The Federal Government will spend the sum of N292bn on the payment of pensions and gratuities of personnel in the military, police, Department of State Services, Customs, Nigeria Intelligence Agency, prisons and others.
This is out of the total of N854.8bn the Federal Government earmarked for pensions, gratuities and retirees’ benefits in the 2023 budget.
The President, Major General Muhammadu Buhari, (retd.), on Tuesday in Abuja signed the 2023 budget of N21.83tn along with the 2022 Supplementary Appropriation Bill into law.
Speaking at the signing of the eighth and final annual budget of his regime, the President said the aggregate expenditures of N21.83tn, was an increase of N1.32tn over the initial executive proposal for a total expenditure of N20.51tn.
According to the approved 2023 budget, pensions and gratuities of the military will gulp a total of N244.6bn; the police will get N8.9bn; Customs, N10.1bn; DSS, N18.5bn; and the NIA, N10.5bn.
Out of the N244, 563,112,535 allocated to the military, N149bn will go to pensions, expected retirees will get N36.6bn, while death benefits for the military sum up to N21.7bn among others.
Also embedded therein were the arrears of gratuities between January to December 2019 and 2021, which amounted to N3.1bn; the arrears on pensions during the same timeline was N2bn, while the arrears on death benefits also stood at N2.1bn.
Out of the N8,865,447,818 set aside for the police, pensions for police officers will gulp N8.71bn while the rest will go to pension running costs.
Joint agencies of the Customs, Immigration and correctional service got a total of N10,071,632,237. Out of the entire sum, N9.8bn will be spent on pensions and N108m on gratuities and death benefits.
The DSS was allocated a total sum of N18, 476,981,906, with pensions, including arrears, amounting to N12bn, gratuity, N1.6bn; death benefits, N606m, and areas on both pensions and gratuity amounting to over N4.1bn.
The Nigeria Intelligence Agency will get N10,499,436,023, out of which pensions/dependant benefits will take N6.96bn. The Federal Government set aside N300m and N3.2bn for pensions running cost with gratuity/long service severance package, respectively.
The Military Pensions Board had commenced the payment of the owed security debarment allowance to eligible military retirees or the next of kin of deceased military officers.
According to the board, over 90,000 military retirees who retired before 2017 were originally not among those to benefit from the allowance.
The President, during the inauguration of the 2023 Armed Forces Remembrance Day Emblem and Appeal Fund in 2022, said he had approved N134.7bn for the payment of the allowance to all military veterans.
Buttressing this in a statement, the Chairman, Military Pensions Board, Rear Admiral Saburi Lawal, said the board had commenced the payment after an agreement was reached with the retirees.
The statement read in part, “The Military Pensions Board wishes to inform our esteemed military retirees and the general public that the board has commenced payment of the first and second tranches (that is, for the first and second quarters, 2023) of the SDA to eligible military retirees/next of Kins of deceased military personnel.
“The beneficiaries of these payments are military retirees on the MPB database who retired before November 9, 2017, deceased military retirees who were alive when the MAFA was signed on November 9, 2017, and non-pensionable retirees who retired before November 9, 2017, but were only paid gratuities.”
