Pay Our Wages Before 2015 Elections, Pensioners Tell FG, Governors

The Nigeria Union of Pensioners (NUP) yesterday urged the federal government as well as state government to ensure that all arrears owed pensioners are paid before the 2015 election.

Speaking in Abuja, NUP president Comrade Abel Afolayan, said that governors who fail to pay the arrears of pensioners will lose the support of its members in the general elections.

Between now and election, we want our outstanding arrears to be paid so that our people will not die. We are also saying that those governors that want pensioners to die, we will not support them, he said.

He pleaded with the ministry of finance and the budget office to release funds to the Pension Transition Arrangement Department (PTAD) to enable them pay the pensioners.

The union also backed the PTAD, describing it as a child of necessity.

Afolayan reiterated the unions determination to work with the new pension authority and pledged its unalloyed support to it in a bid to ameliorate the living condition of pensioners.

He however urged the management of PTAD to step up efforts in the payment of some outstanding arrears of pensions of various categories and the payment of new enrollees for payment as well as payment of pension and death gratuities to the deserving pensioners in order to convince the apprehensive pensioners of its action plan as well as prove its critics and skeptics wrong of its programmmes and activities.

Afolayan also warned unauthorised individuals making statement on behalf of the union to desist from doing so.

That, for the umpteenth time, we wish to reiterate that the likes of E. A. Omoyemi, David Adodo and Pa Chukwurah who are parading themselves as the self-acclaimed leaders of the union are doing so illegally and unconstitutionally as they are neither the voice of the pensioners nor authorized to speak on behalf of the union on issues that border on the welfare and well-being of the civil service pensioners at all levels, he said.

He also lambasted the group for calling on the federal government to bring back the former chairman of the disbanded Pension Reform Task Team (PRTT), Abdulrasheed maina, to either take over pension payment or to be co-opted to work with PTAD.

We will resist that with the last drop of our blood, he said.