Senator Ndume Advocates Pension Payment as First Line Charge

The Chairman, Senate Committee on Establishment and Pension, Senator Ali Ndume, has advocated that the payment of Pensioners pension should be considered as a First Line Charge.

This means that when the law on this is passed, National Assembly will always accord the issue of pension top priority.

He said this in Lagos yesterday while fielding questions from journalists after inspecting the ongoing pensioners’ verification exercise by the Pension Transitional Arrangement Directorate (PTAD).

Senator Ndume said this year he has specifically written to President Buhari on pension issues in terms of their short-fall of funding.

According to him, In fact I am advocating that pension issue should be treated as a first line charge and the President and the Executive are favourable disposed to that but there is a process that has to be followed: the law has to be passed and the passing of the law is not an overnight affair, so gradually as you see you are even raising some of these observations and we will take note of them and work on them, we will be moving forward.

While responding to question that Senators are in the habit of cutting pension allocation, he disagreed on that and said “This year alone, I specifically wrote to Mr. President on issues that affect these organizations in terms of their short-fall of funding so I will not agree on that. Look, I can tell you authoritatively, that pension issue is no go area for senators.  We don’t touch it. So even though you are cutting budget you don’t go and cut budget that affects you father or your mother your sister or brother, we don’t do that,” he assured.

On the objective of his visit, he said, “The objective of this visit is to come and have a firsthand look at how things are being done. I must confess that I am actually impressed by the process, of course as you can see it’s very orderly, it’s very effective and it’s necessary. This is part of what PTAD is doing to improve on Pension management and even the pensioners themselves are happy with the process as you can see I quite talked to many of them and we will continue to see area of improvement that pensioners, as I say earlier, that the labour of our heroes should not be in vain – it should be treated with dignity, respect and equity. Am told this thing is happening in various centres across Lagos, this is just one of the centres. Next time, we won’t have to bring them around like this to do verification since biometric hamonisation and capturing is being done now that is a step forward.”

He said in this digital age, “we should be able to catch up, make sure that our pensioners can even be verified through voice message, or getting someone to do it on them by swap system” noting that that is what is being done now and “am actually pleased and am happy am here to see it myself. I think PTAD should really be commended for doing this.”

While reacting to a pensioners observation that in Argentina verification can be done through telephone, the Senator said “In Argentina, the old man said their verification can even be done by telephone that is voice recognition system but we are here doing electronic finger biometric system and there are various ways of doing it: this is our own and I think it’s better than the voice verification system.

“Argentina is a little bit ahead of us; even though we are classified as a developing country, but there are some developing countries that are more developed than our own. But we thank God, we are getting there. It’s better to start because a journey of a thousand mile begins with a step.  I think this is even more than one step.”

The Deputy Director, Parastatals Pension Department, PTAD, Kabiru Yusuf, while giving detail of their activities in Lagos said in their projection and plans there are 22,200 pensioners located in Lagos and that based on that four centres have been created for the verification exercise.

According to him, from our projection and plans, there are 22,200 pensioners located in Lagos. On the basis of that we have created four centres with a daily target of 375 across 15 days, noting that as at Saturday, May 4, 12,000 pensioners have been verified.

“As at Saturday, May 4, I think we have done close to 12,000 pensioners. By our plan, we have sufficient time. However, we cannot force any pensioner to come out for verification; we cannot create career document for pensioners, one of the requirements of every pensioners because their right to pension came as a result of the career they had with the Federal Government,” he said.

One of the obligations of every pensioner, Kabiru said, is to present his/her career document, stating that when that is done, “we review it, and on the basis of that we then verify them.”

He said there are instances pensioners who can no longer trace their career records are giving options and one of the options, according to him, is for them is to go back to their agencies because these agencies are existing to get a letter of introduction which will now state the details of their career such as date of entry, date of last promotion and the grade and date of exit.

“We are exercising civility to accept this letter of introduction along with affidavits and other banks statements and related records to verify them with a caveat that we will stamp the form ‘verification incomplete subject to further validation’ so that when we get back to the headquarters, we can then revalidate because our primary purpose is to ensure that only qualified pensioners get back onto our payroll. Secondly, the amounts we pay them are compute accurately and we pay them the correct amount. Thirdly, of course we do not verify dead pensioners to ensure that only pensioners that are alive remain on the payroll,” Yusuf added.

Senator Ali Ndume was a member of the House of Representatives, where he was Minority Leader between 2007 and 2011, and in the Senate, where he served as House Leader between 2015 and 2019. He is representing Borno South Senatorial District at the National Assembly. He is currently vying for the position of Senate President.