Governors with sticky fingers By Lekan Sote

 

The Chairman of defunct Pension Reform Task Team, Abdulrasheed Maina, who reportedly collapsed in the court of Justice Okon Abang the other day, provides a good reason for the gang of Nigerian governors to resist the temptation of dipping their sticky fingers into the pension funds of poor Nigerian workers.

Maina was recently arrested in Niger Republic by a joint team of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission and Niger Republic’s intelligence agency operatives after he had jumped bail twice and put his surety, Senator Ali Ndume, representing Borno State in the Senate, in harm’s way.

Ndume was compelled to become a guest of the Federal Government in Kuje Prisons, Abuja, for failure to pay the N500 million bail bond or forfeit his property in Asokoro, Abuja, for his inability to produce Maina in court. In addition to allegations of fraudulently diverting workers’ pension funds, Maina demonstrated that he is also not a gentleman.

The EFCC is prosecuting Maina on a 12-count charge of fraud and money laundering. Rouqayyah Ibrahim, an investigator with the EFCC, told Justice Abang that Maina diverted N14 billion pension funds into 66 odd bank accounts through fake pension payments, akin to paying ‘ghost workers’, and for non-existing, or phoney, contracts.

Maina’s son, Faisal, was arraigned for money laundering, concealing assets and allegedly having illegal possession of firearms. He stopped appearing in court in April 2020. In November 2020, his surety, Sani Galadima, representing Kaura Namoda Federal Constituency in the House of Representatives, was asked to produce him in court.

Also, Steve Oronsaye, the man some swear is not fraudulent, got tarred with the EFCC brush. He faced a 24-count charge for siphoning money from the pension funds unit of his office as Head of the Federal Civil Service.

How and why Nigerian governors, knowing how the criminal diversion of money from the pension scheme has touched raw nerves of workers, ever thought they could borrow the same funds beats the wildest imagination. It’s baffling, really.

Maybe the governors need to be told that pension is money saved by the workers for the rainy day. It’s a financial plan to secure (at least) their current level of living even if they will not improve on it.

Pension or superannuation funds are contributed by employees, or employers, or both, and are generally invested in stocks, bonds, real estate and other assets, and the proceeds are used to pay pension to retired workers.

President of Nigeria Labour Congress, Ayuba Wabaa, has some information for the seemingly ignorant governors: “The money (accumulated in the pension funds) is not piled up in one place, but warehoused in the pension retirement accounts that are opened by the pension funds administrators.”

Also, the NLC reminds the governors that only 18 of Nigeria’s 36 states implemented the N30,000 minimum wage, and less than five per cent of them even contribute to the fund that they want to borrow from. You will agree with Wabaa that some states want to reap where they did not sow.

 

In 2017, the Socio-Economic Rights and Accountability Project reported that 12 states consistently owed workers’ salaries. Sixteen of them failed to pay pensions to their retired employees, though Governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu beats his chest that Lagos State paid N25. 06 billion to 5,819 retirees over the last 18 months.

Most of the states have no credible plans to retire their huge loan profiles, even as some of them –Katsina, home state of the President, Kebbi, Borno, Bayelsa and Taraba– cannot survive without funds from the Federal Account Allocation Committee. The money they raised from the capital market is still outstanding.

Fancy Dr. Kayode Fayemi, second-time Governor of Ekiti State and Chairman of Nigerian Governors’ Forum, presenting what you would describe as a bold face when making a case for governors’ borrowing from the pension funds that most of them grudgingly contribute to.

Fayemi went, “There is nothing wrong, and we are not going to be apologetic that we want to borrow to fund infrastructure. We are not borrowing for consumption, and the various projects that are going to be allowed to access the funds are going to be determined by the committee that we set up at the National Economic Council (chaired by Vice President Yemi Osinbajo).”

To his words, “We are not going to be apologetic,” some Nigerians read arrogance and insensitivity. And to his assurances that the borrowed money will be spent on infrastructure, the smarts on the streets of Lagos say, “Na today!” A way of saying, “We’ve heard this before.”

Recall that state governors pretty much gave assurances that they’d prudently manage the funds when they forced the hands of former President Goodluck Jonathan to disburse accumulated Excess Crude Account funds to them.

These governors, many of whom are profligate, want to borrow N17 trillion from the accumulated pension funds, to augment proceeds from the FAAC and their Internally Generated Revenue, that are both getting leaner and leaner by the day.

Nigerians, who carried out a fact check, came up with the scoop that as of September 30, 2020, money in the pension funds was N11.56 trillion, about N5 trillion less than the N17 trillion that the governors are shopping for.

Neglecting to ascertain what is even available to borrow is a goof on the part of the governors; they don’t even know too much about where they are looking to borrow money. This shows that the governors did not do their homework, and probably have no honest intentions concerning the money they want to access.

The governors should ask their lawyers to explain the fineprints of Nigeria’s Pension Reforms Act of 2014 that says pension funds can only be invested in viable options that promote the country’s economic development.

Though infrastructure, or revenue-generating projects, like “roads that could be tolled, telecom projects, infrastructure manpower (and) water projects,” upon which Fayemi promises that the borrowed money will be expended, should contribute to Nigeria’s economic development, there are no guarantees that the governors will be faithful to their words.

When you remember how they recklessly squandered the bailouts and the Paris Club payments doled out to them by the President, Major General Muhammadu Buhari (retd.), you’ll know that no one should rely on the words of Nigerian governors.

If Section 6(6)(c) of the Nigerian Constitution 1999 hadn’t ousted the powers of the court to prosecute state actors who woefully fail to execute the Fundamental Objectives and Directive Principles of State Policy outlined in Chapter II of the Constitution, many governors would have been leaning on the railing of the docks answering to the people’s prosecutors in the law courts.

After squandering all the freebies they got for doing no work, and failing to provide credible plans to turn the economies of their states around, the governors have the temerity to ask to spend money they neither earned nor contributed to.

The governors should know that there is an inelegant four-letter word that could be used to express the people’s disgust at the disgraceful, unacceptable and unconscionable bee-line they are making towards the pension funds of the poor and hapless workers.

Anyway, the NLC President Wabaa and his men should do everything possible to shoo-off the profligate governors from accessing workers’ hedge nest.

Twitter @lekansote1