The Socio-Economic Rights and Accountability Project (SERAP) has implored President Bola Tinubu to enforce a judgment of a Federal High Court in Lagos which declared payment of pensions to former governors as unlawful. SERAP also called on the President to devise strategies to recover pensions already collected by former governors and to challenge the legality of states’ pension laws permitting those involved to collect such outrageous pensions.
The civil society organization made the demand in an open letter dated March 23, 2024, addressed to President Tinubu, and signed by SERAP’s Deputy Director, Kolawole Oluwadare. SERAP equally urged the President to emulate Governor Alex Otti of Abia State, who recently signed into law a bill abolishing the Abia State Governors and Deputy Governors Pensions Law No 4 of 2001, by urgently obeying the judgment, delivered by Honourable Justice Oluremi Oguntoyinbo, on November 26, 2019. It stated that unless the judgment is immediately obeyed, former governors and their deputies, including those now serving as ministers in the current administration and members of the National Assembly who receive pensions, would continue to evade justice for their actions.
