Chairman, Senate Joint Committee on Establishment, Public Service, States and Local Government Administration, Senator Aloysius Etok, yesterday said poor management of the pension scheme is capable of throwing the country into crisis.
Briefing journalists in Abuja on the committee progress report on the ongoing probe of pensions management in the 36 states of the federation, Etok lamented that many states are owing their retirees billions of naira in pension arrears.
He said: “What we discover on ground in respect to pension payment and management is a time bomb that we must address immediately, else when it explodes, it will be disastrous because we have some states owing N8 to N10 bn for only state pension.
“If you include the local government pension, you will realise that some of these states owe between N14 to N15 billion. Therefore, it is impossible that such states will be able to pay considering the fact that people are retiring every month and they are adding to that number.
We will look for a way to make sure that such arrears are cleared and ensure that we have a clean slate to commence the next phase of pension administration.