Bauchi LG Board Owns Pensioners Over N22.3b
By Khalid Idris Doya
The Local Government Pensions Board in Bauchi state has said that it is owing a total number of 11, 422 pensioners the sum of N22, 393, 616, 466. 60.
“At the end of a verification exercise, the board arrived at total inherited liability of N11,263,579,611.34 with a total of 6,504 Pensioners on the Board’s payroll. From the end of the exercise to May, 2024, over 4,918 staff have retired from the services of the 20 local governments with unpaid benefits of another N11,130,036,855.30.”
The Chairman of the board, Alh. Umar Barau Ningi told the reintroduced ministerial press briefing in Bauchi that the computation brings the total liability, as at May, 2024, to N22,393,616,466.60 and total Pensioners to 11,422.
Alh. Umar Ningi assured that the Local Government Pensions Board never failed in monthly payment of pensions, as the state government had so far provided over N2 billion for payment of gratuities to beneficiaries, “This is an unprecedented feat realized under Bala Muhammad’s administration”.
Ningi added that the Board introduced payment Local Government by Local Government and Local Governments were involved by providing them copies of their payroll on monthly basis, to confirm their pensioners.
Barau Ningi said however that the Federal Government had not been forth-coming in the payment of its contribution since 2010 pursuant to the 2004 Contributory Pension Scheme Act (amended in 2014), saying the inability has affected funding of the states pension matters.
“Due to paucity of funds, the State Government could not perform such functions also since 2011. It was the commendable efforts of His Excellency Senator Bala Abdulkadir Muhammad, who took deliberate policy making Local Governments to provide, on monthly basis, funds for payment of local government pensioners while the state government provides funds, intermittently, for the settlement of gratuities.”
“With the constitution of the Board of Local Government Pension in 2020, the Board first undertook physical verification of all pensioners. In the process, any pensioner whose documents were doubtful and those who refused to present themselves for verification were removed from the list of Local Governments Pensioners under the Local Government Pension Board.
“The Board could not remove them from the pension payroll, because by then, it was the consultants who were paying pensions and salaries.”
“By the end of 2021 however, His Excellency instructed that payment of Local Government pensioners be returned to the Board. This allowed the Board to clean the payroll and removed all doubtful pensioners and those who did not present themselves for verification,” Umar Barau concluded.