President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, boarded one of the presidential jets, heading for official engagements in Western Europe
The Federal Government has announced the commencement of payment of N18bn in outstanding severance benefits to 2,700 retirees of the defunct Nigeria Airways about 25 years after government liquidated the national airline.
Taiwo Oyedele, Minister of Finance and the Coordinating Minister of the Economy, formally mace the announcement at a media briefing on Friday in Abuja.
Oyedele said the retirees were arranged into seven batches which comprised of 2,100 former workers and had already received their benefits.
He added that an additional 600 beneficiaries were arranged into two other batches, eight and nine, and had also been cleared for payment.
The minister acknowledged that the payment failed to take cognizance of the obvious depreciation in value of what the benefit was worth over two decades ago and said the government merely paid the amounts documented and verified.
Oyedele however, acknowledged that inflation had substantially eroded the value of the money over the period but said there was no provision for inflationary adjustment in the settlement.
Defending government failure to consider the depreciation of the money moreover, it was the current government that as part of its policy, intentionally devalued the Naira; he volunteered, “We recognized that no payment today can fully compensate for more than two decades of waiting, but it is important that government confronts these long-standing obligations rather than allowing them to remain unresolved for another generation,” he said.
Explaining the rationale for payment allotment in batches the minister said the payments were being made in batches so that verified beneficiarie
He added that the exercise covered different categories of former Nigeria Airways employees, without distinction between junior and senior workers.
Oyedele explained that the payments followed extensive verification, including biometric capturings and validation of the beneficiaries’ personal and banking information.
He said the process was necessary to prevent fraudulent claims and ensure that only verified beneficiaries received the payments.
The minister said further verification would be undertaken to resolve cases involving outdated information, incorrect bank details and beneficiaries who had died before receiving their entitlements.
For deceased beneficiaries, he said payments would be made to their documented next-of-kin or estates after the completion of the required legal processes.
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