Premium Pension and the Unending Struggle of Retirees
By Idris Umar Feta
What was supposed to be a seamless process has instead become a tormenting experience, almost like waking up to a nightmare in the middle of the night. For pensioners in Nigeria, the road to accessing their hard-earned benefits is filled with exhausting hurdles, unexplained bureaucracies, and a system that seems designed to frustrate rather than support them.
In today’s digital age, one would think that a retiree should be able to access their pension with ease, perhaps even remotely, without the need for physical stress. After all, over the course of their service, workers submit endless personal details, undergo regular verification exercises, and sit through numerous promotion exams just to move from one cadre to the next.
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Why should all of that information not be enough to smoothen the process at retirement? Why must the twilight years of service be stained with struggle? The reality is far from what it should be. Accessing pensions in Nigeria often demands daily trips to the pension office, only to return home unattended. I recall watching an elderly man, grey-haired and frail, still sitting at the pension office past 5 p.m., unattended.
With a whimsical smile hiding his deep frustration, he told me, “I know there was a possibility I won’t be attended to despite waiting to this hour. No problem, I’ll just have to come back tomorrow.” His words, and the resignation in his eyes, pierced my heart. Another pensioner nearby raised his voice in dismay.
Holding up two broken mobile phones, he lamented, “Look at these two phones, they got damaged while I was struggling to get an account statement from my bank as instructed. And for what? How much is my pension that I must put myself through this kind of stress and end up breaking my phones in the process?”
Then came a woman, visibly drained, muttering to herself as she walked out: “If you don’t want to give me my money, just keep it. Why should I keep coming here every day, spend more money on transport, and still not meet all these endless requirements?” Her lament reminded me of a viral video I had once seen from Dubai, where a woman renewed her driver’s licence at an ATM-like kiosk.
In less than five minutes, the machine processed her request and instantly issued her a new licence. Watching that video made me wonder: why should something as critical as pensions, which determine the livelihood and dignity of our elderly citizens, not be as streamlined? Why must our people endure this unnecessary hardship?
I also recalled the grim reports of military pensioners collapsing and dying while waiting in line to access their benefits. Those days, if you passed through Zone 4 in Abuja, you would see scores of pensioners begging in the streets, some sleeping out in the open, because their pensions had been delayed for months or even years.
These were men and women who had given their prime to the service of the nation, now abandoned in their frailty. My personal ordeal only deepened these reflections. After attaining retirement age, I visited the Area 3 head office of Premium Pension Limited to access my savings.
I was optimistic, especially after being handed a checklist of required documents. I left that first day reassured, believing the process would be quick. But optimism soon gave way to frustration. Weeks later, I found myself stuck in the same paperwork quagmire, going back and forth without resolution.
On two separate occasions, I could not even submit my documents because the office was overrun. The atmosphere resembled a crowded market square — pensioners sitting shoulder to shoulder, some outside under the sun, others pressed into chaotic lines inside, all waiting patiently to be attended to.
Finally, on one of those weary days, luck smiled on me and I was able to sit with an official. He checked my documents, then looked up and said, “Alhaji, you were asked to bring a 90-day statement of account. Your statement falls short of that requirement.” It was already around 5 p.m. and I had no fight left in me.
I asked him, “Why can’t you use what I brought?” But no answer came. I realised I had no choice but to revisit my bank yet again. That day, I felt defeated. I had put everything else in my life on hold to tackle this pension matter, and yet I was still being tossed around like a burden rather than a citizen entitled to dignity.
And then the question struck me again: what sense does it make to demand a 90-day bank statement and three months of pay slips from a pensioner’s former employer, when a lifetime of employment records, promotions, and official files already exist in the system? Why subject aged men and women to such exhausting hurdles?
We are in a world that is moving fast into digital automation. Simple kiosks and mobile apps elsewhere are solving tasks in minutes that take us weeks or months. Our pension administrators should be the very first to embrace these innovations, because their responsibility is not to worsen the stress of retirees but to ease it.
But what we see is the opposite. Pensioners, most of them elderly and frail, are being forced to endure hardship to access what is already theirs. They spend money they do not have on transport, stand for hours in suffocating queues, and go home with nothing but more demands for documents.
It should not be this way. Pension is not a favour from the government or the administrators; it is a right earned over decades of service. To deny pensioners easy access is to strip them of their dignity at the very stage when society should honour and support them.
My conclusion is clear: Premium Pension Limited, and indeed the entire pension administration system in Nigeria, must do better. It is time to create a system that matches the worth of those who gave their strength and service to this country. Pensioners deserve better than this endless struggle.
I think Premium Pension could, and should, do better than this.
Idris Umar Feta can be reached at: findarumar@gmail.com.
