After a period of ups and downs, the National Assembly controversially responded to pressure from the National Assembly Staff Association of Nigeria to extend the retirement age for NASS-affiliated civil servants from 60 to 65 years. Nigeria’s debt stands at 37.2% of GDP, another clear example of the powerlessness of parliament. President Bola Tinubu should immediately refuse to assent to the bill.
In a recent plenary session, the Senate agreed with the House after initially rejecting the bill. The bill was proposed by the Senate Majority Leader, Mr. Opeyemi Bamidele (Ekiti Central) for assent on the claim that it preserves institutional memory, and received the support of most senators. Thus, this book reached his third reading.
This debate in the Senate is hollow. To be sure, this is a bad bill, devoid of any comprehensive economic value and created solely to satisfy political whims. This would be counterproductive and further disrupt the uniformity of standard civil service retirement provisions. A long-standing law requires civil servants to serve for 35 years or retire at age 60, whichever comes first. The PASAN bill negates all this by proposing 40/65 years.
This bill is aimed at the opposite of current attempts to reform the federal civil service, reduce governance costs, and restore overall unemployment in the country.
Congress claimed that this was the practice in Britain and the United States. In Nigeria, extending the length of service will in no way alleviate the high unemployment rate as it will extend the retirement age of current PASAN members by another five years. The unemployment rate in the UK is 3.8% and in the US it is 3.70%.
This bill raises another problem. This means that recruitment for large numbers of graduates will be limited. Governance and pension costs will also rise.
As of the third quarter of 2023, the unemployment rate rose from 4.2% to 5.0%. Before the recent statistical revision he was pegged at 33.3% by the Office for National Statistics in the first quarter of 2023. According to Statisense, the youth unemployment rate rose from 6.9% (Q1) to 7.2% (Q2) and reached 8.6% in Q3 2023.
Truly, Nigeria is in a socio-economic quagmire. It spends 98% of its profits on debt repayments. According to NBS research, at least 63 percent of the population was multidimensionally poor in 2022. There should be more by now. Amid economic turmoil, Nigeria is grappling with labor costs. Folasad Yemi Ehsan, head of the Federal Civil Service, put the number of federal employees at 720,000.
NASS should have taken into account in advance the fact that PASAN members are no different from other civil servants.
The bill adds to calls for an extension of the retirement age for other civil servants passed by the Nigeria Labor Congress in May 2023.
The movement for upward review was controversially galvanized by Tinubu’s predecessor, Muhammadu Buhari. Mr. Buhari foolishly raised the retirement age for teachers from 60 to 65 in 2022 without considering all its advantages and disadvantages.
As part of the 46 Amendment Bill to the 1999 Constitution, the 9th NASS passed a bill to extend the retirement age of Federal High Court judges from 65 years to 70 years. He said this was based on the need to unify the retirement age in the judiciary.
But Tinubu must not follow suit. He must eliminate socio-economic illogicalities and focus on sustainable policies that boost the economy and reduce governance costs.