Pension: Stop Quarrelling With Your Tools Like A Bad Farmer – Atiku Fires Back At Tinubu

The presidential candidate of the African Democratic Congress (ADC) for the 2027 election, Atiku Abubakar, has dismissed President Bola Tinubu’s recent comments linking Nigeria’s pension challenges to the administration of former President Olusegun Obasanjo, describing the remarks as misplaced and politically motivated.

In a statement issued on Friday by the Atiku Media Office, the former Vice President described the President’s comments as “unnecessary ghosting and futile political shadow chasing by an inept All Progressives Congress (APC)-led administration.”

The statement was in response to remarks made by Tinubu while receiving a delegation of North-East political stakeholders led by Borno State Governor Babagana Zulum, during which the President blamed the country’s pension problems on the Obasanjo/Atiku administration.

Naijaonpoint recalls that President Tinubu on Thursday mocked Atiku over the fallout of the privatisation carried out when he served as the Vice President to President Olusegun Obasanjo.

Tinubu said the past administration failed to pay the pension of those affected when the government privatized government investment in public entities.

Tinubu, however, added that his government has corrected that error and affected pensioners are getting their dues now.

Reacting, Atiku said the President should focus on governance rather than blaming previous administrations.

“Both President Tinubu and his inept APC administration should seek more knowledge about good governance and developmental communication. Government is a continuum. The present helmsmen cannot continue to waste valuable national time and resources on ghosting and blaming past administrations. A successor must inherit assets and liabilities,” he said.

The former Vice President argued that the Olusegun Obasanjo administration inherited a dysfunctional pension system when it assumed office in 1999.

According to the statement, the government inherited an unfunded Defined Benefits Scheme with pension liabilities estimated at more than ₦2tn, representing about 25 per cent of the country’s Gross Domestic Product at the time.

It added that rather than apportioning blame, the administration introduced reforms that transformed the pension sector.

“But by the time Obasanjo/Atiku left office in 2007, their administration had completely revolutionized the sector by enacting the Pension Reform Act of 2004, leaving behind a fully funded, privately managed Contributory Pension Scheme regulated by the newly established National Pension Commission (PenCom),” the statement read.

The statement noted that before the reforms, Nigeria operated a Pay-As-You-Go pension model that depended on annual budgetary allocations, resulting in huge arrears, fragmented administration, ghost pensioners, inaccurate records and bureaucratic delays.

It also said many private sector workers had no pension coverage, while existing schemes were either poorly managed or unfunded.

According to Atiku, the Pension Reform Act of 2004 introduced a mandatory contributory pension system under which employers and employees contribute to individual Retirement Savings Accounts.

He further stated that the Obasanjo administration established the National Pension Commission to regulate the sector and insulate it from political interference.

“They institutionalized the use of private Pension Fund Administrators (PFAs) to invest funds and Pension Fund Custodians (PFCs) to warehouse assets safely.

“By shifting future liabilities to a fully funded framework, their reforms stopped the accumulation of new un-backed state debts. This foundation laid the groundwork for Nigeria’s modern pension assets, which have since ballooned into tens of trillions of naira,” the statement added.

Atiku urged Tinubu to build on the reforms instead of criticising them.

“This is what Tinubu should be building upon and not quarrelling with his tools like a bad farmer,” he said.

The former Vice President also defended the economic record of the Obasanjo administration, stating that it laid the foundation for the liberalisation of the Nigerian economy by settling the country’s foreign debt and creating an enabling environment for growth in sectors such as banking, telecommunications and hospitality.

He urged the President to prioritise addressing Nigeria’s socio-economic challenges.

“Tinubu should focus on resetting the salient issues of hunger and anger in the land, mostly caused by unabated insecurity, alarming mass youth unemployment, broken-down economy, strangulating social environment and wanton destruction of the nation’s political fabrics,” Atiku said.