The Federal Radio Nigeria Pensioners within the Defined Benefit Scheme (DBS) and under the Coalition of Federal Pensioners of Nigeria,are now left with no option than to join in the naked protest scheduled for Monday, December 8, to press for payment of our accrued arrears from the #32,000 minimum pension.
A statement from the union said their resolve to participate in the naked protest,stems also from outright non-payment of the #25,000 palliative for six months,as approved since 2023 by President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, to cushion the effect of the removal of the subsidy on Petrol.
What sane mind rationalises for acceptance,failure to pay such palliative almost two years that it was awarded? Such is not flying with our colleagues in diaspora,which is the reason they have vowed to put their own naked protest on the international stage wherever they are domiciled on Monday, December 8.
They argue,the world must see how a nation struggling with security,is treating with levity,her senior citizens,making them eternally vulnerable.
One question that still begs for an answer from Pension Transitional Arrangement Directorate (PTAD) and its Supervising Ministries such as that of Finance,Humanitarian Affairs & the Accountant -General’s Office,is the offence of the Federal Pensioners, to warrant us being subjected to this height of dehumanization.
Given our vulnerable status as oldies that had given the productive years of our lives to the service of our fatherland,should subjecting us to a state of beggary on the streets of the same father land be our next portion?Very many of our colleagues have died avoidable death from treatable afflictions,but which insensitivities on the part of state actors have mindlessly made possible.
It is after exhausting all available channels of getting PTAD – our Managing Agency – to press our plight for an answer,obviously failed, that we are resorting to sensitising Mr President’s attention to the presence possibility of some fifth columnists in the ranks of its administration, to derail its people-centred programme.
What PTAD has lately been found engaged in,amounts to a betrayal of our trust in the Agency.
Rather than travel the vigorous engagement route that has fetched its PENCOM counterpart, the ears of relevant government arms to do the needful for our counterpart Contributory Pensioners,PTAD’s preference – unknown to us all this while – had been a pre-occupation of engaging us in trickery & deceit.
After each such chicanery session,it dropped on our respective laps,one or two months of the huge accrued entitlements, as though we are kindergarten children needing to be pacified from crying, with sweetie-snacks.
As if such has not been enough a slap on our faces,the new dimension to that humiliation,is PTAD’s resort to playing the Iscariot card,in which case it invites leadership of our Coalition arm to open talks,only to behind the scene engage NUP leadership at another roundtable to strategize on how to frustrate our common fight position.
The latest of PTAD’S inhuman strategies,is the cherry-picking of infinitesimal number of people to be paid its regular one month of the accrued arrears, only to be able to make mischievous claim that it is not owing Pensioners as many as the months we are claiming.
Tell us what Agency of government operates in that manner and still claims to be working in tandem with such administration’s goal to meet the overall interest of the populace.
If neither Federal Civil servants nor even National Youth Service Corps members (NYSC)are going through this humiliating experience,why must such be our lot?
