Retired Military Personnel Suspend Protest As Nigerian Government Assures Of Pension Adjustment

 

According to him, the Director of Joint Services had informed the retirees that the relevant authorities had reached out to the Military Pensions Board and were awaiting feedback on the matter.

Retired military personnel have suspended their protest over the exclusion of pensioners from the consequential adjustment arising from the implementation of the new minimum wage, following assurances from the Nigerian government that they would be captured in the process.

The retirees on Wednesday staged a peaceful protest at the Ministry of Defence Abuja to demand the inclusion of pensioners in the consequential adjustment and said they were particularly concerned that the newly approved minimum wage for serving military personnel could create disparities between the pensions of recently retired officers and those who retired earlier.

The leader of the team who is also a retired Special Forces officer, Lieutenant Colonel Azubuike Innocent who spoke to SaharaReporters after a meeting with the Permanent Secretary and other government officials said the retirees were not primarily protesting the salary increase announced last November, which they said had not been implemented, but were focused on ensuring that pensioners were included in the consequential adjustment.

Azubuike said the Permanent Secretary had assured them that their concerns were being addressed and that the Military Pensions Board had been contacted to work out modalities for their inclusion.

According to him, the Director of Joint Services had informed the retirees that the relevant authorities had reached out to the Military Pensions Board and were awaiting feedback on the matter.

He said the assurance had convinced the retirees to suspend the protest, stressing that they would, however, reconvene if serving personnel began receiving the new remuneration without a corresponding adjustment for pensioners.

“We are not happy to be on the street, but when we are ignored, we have no other way of expressing our pain. They have assured us that we are being captured in the implementation,” Azubuike said.

He added that the retirees had decided to give the government the benefit of the doubt, noting that they would monitor the implementation to ensure that the promise was fulfilled.

The retired officer explained that the issue was particularly important because failure to implement the consequential adjustment could result in pension disparities among retired personnel of the same rank and with similar years of service.

He recalled that before 2017, differences in pension payments had resulted in officers of the same rank receiving significantly different monthly pensions simply because they retired at different times.

“We have solved this problem in the past and we would not want it to repeat itself,” he said.

He also raised other outstanding issues, including the implementation of palliatives announced in 2023, the use of a new pension template, cases of short payment of pensions and gratuities, and concerns over the welfare of medically discharged personnel.

Azubuike however, said those matters were not the immediate reason for the protest, noting that several of the complaints had already been documented and forwarded to the appropriate authorities.

He said the retirees had deliberately concentrated on the consequential adjustment because it was the most urgent issue affecting pension parity.

Following the assurances from the government, the retirees agreed to suspend the protest, with a resolution to reconvene if they were excluded from the implementation.

The protesters said they would wait for the implementation to commence and assess whether pensioners had been included before deciding on their next course of action.

SOURCE: SAHARA REPORTERS