Pensioners in Taraba State on Monday 24th of October 2022, renewed their mass protest after 30 days of consecutive protests in August 2022.
The renewal of the protest followed the fresh N5.5bn loan approved for Governor Darius Ishaku by the Taraba State House of Assembly on last week.
The protesting pensioners who marched to the House of Assembly Jalingo wondered why Governor Ishaku has been insensitive to their plight after collecting various loans from different institutions, a federal government bailout, and the Paris club refund.
While demanding their entitlements, the Chairman of the state Pension Union, Comrade Silas Jafta on behalf of the retirees also demanded an account of all the debt collected by the state government since 2015 to save the future of the state.
“We are out again to protest for our rights, we want governor Ishaku to be sensitive and pay us our retirement benefits”.
“The governor has collected a lot of loans. He has no project to point at as to what he has used the monies for. He keeps borrowing and Taraba state is gradually becoming the most indebted state in Nigeria but our entitlements are still not considered after retiring for over ten years.
“While we demand that the N5.5bn loan that was approved last week for ruler roads completion should be used to begin the payment of our entitlements, we also demand an immediate investigation into all the monies collected by the governor since he has no reasonable project on the ground,”.
Meanwhile, the Speaker Taraba State House of Assembly, Prof. Joseph Albasu Kunini refused to attend to the protesting pensioners after waiting for over four hours at the assembly’s gate.
Reacting to the N5.5bn loan approved by the state assembly, both the governorship candidates of the Labour Party and the APC in the state, Senator Danlami Ikenya, and Senator Emmanuel Bwacha kicked against the decision of the state house of assembly.
They challenged that the governor cannot pay back N5.5bn in the next seven months of his administration, therefore, should not add more debt to the ones he had already incurred for the state.
“No serious commercial bank would give such loans to an administration that is about to leave office in the next few months without the capacity to pay back”.
They were of the views that the money borrowed was not for any meaningful project.
Sani Sulaiman