The Federal Secretariat in Abuja went agog on Thursday as news filtered to thousands of workers that President Bola Ahmed Tinubu has restored payment of gratuity to federal civil servants.
Reacting to the development, Shehu Mohammed and Joshua Apebo, president and secretary-general of the Association of Senior Civil Servants of Nigeria (ASCSN), lauded the President Tinubu-led administration for listening to the cries of the workers.
The restored the exit benefit scheme grants retiring federal civil servants a gratuity equal to 100 percent of their total annual emolument.
“We are really glad that after decades of struggles by the Union to ensure that Federal Civil Servants who have served the country for 35 years or attained 60 years of age whichever comes first can now be rewarded as it used to be in past.
“We wish to recall that gratuity to Federal Civil Servants was stopped when the Pension Reforms Act 2004 was enacted even though the Act did not expressly abolish payment of gratuity,” the Union stated.
According to the labour leaders, since 2004 the Association had sent several memoranda to Council, wrote series of letters to the Government and on 19th August 2022, when the then national leadership of the Association visited late President Muhammadu Buhari at the Presidential Villa in 2022, the issue was brought to his attention and he promised to work towards the restoration of gratuity, but nothing was done until he left power in 2023.
“We look forward to the implementation of the new gratuity scheme to federal civil servants from January 2026 as President Tinubu has directed so that the morale of civil servants can be further boosted.”
“We assure our teeming members that we will monitor the development closely and ensure that it is implemented accordingly,” the Union emphasised.
The labour leaders posited that gratuity is a monetary benefit given by an employer to his or her employee at the time of retirement without any contribution made by the worker which can be used for post-retirement ventures.
They noted that the payment of gratuity was predicted in the concept that those who have laboured for public and private organisations for decades are entitled to the proverbial “golden handshake” from their employers for their mental and physical exertions during the course of their services.See_More…