Pensions: Stop chasing shadows – Atiku fires back at Tinubu

In a statement on Friday, Atiku’s Media Office described as untenable frivolity the disguised brickbat by the President to visiting North-East political stakeholders led by Governor Babagana Zulum, where he blamed pension problems in the country on the Obasanjo/Atiku government that left office almost two decades before his.

“Both President Tinubu and his inept APC administration should seek more knowledge about good governance and developmental communication. Government is a continuum. The present helmsmen cannot continue to waste valuable national time and resources on ghosting and blaming past administrations.  A successor must inherit assets and liabilities,” Atiku insisted.

According to Atiku’s camp, when President Olusegun Obasanjo/Atiku Abubakar took office in 1999, they inherited a broken, unfunded, and non-contributory Defined Benefits Scheme, DBS, that had accumulated an unsustainable pension liability deficit estimated at over N2 trillion (about 25% of the country’s GDP at the time).

It noted that they did not embark on calling out their predecessors but rolled their sleeves to turn around the situation.

“But by the time Obasanjo/Atiku left office in 2007, their administration had completely revolutionized the sector by enacting the Pension Reform Act of 2004, leaving behind a fully funded, privately managed Contributory Pension Scheme (CPS) regulated by the newly established National Pension Commission (PenCom),” it added

The Atiku camp further stated that the pension administration preceding the Obasanjo/Atiku era was highly fragmented across various government agencies, plagued by ghost pensioners, data inaccuracies, and severe bureaucratic delays.

The former Vice President’s camp equally recalled that many private sector employees completely lacked pension coverage, and the few existing schemes were mismanaged or entirely unfunded.

According to the statement, when the Obasanjo/Atiku administration left office in 2007, it was to their credit and benefit of pensioners that they left behind the Pension Reform Act (PRA) 2004, a landmark law modeled after international best practices which completely overhauled the country’s retirement architecture.