We Paid N1.1bn To Pensioners Monthly, Oyetola’s APC Lambast Adeleke

Niyi Olasinde

The Osun State Chapter of the All Progressives Congress (APC), has demanded an unreserved apology from the State Governor Ademola Adeleke to the  pensioners in the state for disappointing them in his campaign promise to pay up the backlog of their contributory pensions within six months of his assumption of office.

The party said contrary to claims by the Adeleke government that it paid N500m monthly to contributory pensioners during former governor Gboyega Oyetola’s administration, it paid N1.1 billion to the pensioners monthly for the four years it spent in office.

According to the state chairman of the party, Sooko Tajudeen Lawal, in a statement issued by the party’s Director of Media and Information, Chief Kola Olabisi, in Osogbo, the state capital on Thursday, it will now dawn on the state  pensioners and the civil servants that the Adeleke-led government is fraught with deceit in its execution of its campaign promises.

It would be recalled that a statement issued by the state Head of Service, Mr. S.A. Aina stated that the Adeleke administration had approved the release of bond certificates worth N2.1bn for the payment of accrued right benefits of another batch of retirees under the Contributory Pension Scheme at the state and local government levels today.

The statement went further to state that:  “The beneficiaries of this kind gesture of the governor are retired staff of local government areas, local council development areas, area councils, ministries, departments and agencies (MDAs), secondary schools, tertiary institutions and parastatals”.

The Osun State Chairman of the APC hinted that the information about the  mere approval for the payment of the N2.1bn CPS bond for the retirees showed that the Adeleke-led administration is lacking in the sincerity of purpose as the so-called pension bond would be the second time of such in about nine months in the life of the PDP administration in the state.

Lawal queried that if Adeleke does not have anything to hide, he should separate the figures his government is allocating to the primary school teachers, to the civil servants, retired employees in the parastatals, secondary school teachers who retired on CPS.

The state APC Chairman, who stated that the primary schools and local government workers are to be catered for by the local government, disclosed that Adeleke is not announcing the amount allocated to each of the segments of the retired workforce because the administration has something to hide.

Lawal hinted that the Adeleke administration is ‘wicked’ and non-empathetic to the contributory pensioners and that its actions and inactions  is a typical example of one in a motion without movement.

In the state APC Chairman’s words: “If we calculate N500m for the state alone in nine months for the Contributory Pension Scheme, it amounts to N4.5bn for the state alone. If we calculate same for the local governments, it is N4.5bn, making the total that the Adeleke administration is due for, at the minimum, to be N9bn.

“If Adeleke pays N500m continuously in 48 months of his tenure, he can only pay N24bn at the end of his tenure which is a far cry to the outstanding liabilities at the state and the local government levels.

“For nine months now, Adeleke has been able to pay less than N4bn plus the local government liabilities of the pension.  If we divide 48 months  by four times, he would only be able to pay N12bn in four years of his tenure.

Olabisi however challenged the ruling PDP and its government to come out to challenge his claims.

As at the time of filing this report, responses of Osun Sate Government functionaries could not be ascertained, as phone calls to the Governor’s Spokesperson, Mallam Olawale Rasheed and the Stage Commissioner for Information and Public Enlightenment were not picked; neither were  chats made to them via WhatsApp responded to.