After coming under a spell of protests, the Senate President, Bukola Saraki, has stopped receiving the monthly pension he was taking as a former governor of Kwara State. The emolument was a moral albatross on his neck for two years. He did not only stop the collection, but reportedly returned all that had been paid to him since he became the country’s number one lawmaker.
The Socio-Economic Rights and Accountability Project, a civil society organisation, which had accused him of being doubly paid from public funds, and described it as illegal, has been his chief nemesis on the issue. But in Saraki’s recent reaction, he said, “…the moment I saw the allegation, I wrote to my state to stop my pension… morally, if you have got another job, you should give it up until when you are truly a pensioner.” As of December 2016, about nine states had passed similar loathsome pieces of legislation providing lavish pension for their former governors. They are Lagos, Gombe, Zamfara, Kwara, Kano, Akwa Ibom, Sokoto, Rivers and Edo states.
But the Senate President was just one out of a legion of such beneficiaries in the Senate. If the legal correctness of such an entitlement is debatable, there is no question about its moral odiousness. Besides the senators, there are also such men in President Muhammadu Buhari’s cabinet.
The details of the pension packages are as revolting as they epitomise insensitivity and selfishness. Fleecing the common treasury in the guise of retirement benefits began shortly in 2007, when the governors elected in 1999 completed their tenure. But public howling against it peaked in 2015, when Godswill Akpabio, in the twilight of his eight-year tenure as governor of Akwa Ibom State, signed into law, a pension bill passed by the state’s assembly, which granted N200 million annual pay to former governors of the state. This is for life. An amendment to the law provided N100 million for medicals annually and N50 million for a deputy governor. But sustained public outrage compelled him to reject it.
Generally for all, there is a fleet of cars, fuelled and maintained by the state, furniture, renewable every four years, and building of a mansion in any place of choice. In the case of Lagos State: two houses – one in the state and the other in Abuja to boot. Since no ex-governor is a pauper, and no doubt owns a residential house in his state, the Federal Capital Territory will certainly be the preferred place: either Maitama or Asokoro, where a piece of land for such a mansion is, undoubtedly, above N100 million. In Edo State, Governor Godwin Obaseki’s approval of the building of a N200 million house for his predecessor, Adams Oshiomhole, and N100 million for his deputy, seemingly the governor’s first official duty, brought pro-government and anti-government protesters on a collision course.
Until Isiaka Adeleke’s death recently, there were 17 ex-governors in the Senate, and three former deputies. Public office demands not only unalloyed service, but also sacrifices where necessary. Unfortunately, these are in short supply in the country. Some critics suggest that the pension should be supplanted with severance packages. In fact, Nigeria’s current economic reality dictates that such obscene generous pension packages for former governors and their deputies be reviewed downwards.
State assemblies should stand up and be counted in this patriotic task. It smacks of irresponsibility, in the first place, that they enacted these reprehensible pension laws amid the poverty ravaging their people. A lot of water passes under the bridge before such legislative approval is given. Ironically, this goes against the grain of the 1999 Constitution, which provides that the legislature is an independent arm of government, primed to act as a check on the executive arm.
Democratic governance and service delivery cannot be achieved in the country, if this sacred trust is allowed to be unabashedly eroded or abused, which regrettably is the order of the day. Changing this narrative requires a strong civic engagement: development of political consciousness by the people to demand accountability from those elected to serve and protect their interests and to protest when things go wrong. Protest is an irreducible part of a vibrant democracy.
Lest, it is forgotten, some of these ex-governors are on trial by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission for allegedly embezzling billions of naira while in office. Indeed, when almost 30 states of the federation cannot pay workers their salaries for between six and 10 months, pensioners are owed for over one year, collapse in the queues in endless data capturing undertakings and gratuities pile up, it is, therefore, extremely callous and scandalous for any ex-governor to be so remunerated in Nigeria.
