Nigerian workers are endangered species. While in service their take home pay cannot take them home. On retirement they simply slip into penury. Their entitlements come in staccato tranches. They have to live as long as Methuselah to collect their gratuity.
In some states, retirees wait for seven years to collect their gratuities. Strangely, Lagos state, the riches in the federation, has tyrannically cancelled gratuity for civil servants and restricts it to politicians like the governor, commissioners and members of the state House of Assembly who get hundreds of millions for working just for four years. Civil servants toil for 35 years and go home without gratuity.
Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) has a clear picture of the despicable plight of Nigerian workers. That clearly informs the labour unions’ demands.
The loathsome condition under which Nigerian workers toil for 35 years obviously informed the demand by the NLC during the International Workers’ Day celebrations. The NLC called on the federal government to raise retirement age from 60 to 65 years.
The reason is obvious. If while in service their take-home pay could not take them home, retirement into penury can be postponed by five years if it is pushed to 65 years. In a country where university professors retire at 70, few would see anything wrong with pushing general retirement age to 65.
Ironically, the NLC demand gives the picture of a labour union catastrophically obsessed with the deplorable plight of those in service. NLC has completely lost touch with the miserable lives of the 33.3 per cent of Nigeria’s workforce who are completely unemployed and without any means of livelihood.
Nigeria’s 33.3 per cent unemployment rate was recorded more than three years ago. Covid-19 and the gross mismanagement of naira redesign might have pushed it to 40 per cent by now. No one cares about what happens to those in that despicable condition.
The extension of retirement age demanded by the NLC would keep those in service for five more years and rob those in the unemployment camp of any chance of starting a career in the over-bloated civil service.
The problem is that Nigeria has a very youthful population imposed on it by high birth rate and a calamitously low life expectancy. Very few Nigerians live above 65.
That hard fact about Nigeria’s tragically low life expectancy stared me menacingly in the face on March 31, 2023. I was in the crowd of mourners taking the body of the amiable Mrs. Olowofela Ibironke Bakare to her long lasting home at Ikoyi Cemetery.
That ironically was my first time of entering that cemetery in the 39 years I have spent in Lagos. I took a close look at hundreds of tomb stones, mostly those of the elite. Some had died as far back as the 1920s.
To my greatest surprise, the oldest person buried in the cemetery was 75 years old. No one was up to 80. Majority died in their 60s. Our beloved Fela died at 62. As we were burying our own Fela, another crowd of mourners arrived with the body of a civil engineer. That one died at a scant 56. The tomb stones in Ikoyi Cemetery paint a graphic picture of a nation of people who die prematurely.
That raises a ponderous question about the NLC demand for a hike in retirement age. What comes to mind is that the NLC wants Nigerian workers to die in service because there is no future in retirement.
That obviously is the bitter truth. Fela Bakare retired in 2021 as a director (grade level 17) in Lagos state Local Government Service Commission. She died on March 15, 2023, without collecting even a month pension.
If there was a future for pensioners in Nigeria, Fela Bakare would have collected pension for two years before she died. NLC may therefore be tragically prophetic in thinking that Nigerian workers should die in office since there is no future outside that.
Ironically, Nigerian employers have so enslaved workers that if government raises pension age to 70, millions would roll out the drums to celebrate it.
This can only happen in Nigeria. France has been in turmoil since January 2023. For four months now there is no day French workers would not hit the streets in massive protest against a bill sent to parliament by President Emmanuel Macron.
The French president wants to raise retirement age from 62 to 64. French workers abhor the planned increase in retirement age because they need to retire early enough to enjoy their lives after long years of service.
They want early retirement because their entitlements are generous and punctual. Unlike the Nigerian worker who retires into penury, French workers retire into abundant pleasure. They do not want anyone to keep them a day longer in service.
Macron’s problem is that he is battling an aging population where pensioners would soon out-number those in active service. That is the consequence of a catastrophically low birth rate and a life expectancy that stretches into the 70s.
Nigeria battles an unacceptably high birth rate with fertility rate of 5.2 children per woman. The rate in France is 1.8. That accounts for Nigeria’s youthful population where poor healthcare facilities ensure that most of the people die before 65.
With an atrociously high unemployment rate, NLC should drop its retirement age extension demand and compel the states and federal government to ensure that retirees enter the pension pay roll the day they retire from service.
Politicians get their severance pay as they are leaving office. Civil servants deserve equal treatment. Besides, their pension should be paid regularly.
NLC should compel Lagos state government to restore gratuity to its workers.
Governors, commissioners and members of the state House of Assembly all collect their severance pay (gratuity) in seven or eight digits for working just for four years. It is heinous, ruthless and inhuman to rob civil servants of such perk after 35 years of meritorious service.
