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Nigeria: Chaotic Pension Verification
This Day
July 23, 2010
Nigeria
For some weeks, pensioners of the Federal Government have been undergoing biometric registration across the country. The exercise ended this week. While the rationale for the exercise can hardly be faulted, its prosecution caused untold hardship for the retirees, many of whom are advanced in age and frail.
For a nation plagued by the incidence of ghost workers at various levels of public service, no tested method should be spared in eradicating it.â-‚ With the system being currently implemented, the fingerprints and faces of the claimants are captured electronically.That should make identification easier and pension payment less prone to fraudulent practices.
Sadly, however, the ugly experiences recorded at the verification centres have cast a shadow on the obvious merits of the operations. Highly disproportionate numbers of officials available to attend to tens of thousands of pensioners at the venues.â-‚ Apart from under staffing, the machines were also not enough.
The results of these inadequacies were indeed shameful and painful, tragic in some cases. The picture of senior citizens in their 70s, 80s and 90s standing endlessly in rowdy queues, in the rain or sun was most unfortunate. In the process, some were reported to have collapsed. Questions are now being asked whether there are no better ways of investigating the veracity of the country's pensioners than subjecting elderly men and women who had given their youth to the service of the nation to this needless agony.
The response of the Head of Civil Service of the Federation, Mr. Stephen Oronsaye, to this discomfiting scenario is at best explanatory. According to him, "It is rather sad that the people who have served our fatherland are now made to suffer.
This exercise is painful but desirable. The guarantee is that once you have been captured (technologically), the question of anyone asking you to bring your papers will not arise. There are people who have died and we have continued to pay their pensions. By the time we take all these features, we will then begin to have an authentic pensioners' list."
Mr. Oronsaye and his team are on a rescue mission, and they should be commended for adopting a scientific approach that is potentially error or manipulation proof. In the nation's quest for accountability and a functional bureaucracy, such procedures should be embraced, sustained and improved upon as the need arises.
But equally crucial to the succes and integrity of the exercise is the ability of the executing authorities to conduct it in an orderly manner, without harm to people. The exercise was too slow, too cumbersome to achieve that. When people are made to travel long distances to the verification centres only to meet large crowds awaiting rare attention, they can easily become despondent. The consequences of this pitiable situation are usually dire enough to elicit a change of approach.
More appropriate arrangements should have been made to alleviate the psychological and physical exhaustion the pensioners have been made to go through. The logistics, manpower, equipment and other relevant variables should have been mobilized in ways that would make the process more acceptable and less painful. For example, it is better to do it in smaller batches which will be easier to manage. The sight of these aged and frail people lamenting on national television was certainly not a way to boost morale or patriotism.
It is time to take seriously the words of the late American theologian and author, Abraham J Heschel: "A test of a people is how it behaves toward the old. It is easy to love children. Even tyrants and dictators make a point of being fond of children. But the affection and care for the old, the incurable, the helpless are the true gold mines of a culture."
— For some weeks, pensioners of the Federal Government have been undergoing biometric registration across the country. The exercise ended this week. While the rationale for the exercise can hardly be faulted, its prosecution caused untold hardship for the retirees, many of whom are advanced in age and frail.
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