Families Left in Debt as Plateau Owes ₦24.95bn in Pension Arrears

Philemon Obeze

Some afternoons during her primary school days in Jos, Daya Dayil did not go home with her classmates. She went instead to the office. Her father, Daniel Dawang Dayil, would collect her and take her to his office at the Plateau Agricultural Development Programme, where he served as a director. She would sit quietly in a corner while he concluded meetings, signed files, and finished the day’s work, because there was no one else to watch her. 

Her mother had died when she was very young, and from that moment her father rearranged his entire life. He became both parents at once: provider and nurturer, disciplinarian and comforter. Daniel raised four of his daughters (Daya is the youngest) alone while carrying the responsibilities of a senior civil servant in Plateau State, North Central Nigeria. Work could easily have consumed him. It would have been simpler to retreat into it, to let official duties crowd out private grief, but he chose instead to adjust his life around his children.

“He didn’t just work to provide,” Daya said. “He showed up.”

Daniel was the first born in a family of fifteen, the first to attend school, the only one to earn a university degree, and the first to secure formal employment. Civil service was not merely a job for him; it was proof that education could transform a family’s future. He served in the belief that if anything happened to him, the system he had devoted his career to would protect his children. 

He died in 2017 at the age of 60. Nine years later, his gratuity remains unpaid.

Across Nigeria, pension arrears remain a significant fiscal and social issue. According to the 2025 State of States report by BudgIT, Plateau State owed ₦24.95 billion in pension and gratuity arrears as of December 2024. Nationally, 27 of Nigeria’s 36 states were reported to owe a combined ₦626.81 billion in unpaid pensions and gratuities during the same period.

These figures place Plateau State within a broader nationwide backlog affecting thousands of retired civil servants and their families, despite pensions and gratuities being statutory entitlements under Nigeria’s Pension Reform Act and international law. 

Article 22 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights guarantees the right to social security, while Article 25 affirms the right to an adequate standard of living, including food, housing, and medical care. Similarly, the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights, domesticated in Nigeria, obligates the state to protect dignity and welfare.

At the time of his death, Daya was 23 and in her first semester at university, she is now 32. Instead of the stability her father had worked to secure, the family entered a bureaucratic maze of pension board visits, affidavits, bank documentation, court processes, and repeated capturing exercises. Each new requirement carried the suggestion of progress, yet none brought resolution.

Pensions are not gestures of compassion; they are deferred wages, compensation for years already worked. When such payments are delayed for nearly a decade despite budgetary approval, the issue moves beyond administrative inefficiency and raises questions about the protection of fundamental rights.

“It is both pathetic and a misnomer for any government saddled with the constitutional responsibility of protecting lives and property to fail in paying retirees their pensions and gratuities — entitlements they earned through years of dedicated service,” said Seyilnen Lazu, a Plateau State-based legal practitioner. 

After Daniel’s death, Daya’s elder sister, listed as next of kin, submitted every required document. The family complied with each directive and attended every exercise. Still, the gratuity has not been released. 

“The journey has been slow and emotionally draining,” Daya told JoeyOffAir “There are delays, long periods without communication, and no clear timeline.”

Without the gratuity, survival became precarious. School fees were delayed or covered through loans, medical treatment was sometimes postponed, and feeding the household depended on savings and temporary work. Even accessing a small accumulated pension sum required further struggle, as files reportedly went missing more than once, banks imposed charges, and court processes demanded percentages. What should have been a routine disbursement has become a prolonged ordeal.

“It has placed us under continuous financial strain,” she said. 

Daya’s experience is not isolated. Rejoice’s father died in service in 2015, and his gratuity also remains pending. Her brother attended multiple capturing exercises over several years, each one renewing hope that payment would follow. On the day of one such exercise he fell ill, and she attended in his place. Days later, he died. 

“Anytime we heard about capturing, it felt like hope,” she said. “But nothing came out of it.”

Now recognised as next of kin, Rejoice has completed yet another round of documentation and is still waiting.

In another family, Victor Peter was in secondary school when his father died around 2012 and 2013. Like the other families we interviewed, they also fulfilled every requirement, including pension board visits, affidavits, newspaper publication of claims, and submission of bank details. They received about ₦100,000. No further payment followed. His mother turned to small-scale farming and petty trading to keep the family afloat, while Victor took on menial jobs before eventually learning video production. He describes the treatment of retirees and their families as deeply discouraging.

“Seeing how retirees and their families are treated is discouraging,” he said.

When social protection systems fail at moments of death, disability, or old age, their very purpose is undermined. Social security is a core state obligation; it is neither discretionary nor dependent on persistence, connections, or repeated documentation. Without transparency and accountability, approved budgets offer little reassurance to grieving families, and the delay of earned benefits erodes not only household stability, but public trust in institutions.

Caleb Mutfwang, the Plateau State Governor, has acknowledged the backlog of pension and gratuity entitlements inherited from previous administrations, admitting that the system was previously plagued by corruption. “We inherited huge pension liabilities and a system that was compromised. To correct this, we have structured payments based strictly on the year of retirement to ensure equity and transparency,” he said during a meeting with members of the Nigeria Union of Pensioners in April 2025. 

Although official records indicate that approximately ₦300 million is approved monthly for civil service pension obligations in Plateau State, interviews with affected families reveal unresolved cases stretching back more than ten years. Funds are allocated, announcements are made, and processes are repeated, yet many Plateau State civil servants’ families remain unpaid.

JoeyOffAir reached out to the Plateau State Pension Board for comments but received no response as at the time of this report.

In June 2025, Grace Shwarta Dongkum, the Plateau State Commissioner for Finance, said during an interview on state-owned PRTV that “…with meticulous expenses and counterpart funding, the Ministry was able to clear the four months backlog of salaries and arrears inherited from the previous administration […] the Ministry has also been able to pay gratuity from 1986 to 2012.”

The commissioner, however, did not address the issue of pensions in a readout that was published on the state government’s official Facebook page following the PRTV interview.

For serving Plateau State civil servants, these unresolved cases send a troubling signal. They suggest that decades of service may not guarantee posthumous protection for their families, despite the assurances embedded in law and policy.

Daniel, for instance, fulfilled his duty to the state. He buried his wife, raised four daughters alone, balanced leadership with fatherhood, and served for decades in public office. The social contract under which he worked promised that service would be met with security. Nine years after his burial, that promise remains unfulfilled.

The right to social security exists precisely for moments when a family loses its breadwinner. When that right is delayed indefinitely, dignity is diminished, trust is fractured, and grief is prolonged by bureaucracy. Each month, pension funds are approved for Plateau State civil servants, yet many families remain suspended between law and reality, waiting for benefits already earned.

The pressing question is no longer whether the money exists, but whether the state will honour the rights it has already recognised.

“Justice must not only be served — it must be served promptly. As the saying goes, justice delayed is justice denied,” Seyilnen added. 

This story was funded by the HumAngle Foundation under the Strengthening Community Journalism and Human Rights Advocacy in Northern Nigeria project, with support from the Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands in Nigeria.