Pensioners in Niger State have disrupted the swearing-in ceremony of the 25 local government council chairmen, protesting the non-payment of their pensions and gratuities in the past seven years.
It was gathered that Monday’s incident was the third in the series of protests at the state government house.
According to a report by The Nation, the protesters blocked the government house gate, preventing guests from gaining access into the government house where the inauguration ceremony was taking place.
They accused the state government of being insensitive to their plight in the past seven years while describing the several screenings and disbursements of pensions as a scam.
One of the pensioners who spoke to the newspaper, Abubakar Abdullahi, described the state government as wicked.
“How can you owe people for seven months and still have the mind to be living as if nothing is wrong?,” Mr Abdullahi quizzed.
Another pensioner, Charity Yusuf, said that the government had not kept its promise in ameliorating the sufferings of the people in the state, despite various funds released by the federal government.
“The Federal government released Paris Club funds and other funds to this State but we can’t see anything that was done with the funds neither did they deem it fit to reduce the backlog of our pensions and gratuities,” he said.
DAILY NIGERIAN gathered that it took the intervention of the governorship candidate of the All Progressives Congress, APC, Umar Bago, who persuaded the protesters to suspend their protest.
