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By Sunday Ani
A retired staff of the Nigeria National Shipping Line (NNSL), Mr. Martin Nwanne, has cried out to President Muhammadu Buhari, begging him to use his good offices to instruct the Pension Transitional Arrangement Directorate (PTAD) to pay him his outstanding pension allowances.
In a letter titled “My unpaid pension since 2014,” addressed to President Buhari through the Sun Publishing Limited, Mr. Nwanne, who is currently down with prostate enlargement is pointedly begging Mr. President to allow him to live again by ensuring that his pension arrears which were insidiously and treacherously withheld be released to him to enable him seek urgent medication attention for his failing health.
His situation is more pathetic since he has no money to seek proper medical help. It is his honest belief that with the pension arrears paid in record time, he could live a healthy life once again. He worked with the NNSL between August 2, 1965, and February 14, 1977, retired as a senior Clerk on Grade Level 6 and was issued with a certificate of service on August 24, 1995 by the company.
Armed with his certificate of service, he looked forward to receiving the five-year pension lump sum that was proposed for the NNSL pensioners in 2008 by the Obasanjo administration, but to his consternation, the union rejected the idea, and instead, opted for pension-for-life in line with other corporations and parastatals, which the current government of Buhari approved when he came on board.
Having served for about 12 years, and considering the 10, 15, and 35 years layers of service period which were the company’s requirement for an employee to be eligible for pension, he was eminently qualified for the pension benefit. And that was confirmed when in 2019 the PTAD conducted pension verification for the NNSL retirees, which saw a good number of them, including him, enrolled as NNSL pensioners after the verification.
However, Nwanne’s ordeals stated when the arrears of pension from January 2014 were paid to a good number of those who were enrolled as NNSL pensioners without him and a few others. The lucky fellows have received all their pension arrears, and they now receive regular monthly pension, while he and a few others were left to wallow in penury and pains.
Narrating his ordeal, Nwanne stated that at the meeting of the NNSL Pensioners Association held in Lagos in June 2020, the president of the association, Mr. Solomon Nyorere, told them that 139 of them were disqualified by the PTAD for not completing the 10, 15 and 35 years’ service period as they applied to individual pensioners. He also told them that 75 others among whom Nwanne was the number one were not paid because their names were excluded. He noted that there was no query from the PTAD to any of them, and there was no reason given to any of them for excluding them from the enrolled pensioners of the NNSL.
According to Nwanne, there were speculations that some individuals at the PTAD might have put the collective pension the 75 pensioners into a fixed deposit account, so as to collect the interest to line their pockets since nobody explained to them why they would not be paid their legitimate earnings of pension arrears, and monthly pension or even being enrolled in the company’s pension database.
Following his exclusion without any reason, he decided to write to the Director-General, seeking to know why he was excluded. But, not even his letter to the PTDA boss could change anything as it ended in no reply, hence, his decision to cry to the President, hoping that this time, succour will come his way.
“I wrote to the Director-General of the PTAD on December 28, 2021, asking for reasons why I was not paid my entitlement, but she did not reply to my letter till date,” he added.
Today, Mr. Nwanne is critically down with prostate enlargement and needs urgent medical attention. He is, therefore, appealing to President Buhari to urgently intervene so that he could get his pension entitlements, from January 2014 till date from the PTDA, as that would help him to take proper care of his health condition.
“Please Mr. President, I appeal to you to compel the PTAD to pay me all that is due to me – my pension arrears from January 2014 till date, as well as regular monthly pension payment as applicable to other NNSL pensioners.
“I delayed writing you this letter when I learnt you were going for your medical checkup in Britain. I am happy you are back and well enough to find time to read and act on my pain, since I have no other medium through which I can reach you.
“In a country where people have the nerve to steal N22 billion from the police pension fund, stealing the pensions due to 75 pensioners may not be a big deal. Please, re-invent the Muhammadu Buhari I know as the military head of state with Tunde Idiagbon as his deputy and cause the PTAD to do the right thing, which is to pay me my accumulated pension arrears from January 2014 till date, and enroll me in the NNSL pension payroll for life. These are my legitimate entitlements as well as the other 74 NNSL pensioners so shabbily treated by the PTAD,” he pleaded.
