Labour threatens mass action over pensions scam

Omar-okNIGERIA Labour Congress (NLC) might have simply condemned the unimaginable level of corruption in the public sector, but now it is poised for a fight with indicted public officials.

The Labour movement is specifically targeting pensions officials that are already facing trial or on the verge of being prosecuted for the massive looting of pensions funds. NLC said yesterday that because the victims of the fraud are Nigerians, who had given their best to the country in their active days and now living in squalor, it would not rest until they (suspects) were brought to book.

The workers’ movement, which reacted to the looting of pensions funds in the Police Pensions Board and the Federal Civil Service yesterday through a statement, warned against a lacklustre trial of the culprits in the scam.

The NLC, which further asked President Goodluck Jonathan to wade into the pensions fraud, threatened that it would take to the streets to protest the defrauding of the senior citizens of the country if no decisive action was taken against the masterminds of the looting of the terminal benefits of the public sector’s retirees.

Labour said: “The point can however not be overstated; corruption in the pensions sector is not just an economic crime; theft of terminal benefits of our heroes of labour past must be seen as a treasonable crime. Taking the terminal benefits of millions of pensioners, (which are far from being enough to sustain long life expectancy) amounts to burying the future of the existing workforce and mass early burials of the current pensioners.”

The NLC added that if the President failed to ensure that the indicted officials were promptly brought to book, it would “be left with no other option than to embark on a nationwide protest against the national opprobrium.”

In the statement signed by the NLC Vice President, Issa Aremu, the workers alleged that corruption had assumed a more worrisome dimension under the Jonathan administration and urged the people to collectively fight it.

Aremu said: “The recent revelations of alleged pensions frauds in the Federal Civil Service and Police Pensions Office running into billions of naira of deferred pensioners’ payments are the newest ugliest faces of corruption. President Jonathan must urgently intervene to safe the nation’s pensioners in the public sector from their existing continuous income poverty.”

According to the NLC, the reason was not because pensioners had not worked hard for post-service life, “but because a few official criminals are looting pensions funds.

“The ongoing accusations and counter-accusations of bribery, plain theft and fraud between some directors of police pensions board and some senators on one hand and fraud-star words-exchange between the Senate Committee on Establishment and Public Service and states and local councils, and Pensions Reform Task Team (PRTT) headed by Abdulrasheed Maina on the other hand over N2 billion bribe shows that pension matters are too important and too fundamental to be left in the hands of the task force and the Senate committee.”

The NLC said pension matters like other critical Labour market compensation issues are on the exclusive list, arguing that President Jonathan has the constitutional duty to apprehend pensions thieves and deepen the pensions reform to ensure that pensioners are adequately paid as at when due.

Drawing the President’s attention to how his predecessors handled corruption-related matters, Labour said, “notwithstanding his perceived selective anti-corruption drive, former President Olusegun Obasanjo in 2005 offered leadership by decisively removing a minister of education on allegation of bribery in the sector.”

Aremu said the late President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua also fought corruption in the health sector. He, therefore, charged Jonathan to emulate them by dealing decisively with the reported public pensions thefts, “failing which the Labour movement has a duty to ensure perpetual protection of pensions funds through legitimate mass protests.”

Accusing the Jonathan administration of condoning massive corruption, Labour said: “Corruption agenda has sadly replaced development agenda in dangerous full cycle; from power sector, education sector, health sector, sports and now to pensions.

“It is unacceptable to see pensions funds’ suspects smiling to trials over looted billions stashed in private bank accounts and illegal private property laundering, while we see miserable, old, fragile and weak pensioners being compelled to travel long distances for official verification and re-verification, designed ab-initio to frustrate and deny them their pensions.” Labour said, “beyond drastic sanction for pension theft, the monumental fraud in the old moribund pensions system again raises the debate about the superiority of the new 2004 Contributory Pensions Scheme to the old deferred benefits scheme. Latest fraud revelations show that the old system is open to unrestrained fraudulent criminal abuses.”

Meanwhile, the Pensions Reform Task Team (PRTT) has debunked media reports linking it to allegations of N2 billion bribe allegedly demanded by the Senate Committee on Establishment.

The Task Force Information and Media Relations Officer, Hassan Salihu, said yesterday that it never at any time alleged that the Senate panel demanded bribe from it.

Also at a recent press conference in Abuja last week, Maina had told journalists that the bribe allegations “never happened.”

Salihu said yesterday that the attention of the task force had been drawn to a media publication claiming that the PRTT alleged that some members of the Joint Senate Committee approached it and demanded N2 billion bribe.