From Uche Usim, Abuja
Dr. Chioma Nnenna Ejikeme, the executive secretary and chief executive officer of the Pension Transitional Arrangement Directorate (PTAD), is a woman of many parts. She is a medical doctor, an administrator and entrepreneur.
She is a 1982 graduate of the University of Nigeria, Nsukka, with a Bachelor of Medicine, Bachelor of Surgery (MBBS).
She also holds a Masters in Public Administration (MPA) certificate from the University of Lagos.
Her 36-year career started as a house officer at the Lagos University Teaching Hospital, Idi-Araba, Lagos, in 1983.
She served the mandatory National Youth Service year with the Ministry of Defence (Nigerian Air Force Medical Services, Onikan, Lagos) and was retained after NYSC, where she rose from senior medical officer II to principal medical officer II (GL 15).
In 1997, Ejikeme took a leave of absence from the Ministry of Defence to take up appointment as Commissioner for Health in Anambra State. She was part of the team that handed over to the current political dispensation in 1999.
Until her appointment as executive secretary of the Pension Transitional Arrangement Directorate (PTAD) on August 20, 2019, Ejikeme ran a medium-scale manufacturing company, Karen-Happuck Nigeria Limited, that has been in operation for 15 years. As the founder and chief executive of the company, she has successfully built strong brands and been a mentor to up and coming entrepreneurs. For 15 years, Karen-Happuck has also been providing employment for Nigerians and has imparted skills to a lot of otherwise unskilled workers through training on the job.
In this interview, she spoke about innovative solutions designed by the agency to simplify penison management and ensure pensioners get their entitlements as and when due.
‘I AM ALIVE’ Confirmation Solution
If you recall, we launched the ‘I AM ALIVE’ Confirmation Solution in October 2021 as a pilot programme for 50,000 pensioners.
The programme is buoyed by the need for PTAD to continuously update its pensioner database as a means of ascertaining verified pensioners that are alive and should continue to receive their monthly pension.
We explained that the pilot programme was intended to test the applicability, ease of usage and user-adaptation of the solution, following which final adjustments would be made before deployment across the nation for all our pensioners.
It is a web-based solution to confirm the aliveness of our pensioners from the comfort of their homes or their neighbourhoods. That’s to say we don’t have to do a field verification to confirm the aliveness of our pensioners. And this particular event is a training session for pension union executives and pension desk officers that they work with the organisations where this pensioner has retired from. We appreciate that it’s not going to be easy. Because this is technology and a lot of our pensioners are not very literate. A lot of our pensioners reside in the rural areas where they might have challenges with the Internet or even having a smartphone with which they can get this confirmation done. So, these people we’re training now are people who we call focal persons. They’re pension union executives. For the next three days, we’re going to be training the pension union executives and the pension desk officers from the northern zone; that’s the North Central, the North East and the North West. And the idea is that these pension union executives, they know where these pensioners are in every state. Because we have representatives from every state of these three geopolitical zones that we have chosen the participants from. So, this is like a train-the-trainers kind of concept. It is also like the people who would help us carry out this kind of innovation. So, they will be able to go to the communities and help people who cannot confirm their aliveness. But they have to be armed with how the solution works. They have to know why we are even carrying out the solution because if they don’t understand it, they’re not going to buy into it. So, we are here to let them know why it’s important for us to deploy the solution, going forward. They also have to know how it is applied. They also have to know about troubleshooting issues. If in the course of deploying the solution, they have any problems, they already have an idea as to what to do and how to contact us. We solict the cooperation and buy-in of all our esteemed pensioners to enable the success of this innovation, which will be of immense benefit to the pensioners and the government.
Update on payment of pensioners
We are not owing pensioners monthly pension. The administration of President Muhammadu Buhari has shown a commitment and a political will that is next to none when it comes to the Nigerian pensioner. And in terms of monthly pension, we pay our monthly pension regularly. In April 2019, you know there was a consequential adjustment to pensions, which attracted at the time a 24-month arrears. As of last year, we had finished paying the 24 months’ arrears for all the operational departments, except the civil service pension department, that is the parastatal pension department, the police pension department, the customs and immigrations and prisons pension department. We completed the payment of the 24 months’ arrears last year. We only have the civil service pension department that we’re owing three months’ arrears, which, as at May, we have completed that payment. So, we’re not owing arrears. We’re not owing monthly pension. But let me say this: lately, you know, the monthly pension has been coming a little bit later than it used to come. I think this is like in the past eight months or six or so; we’ve had a situation whereby, by the time we receive the money, it’s maybe like about the 28th of the month or something like that. With the result that by the time we finalize, some people will be getting it by the end of the month as against what had happening happening in the past. In the past, most of time, before the 28th of the month, they’ve all received their monthly pension. There was a peculiar situation in the May pension. That particular situation was that there was a kind of a technological glitch in the payment with the result that we on our part had finalized the payment but it hadn’t dropped into the account of the pensioners. This is not something that happens all the time. It’s not the norm but this is technology; just like you, people, when you’re doing some of your interviews, you say, you know, I think we’re having a little bit of a problem, we can’t read so, so and so. It is the same thing. It doesn’t happen all the time. And we plead with our pensioners to understand the good intentions of this government to make sure that our pensioners regularly get their monthly pension as and when due. I understand how they feel, you know, whenever it’s coming late, they’re like, Hey, are you sure these people don’t want to take us back to where we’re coming from? So, I mean, it’s a natural thing, but we want them to understand that we are committed, we are committed to their welfare. And we are committed to making sure that the get their monthly pensions regularly as and when due.
