The Nigeria Union of Pensioners (NUP), has threatened to drag the Federal government to court for attempting to scrap the Pension Transitional Arrangements Directorate (PTAD) without legislative approval.
The pensioners in the Southwest, on Friday, said this in a communique made available to journalists in Abeokuta, after their meeting on Thursday.
The Oronsaye report noted that there were 541 parastatals, commissions and agencies and recommended that 263 of the agencies should be reduced to 161, 38 agencies abolished and 52 merged.
The report further recommended that the Pension Transitional Arrangement Directorate(PTAD) be scrapped and functions to be taken over by the Federal Ministry of Finance.
But in the senior citizens’ report, the union insisted that the Oronsaye report did not recommend the scrapping of PTAD and urged the Federal government to allow PTAD to continue to exist as an agency.
The communique, which was signed by South-West Public Relations Officer (PRO) of NUP, Dr. Olusegun Abatan, warned that if PTAD is scrapped, there will be a reinstitution of corruption and another round of harsh treatment and more untimely death of pensioners.
Abatan appealed to President Bola Ahmed Tinubu not to be misinformed by “rapacious civil servants”, insisting that the PTAD is an act of law.”
The Southwest spokesman said, “The South-West NUP may go to court if PTAD is unilaterally scrapped because it will amount to violation of the law of the land and to that effect null and void and of no effect.
“The South-West decries scrapping of PTAD and taking pensioners back to Egypt where our pensions and gratuities will be at the whims and caprices of larcenous civil servants.
“We do not want to go back to the era where our members will be dying in queues or travelling from all over the Federation to Abuja before our entitlements are paid”, Abatan said.
He also lamented the Federal government’s failure to pay the agreed N25,000 palliative fund to pensioners to ease economic hardship occasioned by the removal of fuel subsidy.