Atiku to Tinubu: Stop ghosting and shadow chasing over pension backlog

The presidential standard bearer of the African Democratic Congress, ADC, and former Vice President of Nigeria, Atiku Abubakar, has dismissed President Bola Tinubu’s recent remarks on the federal government pension backlog as unnecessary blame-shifting.

In a statement issued on Friday by the Atiku Media Office in Abuja and signed by the office, Atiku described the president’s comments to a delegation of Northeast stakeholders led by Governor Babagana Zulum as “untenable frivolity” and “futile political shadow chasing by an inept APC-led administration.”

The president had reportedly blamed pension problems in the country on the Obasanjo/Atiku administration that left office almost two decades ago.

“Both President Tinubu and his inept APC administration should seek more knowledge about good governance and developmental communication,” the statement said.

“Government is a continuum. The present helmsmen cannot continue to waste valuable national time and resources on ghosting and blaming past administrations. A successor must inherit assets and liabilities.”

Atiku said the Obasanjo/Atiku government inherited a broken and unfunded pension system in 1999 and moved to fix it rather than blame predecessors.

According to the statement, the administration met a non-contributory Defined Benefits Scheme DBS with an unsustainable liability of over ₦2 trillion, about 25 per cent of Nigeria’s GDP at the time. The old Pay-As-You-Go model relied on annual budgetary allocations that were severely underfunded and produced massive arrears.

The administration was also said to have met a fragmented system plagued by ghost pensioners, data inaccuracies, bureaucratic delays, and a near absence of pension coverage in the private sector.

By 2007, Atiku’s office said, the Obasanjo/Atiku government had enacted the Pension Reform Act of 2004 and established the National Pension Commission PenCom to regulate the sector. It also introduced a mandatory contributory scheme where employers and employees contribute a percentage of basic salary into individual Retirement Savings Accounts RSAs.

The reforms also institutionalized Pension Fund Administrators PFAs to manage investments and Pension Fund Custodians PFCs to safeguard assets, thereby shifting future liabilities to a fully funded framework.

“By shifting future liabilities to a fully funded framework, their reforms stopped the accumulation of new un-backed state debts,” the statement said.

“This foundation laid the groundwork for Nigeria’s modern pension assets, which have since ballooned into tens of trillions of naira.”

Atiku accused President Tinubu of refusing to acknowledge the structure left behind and said the current government should build on it instead.

“This is what Tinubu should be building upon and not quarrelling with his tools like a bad farmer,” he said.

The ADC presidential candidate further said the Obasanjo/Atiku administration laid the foundation for the liberalization of the Nigerian economy through debt repayment and reforms that opened up banking, telecommunications, hospitality and other sectors.

He urged the Tinubu administration to focus on current challenges.

“Tinubu should focus on resetting the salient issues of hunger and anger in the land, mostly caused by unabated insecurity, alarming mass youth unemployment, broken-down economy, strangulating social environment and wanton destruction of the nation’s political fabrics,” Atiku advised.