THE Pensions Reform Bill now amended and passed by the House of Representatives has, according to the House Committee on Pensions, created ‘new offences and prescribes stiffer penalties that will serve as deterrent to stealing from pension funds’. This is most welcome and deserves commendation as one of the good deeds of a legislature, Nigerians have come to accept as part of the malaise instead of a solution to their problems.
Specifically, the amendment prescribes a ‘harsher penalty of a 10-year jail term for anyone who misappropriates pension fund, in addition to refunding three times the amount embezzled’. This prescription for an offence that, in view of the sordid revelations of the past few years, is rampant in high places is, however, inadequate and must be made truly harsher if Nigerians would not be given the impression that crimes in high places are too often well hidden and, if exposed, too lightly sanctioned.
Besides, the crime seems to operate as a racket in the public service, regardless of rank because the process of documentation necessarily involves many persons who must collaborate to effect the crime. Hence the difficulty in detection, the scale of the crime and the need for stiffer sanction.
One other reason this punishment is inadequate for the crime is that it requires a special level of degeneracy to steal the retirement payment due to senior citizens who have paid their dues in the service of their country in the public or the private sector, and who have little or nothing else to live on. The immorality of the crime is, therefore, sufficiently outrageous to warrant punishment even harsher than approved by the house.
The point must also be made that pension thieves do, by their crime, offend the employee, the employer, and in some cases, the government as respective contributors to the scheme. Besides, the theft of pension fund constitutes an economic crime to the extent that it denies the system investible funds to create jobs and create wealth in the polity. And it should be said that this poorly managed economy is underperforming enough without a drain on available funds.
There are other costs to this crime. The social cost manifests in youth unemployment, idleness, and anti-social behaviour, the psychological debasement of otherwise respectable old men and women condemned to live below poverty level or even begging because some common criminals had made away with their just and entitled retirement benefits.
Indeed, delayed payment of pension, let alone outright pilfering of the funds, should attract very harsh punitive interest above the prevailing rate.
It is ridiculous, even outrageous that, whereas, in more transparent jurisdictions, the threat to the sustainability of pension schemes is the rise in the retired population vis-à-vis the reducing working population, here in Nigeria, the threat is barefaced stealing, directly by individuals, or by complex but illegal process of diversion of the funds by corporate actors.
Legislators may have done their bit to pass the law but the bane of the law in this land is enforcement.
It would not be out of place to call for a special offences court that tries and concludes quickly, such offences as pension fund theft and terrible crimes with high economic and social impact on the polity. The doubt is if this would ever work? After all, there are, in the statute books, including the Pension Act up for repeal, enough laws to deter criminality of all shades. A law is only as good as its enforcement.
Alas, for the simple reason that corruption is the shameful fashion, it has become difficult to achieve diligent investigation, prosecution, and administration of justice as every man seems to have his price and would bend once the money is good.
It is, therefore, not enough to prescribe stiffer punishment for pension thieves; it is even better to design better strategy to prevent the possibility of easy access to the funds by criminal-minded persons, be they highly placed officials or lesser ranked ones. Nigeria bleeds profusely via corruption on too many fronts. The pension funds ought not to be one of the avenues of that deadly haemorrhaging.
Source: The Guardian ng
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