Retirees stage protest, demand N32,000 pension benefits, others

Aggrieved ex-employees of the defunct Arab Bank and Assurance Bank took to the streets of Lagos on Wednesday in a protest, accusing regulatory authorities of systemic neglect and pushing them into acute poverty.

The protest was held at the Pension Transitional Arrangement Directorate office at the old Secretariat within the premises of Tafawa Balewa Square, Lagos Island.

The senior citizens, representing roughly 1,020 affected staff nationwide, are demanding immediate intervention from the Federal Government over their exclusion from national welfare packages.

Despite a 20-year dispute since the banks’ liquidation, many of the retirees said they are currently receiving less than N10,000 monthly, a figure far below the nationally approved N32,000 minimum pension baseline.

The peaceful demonstration drew a crowd of elderly protesters wielding placards highlighting their daily battle for survival. Some inscriptions on the placards read, “Today, today, PTAD must answer us,” “20yrs on: No gratuities and retirement benefits. CBN, NDIC, why?”, and “After 32 years of service, where is our 32k pension palliatives?”

The core of their grievance lies in a perceived “discriminatory dichotomy” enforced by PTAD, which absorbed the workers in 2019 but has allegedly failed to match their benefits with those of regular Federal Government retirees.

The voice of the protest was carried by several representatives who stepped forward to detail the human cost of the regulatory standoff.

A protest coordinator and ex-Assurance Bank staff member, Mr Idowu Oshikoya, said, “We are ex-staff of the defunct Arab Bank and Assurance Bank. We worked, and we are qualified to be paid pension. Up till now, many of us are here to be paid; even those who are paid are not sufficiently paid.”

Oshikoya explained that despite the President’s directive ensuring a minimum pension baseline for federal workers, their group has been entirely left out.

“The N32,000 palliative that was granted for all minimum wage… we are excluded. I can tell you for free that many of us here, our pension is under N10,000. I don’t know how we can survive with that,” he added.

Compounding the problem is the lack of clarity regarding the multi-billion-naira physical and intangible assets left behind when the banks were liquidated two decades ago.

Another ex-Assurance Bank worker, Mr Bola Olaniyan, said, “It was the NDIC that liquidated us, and this has been for about 20 years. For 20 years, some of our members have not been paid a dime. We wrote to the NDIC, we wrote to the CBN… they never deemed it fit to reply to us.”

Olaniyan lamented the rapid deterioration of the bank’s former properties, including nearly new vehicle fleets, which could have been liquidated to offset the mounting debt owed to the retirees.

“PTAD will look us in the face—I’ve got 35 years in the bank—and give us N12,000 as pension at the end of the month. Some could not even afford transport to get to this place. Enough of this nonsense… It is either they give us, or we die here,” he said.

The protesters noted that out of the roughly 1,020 qualified staff scattered across Nigeria, many are too frail or impoverished to travel, leaving the Lagos chapter to spearhead the demonstration. While the workers acknowledged they were classified as “unsecured creditors” during the initial liquidation process, they argued that 20 years is an unacceptable period to hide behind bureaucratic red tape.

As of the time of filing this report, neither the NDIC, the CBN nor PTAD had issued an official response to the ex-bankers’ renewed agitation. The protesters vowed to remain persistent in their daily picketing until their monthly allowances are adjusted to the legal N32,000 threshold and their long-overdue 2009 arrears are paid in full.