22nd March, 2024
Nigeria’s former President, Chief Olusegun Obasanjo has described payment of pensions to ex-governors and their deputies as daylight robbery and rascality.
Obasanjo spoke on Friday when he visited Abia State Governor, Alex Otti, while commending the governor for repealing the pensions acts that recommended jumbo pay for former governors as pensions.
The former president said he was watching the television and that he saw the repealing of Abia pensions act and he asked the governor what it was exactly.
Obasanjo said Otti told him that the pensions scheme for former governors in the state was too outrageous.
The former president said Otti told him that the pensions scheme for ex-governors was like trouble because it allowed them to have a house in Abuja and elsewhere, and that it allowed them to cart away with whatever they could, while the pensions of ordinary people from 2014 were unpaid.
“What sort of leadership? You came and said there would be an end to that rascality. I congratulate you, and I say to you, I hope that your colleagues will follow in your footsteps,” Obasanjo said.
The former president congratulated Otti for his tenacity, for not giving up, for weathering the storm and for signing the repealing of pension law for former Governors and Deputy Governors.
He also urged Otti to pay adequate attention to infrastructure “because if you give infrastructure and you give the type of leadership you are giving, the people of the state will have nothing to worry about. On their own, they are enterprising. All they need is the leadership that will give them all the encouragement.”
Obasanjo said he had always maintained that if there is any zone in this country that could really give what he called regional development, it is the South East geo-political zone because they are almost monolithic in everything.