Nasarawa govt to pay N1bn to over 1000 retirees owed gratuity since 1999

To mitigate the economic hardship facing Nigerians, the Nasarawa State government has approved the sum of N1 billion for payment as a gratuity to over 1,000 retired civil servants owed since 1999 in the state.

Governor Abdullahi Sule revealed this during an unscheduled assessment visit to the State Bureau for Pension Administration’s venue of the ongoing screening exercise of over 700 Local Government and 300 retired state government pensioners.

Sule said that the one billion naira would clear the backlog of gratuity owed to both the State and Local Government retirees from 1999 to 2010.

Governor revealed that his government inherited a backlog of gratuity from the creation of the State in 1996 till date.

Governor told newsmen that he was at the screening venue to monitor the exercise, which he said was meant to mitigate the hardship of the retirees by offsetting their full entitlements to enable them to start something.

He stated, “The Present administration under my watch has been working relentlessly to ensure that both the Local and State pensioners are paid one hundred per cent of the pension, with the pensioners already receiving their February pension.”

Alhaji Suleiman Nagogo, the Director General of the state pension Bureau, while speaking to journalists, cleared the air on why retirees were being paid only N100,000 monthly in the past as gratuity.

“Please recall that payment of this gratuity is being done every quarter, which means that we gather the amount we have to receive in three months and announce to the people to come and collect their gratuity.

“We don’t sit as a Bureau for Pension Administration and say we are paying one hundred thousand naira. There is a committee called the Gratuity Disbursement Committee, which is headed by the Deputy Governor of the State. They sit and look at the entire amount that has accrued for payment of gratuity and looked at the recommendations that came from the BPA and how many people they can take at that quarter.”

However, the DG dismissed claims that files belonging to some retirees were missing, adding that the same process of offsetting the retirees’ gratuity was still being followed in disbursing the funds.

He added, “Whoever said his file is missing, I think he is only claiming so. I have never received complaints of anybody’s file not being traced in this office.”