CONCERNED Nigerians have expressed various views on the Nigeria Labour Congress’(NLC) demand for an upward increase of the country’s retirement age and years of service for civil servants. On May 1, 2023, the President of NLC, Joe Ajaero, during the 2023 Workers’ Day, asked that the age of retirement and length of service in the civil service be reviewed upward from 60 years to 65 years of age and 35 years to 40 years of service. According to him, some organisations tended to reduce the retirement age so that people could retire early and start doing something on their own. In the NLC’s one-sided opinion, it had forgotten that people would still be agile at 60 so that once they leave work , they would be able to do something on their own and benefit their lives and communities. One would have thought that the NLC would have advocated post-retirement business ideas and training so that before workers leave paid employment, they are already trained and equipped to survive and be extensively productive even unto their nuclear families.

The view of the NLC might be influenced by the condition of living, the economic situation of Nigeria and the fear of the future. However, advocacy for post-retirement business ideas and training would have been more professional. Ideally, retiring early is the way to go and the way forward is to make people entrepreneurial so that they can create more jobs, support them to retire early and give them the necessary funds and training to survive after retirement. The NLC’s advocacy is an ugly demonstration of colonial mentality of heaping all our means of survival on government rather than thinking to complement government’s efforts in productivity. Nigeria is used to being dependent even after our so-called independence.  Extending retirement age and length of service would have an adverse impact on economy and outright gross national under-productivity.

Currently, 80 percent of teachers were analogue-trained in the Grade 2 system under the Universal Primary Education but rose through the ranks by either part-time training or adult education systems devoid of digital and computerised training synonymous with advancement, because education itself is civilisation!  This singular reason had enabled the expensive private school syndrome which the masses  cannot afford.  Considering this, what happens to millions of freshly brainy youth with digital skills waiting to be employed to help young students? Nigeria’s unemployment rate is about 65 percent and where will those fresh digital brains go if the government extends the retirement age and length of service of civil servants? It is one thing to extend the  retirement age to 65 years and the length of service in the public sector to be 40 years, it is another to justify the proposed policy in a situation where sometimes we do more talking than acting.

We ned to consider the country’s life expectancy rate before an upward review of retirement age and years of service. For example, the life expectancy for Nigeria is between 50 and 55 years and yet workers are demanding for the pension age to be 65 years and number of years of service to 40 years. How does that work in a sane system? One needs to examine the rationale behind the demand and how realistic it is. However, whichever way we look at it,  if life expectancy is 55 years, then at the age of 45 – 50 years, one is already wearing out. Furthermore, what happens to the productivity of people when they are 65 years? Would they still be productive as expected? Many argue that the decision to increase the retirement age and service years of teachers was pursuant to Section 58(2) of the 1999 Constitution as amended following the Transmission of the Harmonised Retirement Age for Teachers in Nigeria Bill 2021 presented to the National assembly, but  the president should not be stampeded into approving an inherited issue which would jeopardise his cardinal visionary ideologies.

Some talk about the retirement age for university professors raised to 70 years. But have they considered that the two professionals face different target audiences?  While secondary school teachers face youthful, developing brains, the lecturers deal with adult brains which can function on self-initiatives. Therefore, there is no basis for such comparison at all! Presently, this short-sighted promulgation had started to rear its ugly head with a recent circular FME/S/1447/C.IT3 dated 1st August 2023 that thousands of officers on GL. 15 and 16 would not be promoted because there is no vacancy. This is as a result of the backlog of thousands of those who have reached the retirement age of 60 and 35 years but refused to go, thereby blocking others who had been on the same level for about 10 years! All because of a short-sighted policy which aims to kill Nigeria education. Thousands of GL. 15 and 16 officers cannot be promoted now because some people are being selfish. There is no vacancy for the children of peasants who struggled to get them through school. Sadly, many of those who have refused to go would not have their own children among those seeking fresh appointments because they would have sent their children abroad through federal scholarships in the course of their years in the service.

Simply put, those agitating for an extension in the length of service only fear retirement given what is happening to retirees: unpaid pensions, gratuities, etc. As such, they prefer to stay in service instead of appealing to the government to make retirement worthwhile, forgetting that they will still retire one day. It is sad that they do not realise that it is not staying long in service that matters but life after retirement. Experts have warned about the law of diminishing returns; the more you stay in service, the more your productivity declines due to monotony.  Again, failure to inject fresh blood with new ideas into service is suicidal. Or can a graduates of 35 years ago be as exposed as graduates of three years ago to ICT? The longer people stay in service, the likelihood of reduction in productivity.

The government should focus on making the teaching profession attractive, so that many young people can come in and by this, those at age 65 could become consultants without necessarily being in active service.  Extending the retirement age will shut out young people who may want to take up teaching jobs. It will frustrate them and worsen the hatred that young people have for the teaching profession.

Akano is a communication expert. akanonat@yahoo.com
08037195486(SMS)

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