Protesting pensioners
Is it the person who came up to Channels TV you’re talking about? What they were protesting for at that time was this three months’ arrears of the consequential adjustments. That was what the protest was for, because last year I had promised them that, before the end of the first quarter, we’ll be able to pay. That was our expectation as well. But, unfortunately, we did not get release of those funds at the time we thought, because it had to go through administrative processes. You know, you don’t just write off government money like that. When we had applied for the release of the funds, it had to go through the normal questions. Okay, you didn’t pay the balance of the three months; it is in your budget? Can we see the payroll of the pensioners who are going to pay, etc. By the time we finished that process, it was at the end of May and that was when the money was released to us. So, as far as they were concerned, I had reneged on my promise that they would get this money by the end of the first quarter of the year. Well, we have paid that; right, so what he (the man speaking on Channels Television) was talking about was that and we’ve paid. You see, there are complaints here and there and I must tell you, that PTAD has not resolved all the problems of pensioners. If we tell you that, we’ll be lying to you. We inherited problems that span 20 years, it’s not possible to solve all those problems in the nine years that PTAD has been in operation, especially considering the fact that, initially, we had to first of all even build a database, go around the whole country to find out who were these pensioners. Are they eligible pensioners? Going for the verification, we came back to validate this verification. Some of the activities we did last year, they were as a result of the validation of this exercise. We had pensioners who we had verified in 2015 and all of that; people who had arrears due them, which we found out post-verification, people who were not on payroll that were eligible pensioners and all that. Like the director, Civil Service Pension Department had said, out of 22,000 pensioners, we were able to pay N8.5 billion to these pensioners, and this had to do with arrears, people not on payroll, you know what I mean, next of kin of deceased pensioners and all of that. And it’s an ongoing project. We’re still validating that verification and it’s not an easy thing. The work at PTAD, trust me, it’s not a walk in the park. These young men and women you see here, they work from sunup to sundown. So, anybody who is trying to trivialize what they do, I don’t think God will be happy with the person in all sincerity.
PHCN pensioners
Our attention was drawn to a growing agitation by some group of PHCN pensioners known as Concerned PHCN Pensioners.
They are alleging PTAD has colluded with some “powerful individuals” to deprive them of the 33 per cent pension increment as approved by the Federal Government in 2010.
For the records, President Buhari is very committed to the welfare of pensioners and has consistently demonstrated this by approving the payment of outstanding pension arrears and regular payment of monthly pensions.
We had to state unequivocally, that the National Salaries, Incomes & Wages Commission, the Federal Government agency responsible for policy statement on emoluments including pensions had directed via a letter of approval Ref: SWC/S/04/S.542/26 of 26th September 2014, that the retired staff of the defunct Power Holding Company of Nigeria (PHCN) are not entitled to the pension increase of 33%. This is because PHCN pensioners were already on a special salary structure before the pension review for Pensioners who while in service were on one of the Harmonized Salary Structures of the Federal Public Service.
It should be noted that PHCN Pensioners took the Federal Government to the National Industrial Court (NIC) Abuja on this issue. After several engagements, President Buhari approved the implementation of 9.7% increase in the pensions of Ex-PHCN Retirees under the Defined Benefit Scheme (DBS). This approval was used as an out- of -court settlement in order to put an end to the suit at NIC, Abuja.
Following the approval of the President, via approval letter Ref:(SWC/S/04/S.557/III/546) of 7th May, 2021, the 9.7% increment was implemented with effect from 1st June, 2016 and the arrears paid in December 2021 to all eligible Ex-PHCN Retirees. It is therefore preposterous and uncalled for that this group wants to conveniently forget the amicable agreement reached by all parties and arm-twist the Federal Government to make claims on the 33% pension increment.
Other related issues as it concerns this group of pensioners have since been communicated to the Coordinator of the Concerned PHCN Pensioners, Mr. Dunmoye Muritala Oladimeji via a letter dated March 17, 2021 with Ref: (PTAD/PaPD/231/VolII/263).
PTAD will continue to give priority to the welfare of Defined Benefit Scheme Pensioners
About PTAD
The Pension Transitional Arrangement Directorate is an agency of the Federal Government established in August 2013 in compliance with the provisions of Section 30, sub-section (2) (a), of the Pension Reform Act (PRA) of 2004 (amended in 2014), which stipulated the establishment of an independent pension department for the public service of the federation.
PTAD is made up of the following departments (Section 43 (3) of the Pension Reform Act): The Civil Service Pension Department (CSPD); The Police Pension Department (PPD); The Customs, Immigration and Prisons Pension Department (CIPPD); The Treasury Funded Parastatals Pension Department (PaPD); and the Pensioner Support Services Department (PSSD).
In accordance with another Act of the National Assembly, the following pension departments were exempted from the consolidation and management of PTAD:
The Military Pension Department
The Security Agencies Pension Department.
Functions
We make budgetary estimates for existing pensioners and the officers exempted from the scheme established by the PRA 2004 under Section 8.
Prepare and submit the monthly payroll of pensioners to the OAGF for direct payment from the budgetary allocation maintained with the CBN to pensioners’ bank account. Issue payment instructions to OAGF.
Maintain a comprehensive database of pensioners under their jurisdiction.
Ascertain deficits in pension payments, if any, to existing pensioners.