The presidential candidate of the African Democratic Congress (ADC), Atiku Abubakar, has criticised President Bola Tinubu over his comments linking Nigeria’s pension challenges to the administration of former President Olusegun Obasanjo, urging the President to stop blaming past governments and focus on addressing the country’s current challenges.
In a statement issued on Friday by the Atiku Media Office, the former Vice President described Tinubu’s remarks as “ghosting and futile political shadow chasing,” insisting that the All Progressives Congress-led administration should take responsibility for governance rather than dwell on previous administrations.
“Government is a continuum. The present helmsmen cannot continue to waste valuable national time and resources on ghosting and blaming past administrations. A successor must inherit assets and liabilities,” the statement said.
The statement was in response to comments reportedly made by President Tinubu while receiving a delegation of North-East political stakeholders led by Borno State Governor Babagana Zulum, where he blamed the country’s pension backlog on the Obasanjo administration.
Defending the record of the Obasanjo/Atiku administration, the former Vice President said his government inherited an unfunded and unsustainable Defined Benefits Scheme in 1999 but introduced sweeping reforms that transformed Nigeria’s pension system.
According to the statement, the administration enacted the Pension Reform Act of 2004, established the National Pension Commission (PenCom) and introduced the Contributory Pension Scheme, which replaced the old pay-as-you-go system with a fully funded retirement savings framework managed by private Pension Fund Administrators and Custodians.
The statement argued that the reforms eliminated the accumulation of new unfunded pension liabilities and laid the foundation for Nigeria’s pension assets, which have grown into trillions of naira.
It added that rather than criticising past administrations, the Tinubu government should consolidate on the reforms already in place.
“This is what Tinubu should be building upon and not quarrelling with his tools like a bad farmer,” the statement said.
Atiku also urged the President to focus on addressing pressing national issues, including hunger, insecurity, unemployment and economic hardship.
“Tinubu should focus on resetting the salient issues of hunger and anger in the land, mostly caused by unabated insecurity, alarming mass youth unemployment, broken-down economy, strangulating social environment and wanton destruction of the nation’s political fabrics,” the statement added.
