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By Amos Okioma, Yenagoa
Embasara Foundation, a leadership development and non-partisan body, in collaboration with other civil society and professional organizations have expressed deep concern over the recent passage of a bill by the Bayelsa State House of Assembly aimed at granting pensions for life to themselves, the governor, deputy governor, predecessors and successors of forgoing classes of political office holders.
Addressing a press conference in Yenagoa, Chief Ayakeme Whisky, chairman, Media Committee, Embasara Foundation, Comrade Rosemary Naingba, president of Ijaw Women Connect Worldwide, Sir Benedict Guembe, chairman, Bayelsa state Founding Fathers Forum and Dr Charles Ambaowei, said they found it repugnant for the political class to carve out pensions as the latest tool for self-enrichment and perpetuation of personal interest, describing it as a subversion of the trust of the electorate in whom power resides and of the otherwise noble act of law making by a section of the political elites.
They called on the people of Bayelsa State, along with all responsible authorities and civil institutions “to take every lawful step possible to reverse this dishonorable conduct and lawlessness by the state law makers, led by the Speaker Rt Hon Konbowei Benson and the leader of the House, Hon Peter Akpe who sponsored the controversial bill.”
The group, which also included Civil Liberty Organization , Environmental Right Action, Ijaw Elders Forum , Lagos, Ijaw National Forum, Ijaw Women Connect and the Bayelsa state Founding Fathers Forum further said that under Nigeria’s constitutionalism, pensions are the exclusive preserve of civil servants, not political office holders who are public servants but not civil servants.
They added that “this new dimension to law making in a state where successive administrations had failed to settle years long backlog of pensions and gratuities to genuine pensioners who are retirees and mostly senior citizens, show a clear lack of respect for the civil service as a vital institution, an erosion of moral values and a disturbing sense of entitlement among political officers. The people of Bayelsa State do not accept that.
“We therefore join countless citizens from Bayelsa State to urge Governor Seriake Dickson to side with the people and decline assent to the bill, a bad piece of attempted legislation passed with indecent haste and revealing secrecy. The failure of the house to hold a public hearing on the bill, a failure that is now a sad habit in the state’s peculiar practice of legislation, suggests that the members who sponsored this bill were driven by base motives,” they said.
The group also stressed that the new political pension bill, “with the burgeoning, cascading liabilities it will create in the future can only add great gloom to the already bleak climate in a state whose populace is tottering perennially at the level of pedestrian subsistence, with a zero-productive base and consistent public financing culture since 1999.”
