BY ANTHONY OSANEKWU
Before 1966, the highest-paid public servants in Nigeria were the federal permanent secretaries (PS). Their salaries even top those of Chief Executive Officers (CEOs) in the private sector. Today, some CEOs in the private sector earn up to N500 million monthly, while a permanent secretary at the state level earns less than N1 million monthly. In contrast, politicians who are said to earn more than N30 million monthly are reportedly craving for even more.
At the creation of Delta State in 1991, sole administrators with the aid of civil servants ran the affairs of the state without politicians. Then there were no accommodations in Asaba. The few accommodations were being taken up as offices, and the civil servants were sleeping with cartons and mats in the offices. Some staff members who the offices could not contain slept under trees. Then it was a weekend shuttle to and from Benin. Some officers died in the process.
Today, Delta State is quite positioned, and politicians are in place, placing the civil servants in the ‘boys’ quarters’ and behaving as if they (politicians) were there from the beginning, and can do without the civil servants.
Permanent secretaries in the state civil service pride themselves on earning their salaries for life after retirement. What is that compared to what the CEOs in the private sector get in a month? Most appalling is the bitter truth that the highest-paid civil servant in the state civil service (SGL 17) earns less than N75,000 as a monthly pension on retirement. Is that not a death sentence for an officer who was on a monthly salary of about N300,000? When he retires, he does so into poverty, shame and ridicule in society where he once held sway. Then, nobody looks or listens to him because he is now the wretched of the earth.
If the highest-paid civil servant can be at this piteous spectacle, you can imagine what those at the lower cadres earn at retirement as a monthly pension. Some get less than N25,000 monthly as a pension. Little wonder the Delta State Chairman of the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC), Goodluck Ofoburuku, called for the scraping of the present pension scheme and for it to be replaced with the old pay-as-you-go system.
The pay-as-you-go pension system, known as the Defined Benefit Scheme, allows an officer to retire with 300 per cent of his exit salary as gratuity and 80 per cent of his exit salary as a monthly pension. That was jettisoned, and the Contributory Pension Scheme (CPS) was adopted in 2018.
By this system, employers and employees contribute towards the retiree’s pension benefits. The irony of the current CPS is that when workers were not contributing towards their pension, they were earning more than they do now that they are contributing towards their pension benefits. We cannot continue to pretend that it is well when it is not well, particularly as workers in the state civil service retire and go home to die quietly.
It is not only the pension that is poor, but also the salaries. It is a poor salary that gives birth to a poor pension. Instead of tackling the situation headlong, the government is choosing to tackle it the way of the ostrich by picking on some profession in the civil service to give them a fine starting point.
For example, lawyers, doctors and accountants are employed on SGL10. I learnt that doctors are fighting to be started on SGL12. If this is approved, engineers and lawyers will also follow. For a service, you are expected to spend 35 years, and you start from SGL12. Within the next 15 years, you will get to your zenith (SGL 17). It therefore means that you will get stuck on SGL17 in the next 20 years, and you will get frustrated and disillusioned there.
Once this sets in, declining productivity sets in, which is a death knell for the service; the system being adopted is softly killing the Civil Service. While politicians do what they are doing now, paying salaries for life to themselves on leaving office after eight years of ruling the people, the civil servants who worked for 35 years go with a pittance for only 10 years after retirement and thereafter are abandoned to die quietly. Man’s inhumanity to man.
The Wages, Salaries and Income Commission is supposed to regulate the salaries of workers, while the Pension Commission (PENCOM) is supposed to regulate and oversee the regulations of retirees’ pension benefits. Unfortunately, both of them are just there to give their political masters a soft landing in places where they give the workers a hard landing. This is killing the service. If this is allowed to continue, it will get to a point where mainly crooks and criminals will be the only ones serving the service, and political tugs will rule from outside the service. This will be akin to what is happening in most states of South America, Cuba and Haiti. It is already creeping in from the Northern fringes of the country, with Boko Haram and bandits running over many local government areas and our security forces watching helplessly.
The pension and gratuity in the Civil Service are one of the tools kept by our colonial masters to keep the Civil Service going. Now that the focus is only on governors, deputy governors, Heads of Service, permanent secretaries and professors retiring with their salaries for life.
Leaving the most senior Civil Servant (SGL17) to earn a paltry sum of N75,000 as a monthly pension is not only killing the officer, but also killing the Civil Service, because no one who learns of this will want to take the Civil Service as a lifelong career. Even if one accepts the job, he or she will not put in his or her best on the job. If at all they accept the job, they will join their political masters on their looting sprees.
The current pension scheme is supposed to be auto-run without any interference. But today, the CPS is run with a cap in hand, begging the government to release money to pay retirees’ stipends. To release money for this is at the whims and caprices of the governor, who can decide not to release any money, or he may be benevolent enough to release money to pay backlogs of retirees’ benefits.
Someone once wrote about teachers. He said they once stood tall with chalks in hand, now they bend low with bowls begging to feed. Now that we have turned a noble profession into a national shame, how do we expect them to teach on an empty stomach (poor salary)? That is why some teachers double as okada riders today. By neglecting them, we have built a generation that laughs at books and says that education is a scam. By underpaying them (civil servants), they are putting them in situations of disrespect, and we now have youths who cannot spell the word “respect”. By humiliating the civil servant with poor pay and pension, we are indirectly killing our future. What are our labour unions doing about the plight of workers? Little or nothing. In the joint speech issued by the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) and the Trade Union Congress (TUC) during the last May Day Celebration with the theme ‘’Reclaiming The Civic Space In The Midst Of Economic Hardship’’, nothing was said about the perils of retirees.
What a sad 65th Independence anniversary for those who worked assiduously for 35 years for the survival of the nation and are now left to die in cold, on an empty stomach, and without shelter over their heads.
This is how not to kill the service. The government is called upon to ‘take a second look at the current CPS and restore the dignity of the Civil Service’ by paying a living wage and pension, not only for the survival of the civil servant but also for the survival of the nation.
Osanekwu is the current chairman of the Association of Contributory Retirees (ACR), Delta State.
