By Ibrahim Habu Suleiman
Indeed, the welfare of the people has always been a recurring theme in political campaigns in our society and indeed in most countries across the world. However, the understanding of what welfare stands for in most developing countries defers from what is obtainable in advanced democracies. Needless to say most advanced democracies already have their subsisting systems of welfare spanning many decades, whereas in nascent democracies like ours this is only beginning to take some shape.
Nevertheless, this does not stop politicians from pledging to provide some form of welfare or the other to the population when elected into office as part of their manifestoes. While this is not an unwelcomed development, it must be noted that the reality on the ground in a Nasarawa State for example requires more of the provision of justice and fairness alongside securing the life and property of the citizenry – not only as the main priority but also a prerequisite for any subsequent progressive development to flourish. It would therefore be ridiculous to talk of social welfare where certain categories of the people are denied their fundamental rights to life.
Today, the problems of massive youth unemployment persist. In the same vein civil servants in the state are groaning over non-payment of several of their motivational entitlements that include leave grants, promotions, and yearly increments as well as arrears of salaries owed certain categories of staff in the state. Above all retirees/pensioners, who have served the state for over three decades or have reached mandatory sixty years of age before retirement are not given their gratuities and their pension has been slashed to 50% since September, 2016 to date. All this is going on at a time when negotiations are ongoing to provide a New National Minimum Wage for workers in the country as the existing minimum wage has turned workers into paupers, thereby encouraging bribery and corruption, the scourge which the APC administration has made one of its key campaign points.
Perhaps this explains why aspirants so far in the state have not been quite forthcoming in promising to provide welfare per se to the people. One governorship aspirant in the state who has come out to declare his intention to ensure that workers and retirees are given all their benefits in full is the newly turbaned Sarkin Yakin Keffi, Honourable Ahmed Aliyu Wadada. An APC aspirant, Wadada stated at a press conference in Lafia, Saturday, August 18, 2018 that a Wadada-led government come 2019 would make sure that nothing stands in the way of payments of salaries of workers and pension to retirees “even if the state is drier than dry.” To this end he enumerated measures his administration would embark upon to source for funds to avoid total dependence on federation allocation, pledging to resuscitate the comatose Nasarawa State Investment Company in order to attract investment not only from within but also from outside the country; create agricultural clusters in each of the three senatorial districts in the state and to encourage investment in the mining sub-sector among other measures.
Hitherto, most aspirants particularly those on the platform of the APC have not been very categorical on the issue of workers’ and pensioners’ welfare and tended to toe the line of the present administration. As expected governorship aspirants from the opposition parties have been more forthcoming in denouncing the plight of workers and retirees, reassuring them of their intentions to ameliorate their unending tribulations.
Perhaps the irony of the President Buhari-led administration’s change mantra is that many states have been playing politics with the fate of civil servants and retirees. The onset of the country’s worst recession in 2015 was seen as the harbinger of the whole crisis. Over two-thirds of the states in the country could not readily pay workers’ salaries, not to mention other entitlements and benefits. The efforts of the federal government in providing billions of naira bailout and the timely payments of Paris Club also in billions of naira failed to eliminate the problem of huge backlogs of arrears of salaries and pension. All these tended to impact negatively on workers’ productivity and made the federal government’s war against corruption more herculean than ever. Even in Nasarawa State where the workforce is significantly lesser than in neighbouring states like Plateau, pension of retirees in state and local government councils are still being paid in percentage. In fact, most civil servants and pensioners in Nasarawa State who had expected that the Almakura administration would change for the better towards ensuring their improved welfare through regular payment of their salaries, pension and accrued benefits have been disappointed. While workers have the liberty to embark on strike to claim their rights, pensioners have no such privileges. This has ultimately led to a division in the rank and file of the majority of pensioners across the state. Already, a cross section of pensioners has taken the state government to court to demand for prompt and full payment of their monthly pension and gratuities. This is notwithstanding the fact that the Nigeria Labour Congress, NLC and its subsidiary the National Union of Pensioners, NUP still subsist in the state as the so-called representatives of workers and pensioners respectively.
It would be recalled that a governorship candidate of the PDP during the 2015 general election. Alhaji Yusuf Muhammad Agabi from Nasarawa South had then stated that all infrastructural and developmental projects of government could and should be carried out alongside ensuring the welfare of people, with particular reference to civil servants and pensioners. His counterpart from APGA, former Information Minister and one-time deputy governor, Mr. Labaran Maku had lampooned the state government over its treatment of the state civil servants and retirees especially following the distribution of bailout funds and the Paris Club refund to all states in the federation. In fact, the APGA sole governorship candidate has remained firm in his conviction that workers and retirees deserve a better deal.
At any rate the National Vice Chairman, North-Central Zone of the APC, Alhaji Ahmed Suleiman Wambai has however argued that the Tanko Almakura-led administration in the state has done its best to meet up with the challenges of the payment of salaries and pension at both the state and LGC levels compared to what obtains in other states, particularly citing Kogi and Benue states. While heaping blame on the recession as the genesis of the crisis, he reiterated that at the beginning all percentage payments particularly at LGC level, was based on an agreement with the leadership of the NLC (or NULGE) that full payments of salaries and pension (as well as arrears) would resume as soon as the economy improves.
The question is: when will the economy improve? The recession was officially declared over across the country since mid 2017, but retirees have continued to be paid 50% of their pension. There is still no sign of implementation of promotion and yearly increment which were long approved in spite of the fact that these promotions date back seven to eight years! In the same vein the teaming population of jobless people, particularly youths has continued to grow across the state, particularly in the rural areas. So who bails the cat? With 2019 around the corner it may be a matter of time before more concrete developments emerge.