President Jonathan’s Cruel And Unusual Punishment Of Federal Pensioners Is More Pain Than Transformation.

Posted: May, 01 2014, 3:05PM

By Dr. Wumi Akintide

I just came back from a 5 week vacation in Nigeria. I went home wearing two caps. I took the vacation to take care of some personal business and to check on the status of my Federal Pensions which were paid from 1986 but stopped in June 2010 because the Pensions Office in Abuja was more concerned now about  the threat posed by a few ghost pensioners. The office has suddenly realized I might have been a ghost worker and they were not going to resume payment until I show my first letter of appointment issued some 51 years ago or produce the gazette announcing that appointment and my last promotion before retirement. Only God can tell how many pensioners like me including those whose entire life depends on that pension have been sent to their graves by our so-called transformational President and his incompetence, the failure of policies and the bureaucratic problems at the Federal Pensions Office in Abuja.
I went home to find out for myself what is really happening at home on the so-called transformation pledge of President Jonathan when he took office raising so much hope of people like me who believed the President was going to make a difference. I was curious to know if the reports I read on the world wide web and the news media are really true or grossly exaggerated. I went there as a a correspondent and regular columnist with the Sahara Reporters of New York and the Chat Afrik News Forum based in Washington, DC and Maryland.
I am talking of a President who swims in an ocean of contradictions. This President has been known to condone the promotion of his first lady to an absentee Permanent Secretary in Bayelsa State to boost her salaries and retirement benefits. His policies on hindsight, have denied millions of current pensioners who are not as lucky as his wife. Here is a President who has spent millions of Naira to bury his adopted mother-in-law and more millions on the wedding of his adopted daughter and several millions as ransom to free up his brother who was recently kidnapped. The President has woefully failed to get to the bottom of pension funds which are being looted under his watch. 234 students were kidnapped by Boko Haram and it has to take a public demonstration of parents and concerned citizens to rescue them.
The Government Jonathan has inherited as President successfully made arrangements to have Nigerian pensioners of British origin paid their pensions right there  in the UK till now following such pensioners’ retirement from Nigeria more than 54 years ago.. This  President has had no qualms denying Nigerian pensioners of their benefits and entitlements using the most stupid excuses. I could speak to these lapses as a Federal pensioner and a one time Head of the Pensions Unit and a one time Secretary for Staff Development under Madam Francesca Yetunde Emanuel as Permanent Secretary in the Federal Ministry of Establishments more than 40 years ago.
President Jonathan would tell you he is busy transforming Nigeria but what he would not admit is that Nigeria is worse off today than it has ever been under all of his predecessors in that office. Within a few minutes of my arrival at the Murtala Mohammed air port, I could see very little to nothing has changed in Nigeria. I started sweating profusely as soon as I got out of the aircraft. I got another rude shock as Immigration and Customs officials, Drug Enforcement agents and Aviation and Airline staff pounced on passengers who were therefore compelled to offer bribes and kickbacks in broad day light to just get past their barricades only to meet a crowd of touts and taxi drivers waiting outside the airport.
The airport which is a carbon copy of the Schipol Airport in Amsterdam looks more like a  motor park than an international airport. I took a few pictures on my camcorder not realizing that what I have seen was only a tip of the iceberg. The journey from the air port to my vacation stop at Oko Oba Agege which should normally have taken less than 20 minutes drive took close to 3 hours. I knew right there and then what I call a vacation was really going to be more than I bargained for. When President Jonathan and his loyalists talk of Nigeria, you will think they are talking about a different country when you compare the reality on the ground.
President Jonathan on assumption of office promised he was going to be a transformational President meaning he was going to make a special effect to make a difference. He surely has not delivered on that promise from all I was able to see. Around the time of my arrival in Nigeria, the news was everywhere that Nigeria’s GDP has suddenly risen above that of South Africa arguably the most powerful and the most economic vibrant country in the continent. I actually heard the Minister of Finance, Ngozi Okonjo Iwealla addressed a press conference in Abuja in which she gave the credit to  herself and by extension to her President who strongly believes he is going to ride back to power in 2015 based on such empty propaganda and glowing reports of the Nigerian economy. If you believe that crap, you will believe anything. What is so scary in all of this is the President’s state of mind when he is ever so ready to make very false declarations on a transformation agenda that has caused more pains than relief for the silent majority of Nigerians I spoke to or came across.
I would be the first to admit that I could not in 5 weeks see and evaluate and judge every index of progress that the President may have been arrogating to his policies, but there are a few observations that any visitor to Nigeria could not miss. I am basing my assessment on those indicators and the situation at the Federal Pensions Office in Abuja where I visited every day for one week from Monday to Friday from the 6th to the 11th of April.
There are lots of things wrong with Nigeria other the pensions office. The state of national security in Nigeria is nothing to write home about as the Boko Haram bomb blast in Abuja has now confirmed that the Boko Haram insurrection and mayhem are no longer localized to Bornu, Yobe, Adamawa or some isolated parts of the North.
It is fast spreading to the nation’s capital and beyond and our Commander-in-Chief and his so-called powerful military which is known to have performed wonders restoring peace and stability to Liberia, Sierra leone and few of the ECOWAS states is totally helpless in performing the same feat at home under Jonathan’s command. You hear of random kidnap in the South/South and the Southeast and ritual killings in the Southwest. All the President could do is put all the blames on Governors of the affected states while exonerating himself and his Administration so to speak. The dog is supposed to wag its tail but in Nigeria the tail is wagging the dog.