Unpaid Pension: Osun Loses 236 Pensioners

No fewer than 236 pensioners have died in Osun State due to delay in the payment of their pensions and gratuities.

This was made known yesterday during a peaceful protest to the State House of Assembly by the Nigeria Union of Pensioners (NUP), Osun State chapter.


The protesters, who were mostly elderly people from across the state protested the inability of the state government to pay their entitlements. The senior citizens, who carried placards with different inscriptions moved from the state Assembly to the popular Olaiya Junction causing gridlock and preventing vehicular movements in the area for more than two hours.

Addressing newsmen during the protest, the state secretary of the union, Elder Adesoji Adedire, lamented that members of the union could no longer bear the agony posed by the current financial hardship in the state.

Adedire stressed that the protest became necessary since President Muhammadu Buhari had said that no state was being owed monthly allocation.

He said, “Pensioners in the state are yet to be paid seven months pension. All promises made by Governor Rauf Aregbesola when the pensioners met with him on July 23, 2013 were empty and his insensitivity to the plight of pensioners have led to the untimely death of many of us.

“About 30 per cent of the pensioners due for the 142 per cent pension arrears are yet to collect the initial 15 per cent of the arrears payment which started in October 2012. Even many pensioners who were short paid were not attended to.

“Nonpayment of the arrears of 19%, 6% and 15% pension increase which the government implemented in 2011 as well as non payment of the federal share of gratuity and pension of those who retired from 1st July, 2007 for which the state government has accepted.”

He also frowned at the abusive languages used by the state governor.

describing the pensioners as indolent people that pensioners children and wards should cater for them.

Earlier at the state house of Assembly, the deputy chief whip of the house, Mr Taiwo Adeyemi who addressed the protesters pleaded with them to exercise patience promising that the governor would soon find a solution to the issue.