The Nigeria Union of Pensioners (NUP) has decried the flouting of section 173(3) and section 210(3) of the 1999 constitution by government at all levels which stipulate that pension shall be reviewed every five years or whenever workers’ salaries are reviewed.

According to ceoafrica, the National President of NUP, Dr. Abel Afolayan, stated this during the 15th edition of Pensioners Day celebration held in Abuja.

Afolayan said those who are expected to uphold this constitutional provision are the ones flouting it, adding that there are thousands of genuine pensioners who have not been able to access their monthly pension since the introduction of e-payment, since 2009 to date.

“There are also numerous pensioners whose names have been deliberately deleted from the payroll on the false premise and untenable ground that they are ghost pensioners. The names of most of such pensioners are yet to be re-listed and re-stored on the payroll”.

He also said that there were many pensioners who were bio-metrically verified, captured and enrolled between June and July 2010 issued dud cheque which they could not cash till today.

He also decried the stoppage of the 5 per cent federal government counterpart funding enacted in 1987 but stopped arbitrarily in 2010 without any just cause. 

This, according to him, has compounded the problem of the payment of the entitlements of local government pensioners and primary school retirees to such an extent that many of these pensioners have not been paid any pension in the last two to three years.