No fewer than 51,705 illegal pensioners have been earmaked for deleting from the payroll with effect from April 1, The Nation has learnt.

The affected, according to the Pension Transitional Arrangement Directorate (PTAD), failed to use the “I Am Alive” confirmation platform, indicating that there were fake.

Findings show that of the fake pensioners, a whopping 43,010 were Civil Service.

While a total of 6,049 fake pensioners were detected among Police pensioners, 2646 came from the Customs, Immigration and Prison.

The Directorate categorised pensioners in the old scheme under Parastatals Pension Department (PaPD), Police Pension Department (PPD), Civil Service Pension Department (CSPD) and Customs Immigration and Prisons Pension Department (CIPPD).

Prior to plans by PTAD to remove the fake pensioners from payroll, the Directorate had said over 30,000 qualified pensioners were not on payroll while more than 50,000 ghost pensioners were on it.

PTAD said it inherited 268,897 pensioners.

As at December 2022, the figure came down to 226,693 after a lot of cleansing, elimination of ghost pensioners and addition of eligible pensioners who were not on the payroll with a total of N754 billion in monthly pensions paid from January 2015 to December 2022.

Overall, the directorate said it had saved billions of naira from the exercise.

In a notice, the Directorate called on genuine pensioners who may still be among those listed to immediately verify their aliveness and genuineness on the “I Am Alive” confirmation platform.

The notice read: “PTAD wishes to inform pensioners under the DBS who are yet to confirm their aliveness using the “I Am Alive” confirmation to immediately do so. Pensioners are required to reconfirm aliveness every six months to continue to receive their monthly pension directly into their bank account.

“To make sure pensioners effectively participate in this exercise, the Executive Secretary, Dr Chioma Ejikeme, had initially approved a 1-month extension for all pensioners. However, by this announcement, any pensioner who does not confirm their aliveness before the end of March 2024 will be dropped from the April 2024 pension payroll. Dropped pensioners will automatically be restored to the payroll once they confirm aliveness.

“PTAD has forwarded the names of yet to confirm pensioners to the pension unions, associations, and institutions while SMS notifications have been sent to the affected pensioners. We urge pensioners to visit our website, www.ptad.gov.ng for the list of pensioners yet to confirm aliveness. If your name is on the list, click on this link https://iamalive.ptad.gov.ng/ to complete your “I Am Alive” confirmation.’’

Meanwhile, stakeholders have been reacting to the proposal by the Federal Government to scrap PTAD, among other agencies and parastatals listed by the Federal Executive Council (FEC), after the council adopted the Oronsoye’s report last week.

PTAD was listed to be scrap and all activities returned to the Ministry of Finance.

A stakeholder in the industry, who spoke on condition of anonymity, believes some fraudulent personnel in the civil service were behind the enlistment of PTAD.

“When I saw PTAD in the list of agencies to be scrapped, some pensioners and I were not surprised because we know that those who survive on looting pension funds in the ministry and civil service have been frustrated and shut down by PTAD.

“But, we appealing to President Bola Tinubu not to let these bad people win and send us back to the days of sorrow. Many of those charged with the responsibility of paying pensions then fed fat with pension funds and starved the pensioners. We don’t want a repeat”, he said.

The National President, Nigerian Union of Pensioners (NUP), Comrade Godwin Abumisi, said: “If there is anything worse than hell, that was what Defined Benefit Scheme pensioners went through in the hands of the ministry before PTAD was established and mandated to handle our issues. We slept at the Federal Secretariat and under bridges in Abuja, died while queuing for long verification lines and dehumanised.

“But since PTAD came, you have not heard the voice of pensioners complaining about maltreatment in the management of pension. Before PTAD, pensioners experienced the worst treatment ever. We were dehumanised and being kicked around anyhow.

“I remember how I travelled several times from Enugu in night buses to come to Abuja for what the then Office of the Head of Service of the Federation called verification.

“Like other pensioners of our category, I travelled countless times by night buses to Abuja to settle pension issues. Then, if you had issues on anything at all, you had to come to Abuja and you had to take night buses. Many of us lost our lives while coming to Abuja to settle pension issues.

We usually arrive very early, around 4am or 5am and we would sleep on the corridors of the Federal Secretariat. When they decided that the pensioners were messing up the place, they ejected us and we began to sleep under the bridges.That was our experience before PTAD.”

Citing Abdulrasheed Maina, Comrade Abumisi said it was the handling of pensions in the ministry that created the likes of Maina, who is in prison as a result of embezzlement of pension funds.

“This is what we fear on hearing that we will be sent back to the ministry. As a matter of fact, no pensioner wants to go back to the ministry because pension problem is not a small problem. It needs a separate entity like PTAD to deal with it. I want to say that we are impressed and we are very happy with the performance and functions of PTAD in dealing with pension issues. We don’t want to go back to Egypt.

“We are not saying that merging of ministries and some parastatals by the government to reduce cost is not good. But we are saying that on area where they ought not to merge one of those agencies is PTAD, due to the essential nature of its duties. That is why we are crying.

“I have a letter here from the Nigerian Union of Pensioners South-west calling on us the national headquarters to organise a protest against the scrapping of PTAD. But, instead of street protests, we will engage President Tinubu’s government peacefully. And that is why we are saying please give us PTAD back. If there is anything in PTAD that the government does not want, it should be removed, but please leave PTAD alone to cater to pensioners. With the amount of work PTAD has done so far, the pensioners are happy, though it still has not been possible to completely take care of all the issues of pensioners. You can imagine what will happen when government sends us back to the ministry or merges us with another agency that has other responsibilities other than pension issues. So, we say again, we don’t want to go back to the ministry”, he added. (The nation)

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