By Udesinanna Stephen, Precious Oham
The Nigeria Union of Pensioners, NUP, Ekiti State Council on Thursday offered prayers to God for intervention over the insecurity and economic hardships in the country.
The prayer summit, which is the first in the series for 2024 tagged: “Seeking The Supremacy Of God’s Power” held at the NUP State Secretariat, Ado-Ekiti.
The Chairman of NUP, Ekiti State Council, Comrade Joel Akinola said that the current situation in the country calls for spiritual intervention as majority of the masses are suffering economic hardships.
While noting that only God can redeem the country and command the decisions of the leaders, he decried that the leaders across all levels of government are the problem in the country.
He said: “With the current situation of things we have in the country, Ekiti State inclusive, it is God that can intervene. God will choose somebody to resolve the crisis in Nigeria. Even the blind knows that Nigeria is not doing well. We are suffering in the midst of plenty and our government have misplaced priorities.
“The problem with this country is leadership. It is unfortunate with the kind of leaders we have both at the local, state and federal level of government. Nigeria has no problem but only leadership problem.
“Critical areas of concern are the menace of kidnappings, murder and general insecurity. We are witnessing now high cost of goods and services that is making life very unbearable for the people. This is largely caused by the unthoughtful hike of price of fuel.
“The Union is pleading that the Federal Government should urgently put necessary interventions in place to ameliorate the hardship Nigerians are going through.”
Also, he called on the Ekiti State government to remit the part payment of their pensions, unpaid gratuities while calling for the release of more funds to pay the balance of five months and two months outstanding for Local and State Governments’ pensioners respectively.
Speaking on the unremitted deductions of payments due to pensioners, he said, “We implore His Excellency (Governor Oyebanji) to remit the outstanding four months deductions from our pensions. We need these deductions now more than before because of the high cost of goods and services in the country. The deductions are for the months of April, May, June and July 2018.
“There is the ugly scenario where in this hard time we have some of our members earning as low as N340 pension per month. One wonders what this amount will buy. This is why we are appealing to Mr Governor to implement the Consequential Adjustment of our pensions in line with the economic realities of our time and in consonance with the provisions of the Nigerian Constitution.”
He however commended Executive Governor of Ekiti, Biodun Oyebanji on the regular payment of the monthly Palliative of N10,000 to Pensioners, adding that this has gone a long way to alleviate their financial predicament.
The event attracted leaders of the union in the state including religion leaders such as Pastor Odebode Kayode and Chief Imam Abdul-Tolib Mohammed.