Vehicular movement at the entrance gate, which was taken over by the protesters, was briefly distorted.
The retirees, who stormed the state capital from the 16 local councils and two special development areas of the state, demanded that their pension and gratuity arrears be paid without delay.
Chanting ‘Darius pay us our pension and gratuities’, they lamented that the state government, under Governor Darius Ishaku caused untold hardship on them and their families.
Wielding placards of various inscriptions, the protesters accused the state government of lackadaisical attitude towards their plight, vowing not to relent in pressing home their demands.
The peaceful protest, which was under heavy tight security, began from the pensioners’ office in Jalingo.
Led by the chairman, Kefas Katan, the Taraba pensioners lamented that the backlog of their gratuities had risen to over N30 billion.
They also expressed sadness that over 1,000 of their colleagues at the local councils had yet to be enrolled for pension or paid gratuities, 10 years after retirement.
Citing the ordeal of their deceased members, due allegedly to the government’s failure to do the needful, they vowed to mobilise and campaign against any governorship candidate that failed to plan for pensioners in the state.
Some of the family members lamented that hardship had stopped them from educating their children. The women, especially, blamed the high rate of drug abuse in the state on the government’s failure to settle their spouses.
The inability of the pensioners to meet their families’ needs, some of the women said, “is the reason our children have taken to drugs.”
Though no government official was available to address the pensioners at press time, the protesters vowed to hang on until they were addressed by the governor or his representative.
