PENSION LAW: ABIA STATE FOLLOWS GOV. UZODIMMA’s EXAMPLE

ABIA state Governor, Alex Oti, last week assented to the State’s Governors and Deputy Governors’ Pension Repeal Law of 2024 passed by the Assembly.The Executive Bill was expeditiously passed to ensure enough savings urgently needed to off-set the backlog of pension and gratuities owed to ABIA state ‘s retired workers since 2014.
Already, former President Olusegun Obasanjo has hailed Oti for such a right step of good governance in leadership as against sticking to the old order of “daylight robbery ‘ and” executive rascality ” that deplete states’ financial resources.
Nonetheless, it is good to put on record that Oti , at last ,has graciously emulated the good example of Governor Hope Uzodimma, who in 2020, repealed the obnoxious 2007 Pension Law of Imo state.The executive bill entitled, “A bill for a law to repeal the Imo state Governors and Speakers’ Pension and Privileges Pension Law No 5 of 2007( as amended) was subjected to robust debate and passed into law by the State’s Assembly before the Governor assented to it.
By the development,all the ex-Governors,their Deputies, former Speakers and ex- Deputies were stripped of their pension and other exit benefits.Analysts believe that the move is a historical sacrifice meant to save Imo people from the years of the locusts.But it is curious that while some states took a cue from Imo and did the needful, a nearby Abia state had to wait for more than four years to toe the line of justice and good governance.Perhaps, that is why Abia state embraced a new party for meaningful change.
Many states of the Federation till date, swim in debt ocean because annually, they budget billions of Naira essentially to pay pensions and gratuities to such ex- top public office holders as Governors etc.This ugly trend which has no partisan lining,is not withstanding the huge sums of money usually expended on their security and upkeep after they had left their plum jobs.
As long as these politicians remain alive after leaving office, they still live above their legitimate incomes as the government replaces their vehicles every other two to three years, depending on the states.
No wonder, many states are always in dire financial straits despite their huge allocated shares from the monthly federation account as well as the Internally Generated Revenues( IGRs). Reports indicate that often times, the pension abnormality as a matter of political expediency , is shamelessly legitimised by State Houses of Assembly in concert with the Executive Governors.This explains, in the main, the existence of hurriedly put legislations designed to protect the pensions of these insatiable politicians who endlessly milk their states dry, during and after leaving offices.
No doubt, the current effort by some state governments to repeal pensions laws should be sustained because they are anti- workers and oppressive.lt definitely takes a strong political will to do this and history will surely be kind to that leader who is ready to leave an enduring legacy.And this is an auspicious time to control the excesses of public fund wasters that abound in all the nooks and cranny of the country.