By Our Correspondent <\/p>\n
Presidential flag bearer of the African Democratic Congress,( ADC), and former Vice President, Atiku Abubakar, has faulted President Bola Ahmed Tinubu\u2019s claims on the Federal Government pension backlog as \u201cunnecessary ghosting and futile political shadow chasing.\u201d
\nAtiku in a statement by his media office on Friday, described the President\u2019s remarks to visiting Northeast stakeholders led by Governor Babagana Zulum as an attempt to blame the Obasanjo\/Atiku administration for problems it solved almost two decades ago.Offi e
\n\u201cBoth President Tinubu and his inept APC administration should seek more knowledge about good governance and developmental communication,\u201d the statement said, adding that \u201cGovernment is a continuum. A successor must inherit assets and liabilities.\u201d
\nAtiku\u2019s office recalled that when the Obasanjo\/Atiku government took over in 1999, it inherited a broken, unfunded and non-contributory Defined Benefits Scheme with an estimated liability of over \u20a62 trillion, about 25% of GDP at the time.
\nAccording to the statement, instead of blaming predecessors, the administration enacted the Pension Reform Act of 2004 and established the National Pension Commission, PenCom, leaving behind a fully funded, privately managed Contributory Pension Scheme when it exited in 2007.
\nThe old Pay-As-You-Go model, the statement noted, depended on annual budgetary allocations that were grossly underfunded. It noted that the system created massive arrears, ghost pensioners, data inaccuracies and bureaucratic delays, while most private sector workers had no coverage at all.
\n“Under the reforms, the Obasanjo\/Atiku government introduced mandatory contributions by both employers and employees into individual Retirement Savings Accounts, RSAs. It also institutionalized Pension Fund Administrators, PFAs, to manage investments and Pension Fund Custodians, PFCs, to safeguard assets.”
\nThe Atiku Media Office said the reforms stopped the accumulation of new un-backed pension debts and created the foundation for Nigeria\u2019s pension assets, which have since grown into tens of trillions of naira. It accused Tinubu of failing to acknowledge that structure.
\nThe statement further said the Obasanjo\/Atiku administration laid the groundwork for the liberalization of the economy, including paying off foreign debt and creating enabling environments in banking, telecoms, hospitality and other sectors.
\nAtiku advised the President to focus on current challenges, adding, \u201cTinubu should focus on resetting the salient issues of hunger and anger in the land, caused by unabated insecurity, mass youth unemployment, a broken economy and the destruction of our political fabric,\u201d the statement concluded.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
By Our Correspondent Presidential flag bearer of the African Democratic Congress,( ADC), and former Vice President, Atiku Abubakar, has faulted President Bola Ahmed Tinubu\u2019s claims on the Federal Government pension backlog as \u201cunnecessary ghosting and futile political shadow chasing.\u201d Atiku in a statement by his media office on Friday, described the President\u2019s remarks to visiting […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":14822,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15878","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyechoes.ng\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15878","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyechoes.ng\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyechoes.ng\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyechoes.ng\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyechoes.ng\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15878"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dailyechoes.ng\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15878\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15879,"href":"https:\/\/dailyechoes.ng\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15878\/revisions\/15879"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyechoes.ng\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14822"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyechoes.ng\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15878"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyechoes.ng\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15878"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyechoes.ng\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15878"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}