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From Obinna Odogwu, Awka
The Executive Secretary,Pension Transitional Arrangement Directorate (PTAD), Dr Chioma Ejikeme, has said that she would not relent on current efforts to deliver exceptional services to pensioners.
Ejikeme, who was in Awka, the Anambra State capital recently to attend a stakeholders’ engagement forum for the South East region organised by her directorate, spoke with Daily Sun on a number of issues bordering on federal pensions and pensioners.
Excerpts.
What would you sayare your achievements since assuming office?
Our achievements are numerous. We’ve been able to complete the field verification for all pensioners in the operational departments.
When I started, we finished the payment of 33 per cent arrears inherited from 2010. By December of 2019, we had completed the payment of that 33 per cent arrears across all the operational departments of PTAD.
When we now finished with the verifications, we started validating verifications. I started with declaring a state of emergency on civil service pensioners because we had finished their verification between 2015 and 2017 but we hadn’t validated the verification. So, we went into a project that looked into all the pensioners’ complaints, looked at the people who were not on payroll, put them on payroll; looked at people who were not properly placed, placed them properly, paid gratuities, paid arrears to the tune of over eight point something billion. And when we finished with that, we now started with the parastatals’ pensioners. And with the parastatal pensioners, we first of all started with paying off arrears to some of the defunct agencies. A lot of them came with pension arrears ranging from 84 to 200 and something months. So, what we have been doing is that we have paid off New Nigeria newspapers, we have paid off NICON Insurance, paid off Nigeria Reinsurance Corporation, paid off Aluminium Smelter Company, paid off Nigerian Aviation Handling Company (NAHCO), paid off Delta Steel Company and a whole lot of them. All the defunct agencies that we inherited, we have paid all their arrears except for Nitel/Mtel.
We inherited 84 months of Nitel/Mtel, finished paying for 48 months of Nitel/Mtel. And we have a balance of 36 months and we are very optimistic that we are going to be able to liquidate all that. And in the whole, all those arrears for these defunct agencies, we have paid over 50 something billion in arrears. We have continued to pay monthly pension as and when due. In April of 2019, there was an increment, a salary increment for serving civil servants and as a result, pensioners had to have their own increment. So, in 2020 we went through the issues concerned and eventually, in 2021, we got approval for consequential adjustment of pensions for our pensioners as a result of the increment of 2019. And as at the time we got our approval, we had inherited 24 months arrears of this particular increment. Now, the more important thing about the 2019 consequential adjustment increment for pensioners is that it is novel; it is the first of its kind. And it has been described as the most impactful and the most equitable in the history of pension increment in Nigeria because for the first time, we used absolute figures for the increment as against percentages. And I keep trying to explain to people, if somebody is earning N1000 as pension, for instance, and you give that person 33 per cent increment, and somebody is earning N1 million as pension and you give that person 33 per cent increment, it is not equitable. It is a situation of the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer. So, but with this absolute figure, we now, in our agency, have a minimum pension as it were. There is no pensioner who earns less than N8,000 plus now in PTAD as against pensioners who were earning N500. But people would ask why would a pensioner earn N500? I keep explaining.
We have two different sets of pensioners under PTAD, the state pensioners with federal share and the federal pensioners. Now, these state pensioners with federal share are pensioners who worked with regional governments; they were employed by the regional governments before the 31st of March, 1976. So, the portion of your pension is dependent on the period of time between when you were employed and 1976. So, if say, for instance, you were employed on the 1st of March 1976, your pension is only one month belonging to the federal, the rest of your pension will be borne by the state. So, that’s why we had such small figures at that time. Now, we have continued validating and trying to get our database put in place, making sure that everybody is getting the right pension that they’re supposed to get.
What is the essence of the ‘I Am Alive’ campaign you’re promoting
That is the most important thing w we are actually talking about now, the baby of the day and it is a game changer as far as the pension administration is concerned. The I Am Alive confirmation solution is critical to the success of efficient pension payment.
