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Chinwendu Obienyi
Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) pensioners have pleaded with the management of the bank to to hasten the review of their pensions as agreed to alleviate the pains of the over 5000 pensioners in the country.
In a letter dated April 20, 2020 to the CBN Governor, the pensioners through their Publicity Secretary, Chief Chimezie C. Ahaneku, noted that the ex- employees have been constantly assured at different meetings that the process of its general review was progressing and would be completed in no time, but lamented they were yet to receive any payment.
The letter further said that hopes of the pensioners had been initially raised after a general headcount of the 5,000 CBN pensioners eligible for the payment for the month of Feburary and March 2020 and pleaded with the Godwin Emefiele to act quickly as any further delay could be dangerously harmful to the pensioners adding it was almost five years in arrears.
“This is a clear contravention of the section 173 subsection (3) of the 1999 Nigerian Constitution which stipulates that pensions shall be reviewed every five years or together with any Federal Civil Service salary review whichever is earlier.
The unfortunate thing about this is that the moment a pensioner dies, his or her pension payment is automatically stopped or terminated immediately. In the past five weeks, we have lost three pensioners.
As elderly and among the most vulnerable people in the society, we had since March this year, expected the CBN to have paid us a palliative at this crucial time of COVID-19 and the resultant general lockdown, but since the CBN management is not thinking along that line and since our strong expectation of receiving the enhanced pension in the month of May has been dashed, we implore the CBN governor and its management to direct that the action be urgently expedited”, the pensioners said.
According to them, this would ensure the conclusion of the review process to enable us receive the enhanced pension together with the accrued arrears before the end of June 2020 as the urgency of the matter is clearly borne out of their desire to be able to receive the anticipated pension increase while they remain alive.
