochas Okorocha, on Wednesday, traveled with about 100
persons to Turkey on what he called industrial fact finding trip.
Industrialists and others were on the trip. It was the second time in
months [that]the governor was leading such a large number to the same
country," the Guardian report disclosed.
According to the report, retired civil servants in the state were
being owed arrears of eight months while retired primary school
teachers claimed that they had not received any pensions for 22
months.
Even so, the state government's share of the monthly allocation from
the Federation account came to slightly more than N3.9 billion for
July. In addition, the state received more than N3 billion in the name
of 27 local government councils.
Going by the report, Imo State had got some significant financial
breaks from the Federal Government.
It
said Governor Okorocha had recently revealed that the Federal
Government had restructured the monthly deductions from the state's
allocations that went into debt servicing. The restructuring meant
that the state now spends N480 million on debt servicing instead of
N1.2 billion.
Besides, the state had received bailout funds for payment of workers
salaries and pensioners' arrears.
Even though the governor had not divulged the exact amount of the
bailout, figures released by the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN)
indicated that Imo State "received about N26.806 billion," the
Guardian reported.
Apparently, Mr. Okorocha, who recently told state workers that his
administration spends N1.2 billion each month to pay salaries, wants
certain state-owned agencies to commercialize their activities,
earning enough revenues to cover staff salaries. And apparently, the
20,000 workers employed by these agencies are opposed to the option of
commercializing their operations.
According to the Guardian, the governor has alleged that "more than 40
per cent of those who parade as pensioners are ghost[s], adding that
they had been allegedly colluding with some treasury officials to
defraud [the]government." The state government has called for "another
round of verification exercise," to separate the real pensioners from
ghost leeches and imposters sucking off public resources.
The pensioners are unimpressed.
They told the newspaper that they "had been verified in 2011 and 2013
respectively under excruciating conditions."
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Let's be clear:
Imo State is not alone in owing workers and/or state employees arrears
that run into many months. In fact, unpaid salaries are one of the
gravest, if little discussed, scandals in Nigeria. And it's not only
governments that often treat salaries and other financial commitments
as if they were a favor to workers, rather than the rights of men and
women who have done work. The Nigerian private sector is also plagued
by unpaid entitlements.
Former Governor Chinwoke Mbadinuju of my home state of Anambra, a
lawyer and journalist by training, gave a haughty dismissal of
pensioners who showed up at his office to protest their unpaid
pensions.
Declaring them dead wood, he reportedly told the pensioners that they
should have children abroad who should be taking care of them. My
mother, who put in more than thirty years of service as a committed
teacher, was one of those pensioners Mr. Mbadinuju told off.
At one point, she had not received a kobo in pension for 14 months!
The same governor's failure to pay state teachers led to a yearlong
strike. It's the kind of tragedy that's become commonplace in Nigeria.
Not only are workers dehumanized by public and private sector
employers who don't pay them; future of the youth is mortgaged when
they are subjected to malnourished existence and months of receiving
little, no or wretched education.
The argument is often made that too many Nigerian workers are indolent
and delinquent.
There's little argument there. And there are, indeed, too many
"ghosts" on payrolls, put in there by unscrupulous bureaucrats who
make a killing at the expense of the collectivity.
Imo State and other public sector employers deserve to find and erase
these ghosts.
For that matter, it is not unreasonable for the governor to insist
that certain state agencies raise the revenues to meet their recurrent
obligations.
Yet, allowing for the existence of "ghost" parasites and the argument
for significantly beefing up internally generated revenues, there is
no excuse—repeat, absolutely no excuse—for owing workers and
pensioners even for one month.
It is about time Nigeria criminalized this pervasive practice. A
government that shirks its responsibility to pay its workers or
pensioners has lost its salt, its legitimacy. In fact, a president,
governor, or local government chairperson who is unable to manage the
"minimal" task of paying salaries and pensions should be deemed worse
than a ghost leader. Such a person should immediately step down, and
make way for those who understand the elementary principle that
salaries and pensions are a statutory and moral obligation, and that
to deny people such a basic entitlement is to degrade them to the
level of lower animals.
When a governor doesn't pay his workers or retired workers, he might
as well be saying to them—as Mr. Mbadinuju might—"Go, eat sand!" Such
a governor should not be junketing to Turkey or any other address
governed by competent men and women who truly understand how to spell
the word "leader."
– Please follow me on Twitter @okeyndibe
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