Grandma Ayo and the pensioners’ curse

BY MICHAEL OLATUBOSUN

After stumbling on a verification exercise of pensioners by the Lagos state government, held on Monday, Olatubosun paints a scene of anguish and misery — and a near-death experience.

“The government is just making us suffer,” I hear a man in his late 60s say to two of his peers as I walk around the premises of the Local Government Establishment and Pensions Office (aka Pensions Board) situated in the Old Secretariat on Oba Akinjobi Road in Ikeja.

“They should have fixed this verification earlier in the year around March, not now during the rainy season. See the troubles we are facing; it is unfair.”

Besides the three men, there are hundreds of other aged pensioners about, many of them arriving as early as 7am for a documentation scheduled to begin at 9am. They look lost and forsaken yet anxious to know what to do, where to go and to know which official will treat their files.  A few paced back and forth, searching frantically for which piece of plain paper they need to write their names on.

Indeed, it has rained all morning and all the senior citizens are wet to their underwear, shivering under a few canopies; the chairs are insufficient, so most of them stand about with their documents firmly in their grip or under their armpits. Those too old or too sickly to go through the stress, sit in the vehicles they have come in. The much older ones, frail and grey, pick their steps slowly and in pain, aided by walking sticks or supported by their relatives.

The overall scene is one of disorder, one that breaks the heart.

Shortly, my gaze falls on a woman standing all by herself and holding tightly to one of the poles of a canopy with one hand and an umbrella in the other. She can’t be younger than 70. I notice that the upper half of her body, from her arms up to her head, is shaking nonstop; that sight immediately brings the late Muhammed Ali to mind, so I guess that this must be the early stage of Parkinson’s.

Grandma Ayo is partially blind, soaking wet and standing in a puddle, unable to move an inch. “I am trying to find the people that brought me here, my husband and grandson with the driver,” she says when I walk up to her to offer some assistance. “My documents and my phone are with one of them. This is bad—without them I can’t do anything.”

That’s not Grandma Ayo’s only dilemma. She also wants to locate the owner of the umbrella she is holding but isn’t sure under which of the eight odd canopies around the man is likely to be. It is one of those blue ones, she says. There are five of those and in the midst of the present disorderliness, it is impossible to find anyone too far away from where you are, especially if one’s vision is poor.

Just then, one of the co-coordinators, himself a retired pensioner who is impressively agile for his age, steps forward to  make some announcements. “If you retired any date after 1^st April 2000, you shouldn’t be here — please go home,” he says at the top of his voice, so that his listeners can pick his words above the pounding of the rain. “Also, if for any reason you could not or did not do your verification last November, you can stay back. If you don’t fall into any of these two categories, today’s exercise is not for you. Please leave.”

Almost immediately, the affected pensioners — those who needn’t be here — show their displeasure, mumbling, grumbling and vexing. Why didn’t they inform us earlier? Why do they have to make us come all the way, only to tell us this here and now?

Everything smacks of improper planning or a deliberate attempt to frustrate. The pensioners, I learn, have come from the 57 local governments of the state.  That, perhaps, is where the management of the pensions board has erred. What’s wrong with decentralising the verification and organising it per LGA or LCDA?

It makes more sense to have younger people who presently work with the Board to visit the LGAs and LCDAs to carry out the necessary verification, rather have these elderly people jump buses from tens of kilometres away to have their documents verified. It shouldn’t be too much to do for folks who spent at least 30 years of their lives serving the state.

Meanwhile, Grandma Ayo is still on her feet, trembling and confused. She is standing near a puddle, unable to take a step forward. I hold her shaky right hand and lead her slowly around, both of us hoping that one of her family will spot us, or the umbrella’s owner. After 15 minutes of that, nothing of such happens. Still, there are no empty chairs for her to sit on; everyone who needs to step away from where they are seated take their chairs with them, or they ask their wards to sit on it till they return.

It’s gone past 10 am, and none of the officials has come. The grandees really have no choice — they are at the mercy of the elements and have to wait till they show up. At that point a funny thought crosses my mind: I’m happy I am not a civil servant and won’t have to put up with this sort of treatment when I retire.

Hours later, at about 2pm, a woman slumps and is rushed out of the compound in an ambulance.  “Let’s just hope that she doesn’t die,” one female pensioner says, an umbrella over her head.

Over the last decade or so, newspapers publish countless stories of retirees in different parts of the country who faint and die while waiting in a queue for a similar exercise such as this; unfortunately, it is a cross their mates continue to carry in a country that has lost its heart, its soul and the tiniest morsel of propriety.

Shortly, the woman is on the phone to another pensioner who couldn’t make it to the Board today. “Don’t come oh, except you have the strength to stand for a long time and you have eaten well,” she warns. “With your condition, I don’t think you can withstand what we are going through here.”

After the call, the woman turns to her companion. “She has partial stroke. How can she cope with all this wahala? We are old people and we are not getting any younger, you know.”

The pain and regret in her voice is unmistakable. At this time, the officials have started to treat the files; and minute by minute, the crowd thins out.