At a recent press conference at the presentation of the report of the State Committee for the Payment of Pension and Gratuity from “2015 to 2023”, the Governor Ahmed Aliyu of Sokoto state attempted to respond to a recent submission by his predecessor, Aminu Waziri  Tambuwal, on the subject matter.

I watched the session on TV, where TambuwaI told Senate plenary that as at May 2023, he did not owe any outstanding payment of pension to retirees in the state. But in what I can only view as his bid to pull down his predecessor as the only means of gaining popularity and mitigating the growing disenchantment with his administration, Aliyu misquoted TambuwaI by inserting the issue of gratuity into the subject.

This misinformation needs to be corrected and as someone, who was in the system and has closely followed such events and incidents, I feel obligated to address the issue in the interest of posterity. Putting the records straight, Senator Aminu Waziri TambuwaI’s statement on the Senate floor did not include the issue of gratuity. His exact words were:

“By the time I left as governor of Sokoto state I had defrayed outstanding bills of pension that I inherited from my predecessor and paid till the last month that I left as governor of Sokoto. Sokoto state as at that time was not owing a kobo to any pensioner and Sokoto was not owing any civil servant any salary”.

Ahmed Aliyu must have, therefore, made his reaction out of stark misunderstanding of the difference between pension, gratuity and salary or, due to his now penchant for resorting to outright falsehood as a strategy for political opposition. It appears that the Sokoto state governor is unaware of the demand for truth, when addressing issues of finance, where claims are after all, verifiable through a recourse to records.

An instance to buttress this view is the governor’s claim that N16b was paid to Sokoto state by the former President Muhammadu Buhari administration as bailout to clear pension and gratuity arrears, when in fact, my check discovered that Sokoto state received N4b as at December 23, 2015, as pension and gratuity bailout fund from the federal government.

 It is pertinent to recall that a committee for the verification and payment of the claims was at the time, setup under the chairmanship of the then state Accountant General, Umar Balarabe Ahmad, who, incidentally, is still holding the same post in the Aliyu administration.

An initial N2.6b was released to the same committee through the permanent secretary for Establishment and Pension Matters, on January 28, 2016 for the payment of accumulated life, death, contract gratuities and pension arrears from December 2011 to August 2015, as arrears of entitlements not paid by TambuwaI’s predecessor and Aliyu’s mentor, Aliyu Magatakarda Wamakko. 

Subsequently, additional N200m and N100m, respectively, were released to the committee to sustain the exercise, which in fact, was actually the continuation of an ongoing process of payments by the Tambuwal government, even before the federal funds were received. Some of the beneficiaries of the payment of gratuity which did not fall under the purview of the account general’s committee were Sokoto state past chiefs executive and their deputies. 

Invariably, the total amount paid during the Tambuwal administration is substantially above the N4b received from the federal government as pension and gratuities bailout. And the settlements were done without prejudice to political party or partisan affiliations of the beneficiary public/civil servants. They included Attahiru Dalhatu Bafarawa and Wamakko, who were governors at different times, under different political party platforms.

Acting governors and deputy governors who also benefitted from the special payments included, the late Garba M. Silame, Chiso A. Dattijo, Alh. Muktari Shehu Shagari, Abdullahi Balarabe Salame, Muhammad Zayyana and, the late Ahmad Muhammadu Gusau.

Governor Tambuwal also in 2020:approved the setting aside of N100m monthly for the payment of gratuity arrears and to ensure equity and justice. On the principle of first-come-first-served, several senior public/civil servants, who were and are still close to Tambuwal had not been due to claim their gratuity and were thus not paid, up to the end of his tenure in May 2023.

Some of the officials in the Tambuwal government who are yet to receive their gratuities include Muhammad Mainasara Ahmad, former decretary to the state government, Bello Aliyu Goronyo, current state PDP chairman, Abubakar Shekara, former permanent secretary and Abdulkadir Tambuwal, former state Grand Khadi.

Finally, it is also worth noting that, as a mark of commitment to the welfare of civil/public servants, the Tambuwal government remained the only one in the North-west that implemented in full, the N18,000.00 and N30,000.00 minimum wages as well as the CONCASS Salary Scale for tertiary institutions in the state.

Further, under Tambuwal’s watch, Sokoto implemented the World Bank

SFTAS programme for the four years, since its introduction and as a result, ranked first among the 36 states 

and FCT in 2019/2020, receiving the World Bank award in Open Governance, Transparency and Accountability and Inclusion.

Instead of chasing shadows, therefore, Governor Ahmed Aliyu should be advised by his AG, who incidentally also served in the same position during the Tambuwal administration, to emulate his predecessor and focus on the payment of gratuity arrears, which governors in virtually all northern states are embarking upon, without rousing any rabble. That would not neither take away his credit for any achievement he would record, nor diminish the accomplishments of Tambuwal.

Sahabi Aliyu Malami, a retired director in the civil service, writes from Kofar Atiku, Sokoto.