ON the evening of Wednesday, September 9, 2020, Ochade Ndude was returning from church around her Umusedeli home in Kwale, Ndokwa-West Local Government Area, Delta State, when one Okoli suddenly approached her and asked that she hurriedly mount his bike.
Frightened, her mind raced. She could not imagine what could have occurred until she summoned the courage.
What happened? she asked out of curiosity.
“Your husband just had an accident and broke his leg,” Okoli responded. The news shattered her mood. It was devastating, not realising there was more.
Ndude would later find out her 63-year-old husband, Francis Ochade, was knocked down by an oncoming vehicle on the highway to Asaba, the state capital.
By the time she got to the hospital, he was dead.
She has since resorted to farming and borrowing to feed her family. Before the incident, the Late Ochade, who retired as Primary School Headmaster in the state, had left home to ply his new trade – Okada business.
Having served the state government for 35 years, he left the public service in February 2017 and became a commercial motorcyclist “okada rider”.
At 63, the job became his new venture. This is due to the non-payment of his accrued pension rights and contributory pension benefits owed by the Delta State Government through the Bureau of Local Government Pensions, Asaba.
The late Ochade could not access his rightful benefits five years after retirement.
There are several others across the 25 LGAs in Delta. The ICIR confirmed Delta’s indebtedness to the retirees in the 2021 annual report Pension Commission (PenCom), published on June 22.
Ndude quickly adds that the need to meet the family obligation compelled her late husband to become a commercial motorcyclist even at old age.
“Since that day, life has been difficult, suffering with four children,” says Ndude. “We lack money to feed. The senior one just finished secondary school, there is a little one, and the other child went for a menial job so we could get something to eat.”
91 deaths just from two LGAs
Until his death, Ochade was a member of the Concerned Delta State Local Government Primary School Teachers’ Contributory Retirees. The group is an umbrella body of yet-to-be-paid primary school retirees in Delta.
Besides him, 24 other deceased members of the association in Kwale had died at one point or the other while struggling to access their retirement benefits. Governor Ifeanyi Okowa did not start paying the retirees until 2017, two years into his administration.
Many aggrieved retirees are either crippled with medical conditions or suffering from starvation.
Philo retired in January 2022, but she was asked to continue working till March 2022 until a new teacher resumed, says many members of the group.
Just by count, about 91 deaths have been recorded from two LGAs yet the retired teachers spread across the 25 LGAs in Delta.
The retirees, however, believe their members might still be alive. And the funds would have come in handy to meet their health and socio-economic needs if not for the delayed payment of their retirement benefits.
The drama towards a new pension scheme
Between 2007 and 2008, the Delta state government joined the Contributory Pension Scheme (CPS) of the Federal Government, which was enacted by a 2004 federal pension and later reviewed through the Pension Reform Act, 2014.
The Act attempts to ensure a uniform contributory pension model for employees in Nigeria’s public and private sectors. The 36 states, just like Delta, are urged to adopt the law. Upon its enactment, it literarily knocked off the old pension scheme.
Section 15 (1) (a) (b) (c) of the Act makes a case for the accrued pension of the retired public servants who operated the previous pension models until the transition and how the accrued pension benefits (from the old pension) of the retirees should be settled through the Retirement Benefits Bonds.
“As from June 25 2004, being the commencement of the pension reform act, 2004, the accrued pension right to retirement benefits of any employee who is already under any pension scheme existing before the advent of that Act, and has over three years to retire shall:
In the case of employees of the public service of the federation where the scheme is unfunded, be recognised in the form of an amount acknowledged through the issuance of the Federal Government Retirement Benefits Bonds by the Debt Management Office (DMO) in favour of the employees and the bond issued under this subsection shall be redeemed upon the retirement of the employee by section 39 of this Act, and the amount so saved shall be added to the balance of the retirement savings account of the employee and applied in accordance with the provisions of Section 7 of this Act….” Part of the section reads.
“In the case of the employees of the public service of the federation, FCT or in the private sector, where the scheme is funded, credit the retirement savings accounts of the employees with any fund to which each employee is entitled and in the event of an insufficiency of funds to meet this liability, the shortfall shall immediately become a debt of the relevant employer and shall have priority over any other claim,” Subsection (c) of the same Act reads further.
From the above, these provisions place on the Delta state government the responsibility to mop-up funds through bonds at the DMO to settle the accrued pension rights.
Findings would later reveal that the state government had set up the Retirement Benefits Bond Redemption Fund Accounts with the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), as enshrined in the Pension Act, from which it could sort the aggrieved retirees.
According to PenCom, Delta State ranks fifth among eight states nationwide that have taken similar action on behalf of their retirees to offset the payment.
It implies the state has commenced the process of addressing the accrued pension rights of the retirees.
Meanwhile, around April 25, Okowa agreed the state was owing the retirees over N100 billion, and efforts are ongoing to settle the debts from the old pension.
“It is something we are committed to,” he says, pledging at the Bishop Agori-Iwe Memorial Church in Ugbehlli. “…I will continue to do the best that we can, and by the time we are able to pay the accruals, it will no longer be a burden to subsequent governments.”
On August 2, The ICIR met 30 other association members at Warri-South LGA where they were holding their monthly meetings.
Lori Patrick (63), leader of the retirees in the LGA, supervised the meeting. Towards the end of the session, Patrick presented a register of 66 members of the retirees who were announced dead.
Patrick had opened the register to document the deceased. The most recent was Philo Onoghere, whose fellow retirees say she died two weeks before this reporter’s visit.