Chief Dr Patrick Osagie Eholor who is the President of One Love Foundation Otherwise Known as Ultimate Equal and Father of Nigeria Students, FONS has promised to file a class Law suit on behalf of Nigerians who are deprived of their Pensions and gratuity.
He said this while speaking to Newsmen on Thursday.
According to Eholor,
the issue of pension and gratuity has always been a burden on Nigerian Government that every year the money is being made available to the government, yet it is being diverted towards other things unaccounted for.
He said that, it is quite unfortunate indeed that state government appears to share friendly relationship with pensioners, hence prolonging the struggle and frustrations pensioners face to get their entitlement.
"Most if not all the 36 state government owe salary, gratuity and pension with impunity. Many retirees and pensioners in different state have died while many other are suffering greatly due to non-payment of their benefit.
" The Nigeria Union of Pensioners seems not to be protecting their member interest either as they are silent about the non payment of pension.
"It is also written in the Bible that every workers deserves his/her wages but here in Nigeria the reserve is always the case as our government would rather subject every workers to hardship and still not pay them.
"Almost 20 years after the contributory pension came into being through the Pension Reform Act of 2004 it is very unfortunate that most state are unable to come to an agreement with the new policies attributing their loopholes to the downfall of revenue from Crude Oil sales which is also another key factor responsible for the delay in salary and pension payment of workers.
"For instance states like Abia State is owing 20 years of gratuity and 38 month of pension arrears while Ogun state is owing about nine years of gratuity and pension deductions spanning over 21 months. Other notable state owing huge figures of gratuity are: Lagos, Cross River, Anambra, Ekiti. It is so pitiable that the issue of pension and Gratuity is a huge challenge for sitting governors as they seems to also blame it on past governors.
Eholor further stated that while we seems to blame the governors for non payment of pension and gratuity it is also imperative to note that another challenge for non payment is the issue of GHOST WORKERS OR GHOST PENSION.
"Most of the immoral Civil Servants while still in active service engage in padding the workforce and this leads to colossal pension figures for the state government to pay" he added.
Speaking further on this, Eholor asserted that The issue of GHOST WORKERS has always being a thing of persistent in the public sector.
However, the state government must not always wait till it too late to cry, there are new technologies devices to be able to spot out ghost workers.
Eholor said "Despite all of these I am urging all state government to brace up and rise to their responsibilities to ensure they pay all backlog of pension and gratuity as all workers deserves their wages, they worked hard for it so it is inhumane not to pay them while working and after retirement"
"I am currently networking with CSO’s (Civil Society Organisation) in the 36 states including the federal capital, One love foundation is going to file a class Law action suit on behalf of our Mothers, Fathers, brothers and sisters who have been deprived by our clueless government"