Economic Crunch: Who will bail out elderly Nigerians?

As Nigerians continue to contend with the harsh economic realities in the country, elderly Nigerians have been at the receiving end as many of them don’t have a fall back neither are those entitled to pension being paid as and when due. In this report, OMIKO AWA writes on their plights, how the situation is impacting the younger generation of Nigerians and the pragmatic ways government and various stakeholders can lift the spirits of these senior citizens.

“Is it a crime to spend one’s youthful years faithfully serving one’s fatherland? Or is it a crime to be old in Nigeria? I cannot afford to feed or dress well. I now depend on charity to foot my medicals and sometimes my daily needs,” a retired public school headmaster, Pa Chika Chijiuba, agonised, as he recounted how the society and his Abia State government had treated him until recently when it began a save-face turnaround.

The octogenarian is just one of the several millions of senior citizens, who had served the country either in the private and public sectors, but are now retired due to age and dependent on their pension.

Those of them not on pension either depend on their children, loved ones or charity to survive. The situation is so hopeless in some states that many these elderly citizens take up menial jobs to keep body and soul together.
However, it was for this reason that the government introduced the policy of deducting some amount of money from the salaries of its employees as gratuity and pension.

The policy was geared towards mitigating the hardship and anguish retirees in the country suffer. However, despite the policy, these senior citizens stay months, and in some cases, years before they are paid the stipend due to them.
Many analysts, who spoke with The Guardian on the situation, described it as unpalatable and a disincentive for the young ones, who may want to serve their fatherland in different capacities.

An economist, Dr. Fatai Oriyomi, said the situation arose as a result of lack of understanding of the roles of senior citizens in nation building and poor resource management that have made most states to see them as a worthless group of people.
He noted that senior citizens are not only purveyors of resources, including ideas, ethos and values, but also conveyors of information that any community needs to grow.

According to him, they are the last resort to fall back on when things go wrong in the society because of their wealth of knowledge, which will take the young ones many years of learning and practice to acquire.
“Seniors citizens are a treasure, which is the reason advanced countries treat them very importantly so that they can effectively impact the youth. A good number of them can proffer solutions to the nation’s problems if given opportunity, especially those that had attained managerial status in their past offices, because they have lived to see the pros and cons of certain policies and now know better than many of us,” he noted.

According to Oriyomi, failure to give these elderly ones what rightfully belongs to them is a reflection of how the country treats its national heroes, stressing that like the heroes, the senior citizens had kept the fate and needed to be appreciated for moving the nation forward at their primes.
Describing the shabby treatments organisations, including government agencies, mete out on these elderly ones as torture, the social analyst condemned the attitude of asking them to stand for long hours, sometimes, in the sun or to travel from their country homes to the city to have their documents verified before they could get their pensions.

He described the attitude as an impediment to patriotism by young Nigerians who are aware that their parents served the nation for 30 or 35 years and yet poorly treated.

“If only the government can make our senior citizens at any level and social strata happy by paying their pension and other entitlements regularly and enabling them to have quality and subsidised medicare, the young ones will be happy too because this will amount to the government handling the major problems of the aged. This will have a psychological impact on the people and they will be willing to work to uplift the nation.

“A situation, where one’s parents worked for long only to be paid peanuts at the end of the day will spur the youth to engage in dubious means to make money, including defrauding the government or not seeing government property as worthy to be protected so far he or she makes money and wouldn’t to suffer like his or her parents,” he added.

Although, many of these aged ones have been tagged redundant and unfit to embark on any economic activities, yet a good number of them who are still agile run their personal businesses. Some even sit on the boards of big companies, taking and making decisions and still making money for themselves.

On this note, Oriyomi disclosed that because of the nature of Naigeria’s economy, some aged people establish small scale outfits with their gratuity to keep themselves mentally and physically active, adding that it will be proper for the government to have a retirement scheme for its employees, which ensures they don’t end up being burden to themselves and the society or even die early owing to lack of care.

He noted that the scheme should include training them on how to run their own businesses.

“I understand that some of them are advised to go into farming, but we cannot all be farmers. There should be a package for other forms of businesses, especially for those who are still strong and willing to work.
There have been cases of people becoming millionaires after retirement and establishing their own small businesses. This is just one of the reasons senior citizens should be valued and not just given a blanket tag – old and redundant,” he said

For the sociologist and human management and business development consultant, Opeyemi Olawale Owosibo, the nation’s senior citizens should have some social support services such as counselling, mentoring programmes and networking platforms, saying this could help retired civil servants and those that have been on self-employment to adjust to their new post-work life.

According to Owosibo, this could provide emotional support, opportunities for engagement and facilitate their continued contributions to the society.
He said: “Offering senior citizens opportunity of continual engagement can be beneficial both for them and the society because they possess valuable knowledge, skills and experience that can be utilised through the consulting assignments, advisory roles or involvement in training and mentoring programmes for current civil servants, politicians, community organisations and even youth organisations.”

Owosibo highlighted the implications of not catering for the aged or paying retirees their benefits, particularly during these challenging times, saying it is inimical to their wellbeing, especially those of them that solely rely on such benefits to cover essential expenses.

He added that non-payment or delayed payment have put many in financial hardship, which affected their ability to cover medical bills and household expenses.
The sociologist noted that the social implication is that it could lead to stress, poverty, compromised living standards as well as erode the trust between the government and civil servants.

