ABEOKUTA
Organised labour in Ogun State, comprising the Nigeria Labour Congress, Trade Union Congress and Joint Negotiating Council, on Monday, directed the entire workforce in the state to proceed on indefinite strike.
This was contained in a document signed by the leadership of the NLC, TUC and JNC and made available to The PUNCH on Monday.
The development was a result of an unremitted N82bn contributory pension deduction spanning 14 years. The decision to embark on the trade disputes was said to have been taken at the statewide congress held on Monday, where the workers voted for indefinite suspension of their services over the dysfunctional Ogun State Pension Reform Law 2008 and amended 2013.
The 2013 Pension amended law is said to have established the Contributory Pension Scheme which stipulated that both employers and employees should contribute a set aside monthly savings of 7.5 per cent each of the basic salary of the workers, which is to be kept by appointed pension fund administrators.
The labour claimed that practically, in its 17 years of its passage as a law, from all indicators, the CPS has, at best, been practised in complete breach of the law that established it.
The statement stated that “Accessible records on it established the incontrovertible fact that it has rather been a drain of resources for the workers, and curiously, a wage lowering tactic for successive governments of the state.
“Only 34 months (that is, three years less than two months) of the expected 204 months (17 years) of the deductions from both sides, i.e. the state/local governments were remitted to the PFAs.
“In the last 14 years, and still counting, monthly deductions only from workers’ salaries have been diligently consistent without remittance to their PFAs. The statue-prescribed investments of the funds, the interests it could have yielded, amongst other associated benefits are all in limbo. It simply translated to the apparent shortchanging of the entirety of active and dedicated workers of the state over the years.”
The labour unions recalled the widely-publicised Adekunle Hassan Pension Reform Committee set up in 2022, adding that neither its findings nor its recommendations were released nor was there any definitive concrete step taken to address the issue. Countless correspondences on it were written and delivered to the state authorities with no single response.
“In clear terms, the indefinite suspension of services across the state and local governments takes full effect from midnight, Tuesday 15th July 2025,” the statement added.
Recall that the organised labour, about two weeks ago, urged the government to either suspend the implementation of the CPS which was supposed to have commenced on July 1, or revert to the old pension scheme.
The workers said the 17-year-old pension scheme was signed into law in 2008 by former Governor Gbenga Daniel but it had been designed to fail, because the administration failed to remit 25 months of workers’ deduction before leaving office in May 2011.
They stated further that though Daniel’s successor, Senator Ibikunle Amosun, amended the law in 2013, to commence the implementation of the contributory pension scheme in July 2025, he also remitted only nine months of workers’ deductions during his eight-year tenure.
The labour leaders affirmed that Governor Dapo Abiodun, within six years in office, remitted no dime as workers’ deductions into the pension scheme.
They lamented that despite several letters and messages sent to the government over the nagging problem, the government had only replied with deafening silence.