It is new, it is novel. Now, this I Am Alive confirmation solution is what is going to replace field verification. You know pension is for life, which means that if a pensioner is dead, he or she is not supposed to continue to receive pension. So, how do we know that a pensioner is dead? We have done our field verifications; we have our database of our pensioners but how do we know when they have passed on? The only way we can know is if the relatives are nice enough to come and tell us that their loved one has died; sometimes the pension unions tell us that their loved ones have passed on. But most of the time they don’t. So, what would have been the alternative is for us to continue to do the field verifications to ascertain who is still alive and eligible to continue to receive pensions. But PTAD prides itself in using technology to manage pensions. So, this particular solution is technology based and it is a solution that enables the pensioner to confirm their aliveness from the comfort of their homes. I am sure you heard the SERVICOM representative talking about how his uncle lost his life travelling from Otukpo to somewhere else for verification. So, we don’t want that for our pensioners. So, I Am Alive confirmation, you can confirm your aliveness in the comfort of home using a smart phone or using a computer system. It is easy, it is user friendly, it is cheap; you don’t have to travel to anywhere. And that is the gospel we are propagating now. And we are asking the press to help us spread this news through all the nooks and crannies of Nigeria. This particular solution is what will determine whether a pensioner is eligible to continue to receive pension or not because if, for instance, you don’t show up for the I Am Alive, we will assume that you’re dead. Now, we have flagged off this solution nationwide on the 14th of April, 2023 and we have given each of the operational departments six months to be able to confirm their aliveness. When we flagged off on the 14th, we started with the police pensioners. We started on the 14th of April and they are supposed to stop on the 13th of October. That is six months period. The next department to start is the customs, immigration and the prisons departments. They started on the 1st of June and they are ending on the 31st of December. The other department which has also started is the civil service pension department. They started on the 1st of July and they are ending on the 31st of January. The last department that is going to confirm their aliveness will be the parastatals pension department. They are going to start on the 1st of August and they will end on the 28 of February. So, we want you to help us disseminate this information so that we will have all our pensioners confirm their aliveness because after that six months period, if they don’t confirm their aliveness, they will be removed from the payroll.
What other initiatives have you introduced to reposition PTAD?
There are a whole lot of initiatives that we have come up with. One is the harmonisation of pensions. As a matter of fact, that particular document is waiting for approval now because the national salaries, incomes and wages commission has worked on it. PTAD has also, during my tenure, started looking into health insurance for pensioners and we have gone along with the national health insurance authority concerning provision of health insurance for pensioners. We are generally interested in the welfare of our pensioners. These are just some of the highlights of what we have been able to do in the last three to four years.
We understand that PTAD is planning to conduct surveys for pensioners living in the United States of America, Canada and the UK. Can you throw a little light on such initiative
There are pensioners we call Diaspora pensioners. Now, our Diaspora pensioners are pensioners who are now residing outside Nigeria. You know we are very caring people. When our people get older we say ‘mama come and stay with me in America so I can take care of you.’ We know we have many Nigerians out there in the Diaspora. So, they have their loved ones there. Some of them actually left many years ago when we had brain drain. A lot of our professionals, especially in the parastatals pension department, the professors, the doctors went away to other climes so many years ago to practice and they have retired there. And they are in those places. A lot of them have not been verified. As a policy, you are not supposed to be on our payroll except you have been biometrically verified. And that is to say, we have taken your photograph, your fingerprints and we have your career documents digitised on our database. So, some of those pensioners, we have been paying them on what we call the legacy payroll. Legacy payroll is inherited payroll that we inherited when we started out.
So, we need to verify them because some of them might not be eligible pensioners; because we found that out when we started the verification of the legacy payroll that was given to us. A lot of people were thrown out because they didn’t have the proper career document to be eligible for pension. So, what we are trying to do now, because a lot of people are still on our payroll, a lot of them are people who are eligible for pension but because they were not on the legacy payroll and because they have not been verified by PTAD, they are not receiving anything at all. So, all we want to do is to first of all know who these people are and where they are. If we are going to do Diaspora verification, for instance, you have to know where they are. So, we can’t just wake up and say okay let’s go and find out people who are residing in America. Where are they? So, what we have done is to create a link on our website. Now, the link on our website is a survey link that these Diaspora pensioners should click on and fill out forms for us. That form will tell us your name, where you retired from, scan on some documents for us to look at. So, that way we will be able to collate a database of Diaspora pensioners. And when we now collate the database, we will now know how to go about making sure that we verify them and they are rightfully placed on the payroll and they are receiving their rightful pensions.
Many states are in arrears of pensions. Is there any way the directorate can intervene in such cases?
We are federal government oh! We keep pleading with the states. You understand. They are not under our purview. We don’t manage state pensions but we keep pleading with the state governors. Please, pay your pensioners their monthly pensions. Please, pay them their gratuity. Please, pay them their arrears, because we keep saying; you see, this thing is a journey everybody prays to get to. The young man and the young woman of today are the pensioners of tomorrow. That is my mantra. Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.
Feedback from your going round the country with your programmes
It’s been humbling. That’s the word I will use. It’s been humbling. It’s been amazing. The way they praise us everywhere we go, the way they appreciate us, the way they pray for us. Every day I get people sending me prayers everyday and I am like ‘this is what you are supposed to get, it is your entitlement. We are not doing you a favour. This is what you worked for and it is what you are supposed to get. It’s been a very humbling experience I must tell you because the pensioners of the defined benefit scheme under PTAD, they are so appreciative of what we are doing.
And that makes us happy. It gives us the energy to continue to do what we are doing.