He noted that the result of ignoring the elderly or senior citizens in the polity may be latent, but the consequences, which include the gradual erosion of morale among active civil servants, corruption among the youth who will not want to suffer the fate of the senior citizens they are seeing, the overriding drive for wealth and disregard to the government and it agents among others, are fatal and have a telling effect on the image of the country and economy.

Frowning at the way government at all levels and even the general public treat retirees and other group of senior citizens, the first Vice Chairman of Senior Citizens’ Association of Nigeria (SCAN), Ejigbo Local Council Development Area, Gabriel Ajose Fadeyi (Baba GAF), who is also the Chairman of Nigeria Union of Pensioners (NUP), Lagos State Television Chapter, disclosed that the worst offenders are state governments.

He stated that currently, some retirees earn as low as N2,000 and N5,000 monthly, lamenting that even when the pension law says monthly pensions should be reviewed upwards every five years, the various state governments have not complied with the law.

He said: “Similarly, the pension law that says whenever the Federal Government increases the salary of current workers, pensioners’ take home should equally be increased has not been put into practice. Government will not do this until the union starts agitating for it. Not only that, what about the older persons who did not work in any government or private establishment? They are feeling the brunt.They are neglected, whereas not many of them have lucrative businesses to sustain them. Honestly, the government at all levels should take statistics or data of senior citizens in the country with a view to assisting them weekly or monthly.

“Already there is a body known as Senior Citizens’ Association of Nigeria (SCAN). They have a comprehensive website that has the names of all senior citizens in Lagos and other six states of the federation. I believe the current National Senior Citizens’ Centre (NSCC), Abuja, established by former President Muhammadu Buhari would liaise with SCAN to set the ball rolling on the need to adequately take care of the elderly ones in the country. The treatment of older persons should not be limited to the government or private retirees or pensioners alone, but the entire senior citizens in Nigeria.”

One major critical area of challenge, Fadeyi noted, is the health of these elderly ones, saying although some elderly people were wealthy and could take care of themselves, a large number of them live in abject poverty and have no one to take care of them.

According to him, such senior citizens are roaming the streets begging, while some elderly people still do menial jobs as such security guards even with their frail nerves.

Bemoaning the situation, he said: “Imagine a 73-year-old working as security personnel in companies, private homes as well as for streets as night guards. They do these odd jobs because there is no national policy to cater for their welfare or anyone to take care of them.

“The problems of the elderly ones are majorly their health. After the age of 61, one ailment or the other will begin to set in and at age 65, they become pronounced. Ailment such as diabetes, hypertension, arthritis and dementia will become common among them. Diabetes and hypertension for instance, if not properly treated, may lead to other health challenges such as paralysis, loss of sight and hearing impairment. Others include cancers – prostrate, breast, bone marrow problem, brain damage, among others. To reduce these, elders should regularly go for medical check up, have regular exercise, regularly interact with their peers and always happy.

“Daily walk for 20 to 30 minutes, talking, laughing, dancing, among others, reduce some of these dangerous ailments. Being in places where people crack jokes also help elders to get well quick. Above all, there is the need for elders to go on holiday; travel for more experience and ability to read regularly helps a lot too to make them mentally stable.”

Calling on the National Assembly to expedite action on the Elders Rights Bill, Baba GAF, as he is fondly called, stressed on the need for the government to start giving senior citizens across the country weekly or monthly stipends as it is done in other countries.

He said: “In Europe and the United States of America for instance; seniors are paid weekly stipends, which Nigerians there refer to as “Owo Baba” — money for a father’s upkeep. They are also exempted from paying taxes, medicals, among others. These countries treat their senior citizens with dignity, respect and honour; they revere and make them happy all the time. Such can equally be done in Nigeria.”

According to him, the so called “Old Peoples Home” is alien to Nigerian culture and should be jettisoned. To him, the government should rather establish recreational centres with the necessary amenities like TV set, radio, different home games and sporting equipment should be introduced in all the nooks and crannies of the cities and rural areas, where the elderly can meet often to exchange pleasantries, ideas, make new friends and go into reminiscences.

GAF said this would not only make them happy, but also keep them mentally alert and boost their longevity.
As the nation’s economy faces many challenges, with prices of goods and services almost going out of the reach of the poor, making Nigerians to call for palliatives to mitigate the situation, GAF noted that such interventions should begin with the senior citizens, especially those that are vagrant.

According to him, for an effective distribution, those in charge should adopt a house-to-house technique, which state governments use when distributing Land Use Charge notices.
Also, the Director of Career Development and Counselling Centre, University of Ibadan, Prof. Ifeanyi Onyeonoru, noted that in spite of the new pensions system in the country, retirees are still not enjoying any reasonable relief after retirement.

The don disclosed that the degrading symbolism that the nation’s senior citizens now represent creates pre-retirement anxiety for their colleagues who are still in service, stressing that this constitutes a threat to their mental health and physical wellbeing.
The varsity teacher explained that things began to go sour in the mid-1980s, as retirees were no longer assured of sustenance of livelihood after retirement.

“Human resources are the most valuable assets of any organisation; having spent most of their productive life in such a place, our senior citizens should be entitled to a happy life in the post-work period as a result of good retirement package. Indeed, pensions and gratuity should be seen as part of working life, an appreciation handshake for employees’ contributions to the workplace and society at large,” he said.