The presidential candidate of the African Democratic Congress (ADC), Atiku Abubakar, has slammed President Bola Tinubu over comments linking Nigeria’s pension challenges to the Obasanjo administration, urging him to stop “ghosting and shadow chasing” and focus on fixing the country’s pressing problems.
In a statement issued on Friday by the Atiku Media Office and made available to The News Chronicle, the former vice president described Tinubu’s remarks as a distraction, insisting that the APC-led administration should stop blaming past governments and instead take responsibility for governance.
Atiku’s response followed Tinubu’s comments during a meeting with North-East political leaders led by Borno State Governor Babagana Zulum, where the President reportedly blamed the country’s pension backlog on the administration of former President Olusegun Obasanjo.
According to Atiku, governance is a continuum, and every administration inherits both the achievements and challenges of its predecessor.
He argued that when the Obasanjo/Atiku administration assumed office in 1999, it inherited an “unfunded and broken” pension system burdened by liabilities estimated at over ₦2 trillion, but chose to implement reforms rather than assign blame.
The former vice president said the administration introduced the landmark Pension Reform Act of 2004, established the National Pension Commission (PenCom), and replaced the old Defined Benefits Scheme with a fully funded Contributory Pension Scheme managed by private Pension Fund Administrators (PFAs) and Pension Fund Custodians (PFCs).
He maintained that the reforms eliminated the accumulation of new unfunded pension liabilities, curbed ghost pensioners, improved transparency, and laid the foundation for Nigeria’s pension industry, which has since grown into assets worth trillions of naira.
“It is mischievous for President Tinubu not to acknowledge the robust pension framework his administration inherited,” the statement said.
Atiku further argued that the Obasanjo administration also laid the foundation for major economic reforms, including debt relief, banking consolidation, telecommunications expansion, and other infrastructure-driven initiatives.
He urged Tinubu to concentrate on tackling what he described as Nigeria’s real crises, including rising hunger, worsening insecurity, mass youth unemployment, economic hardship, and social instability, instead of blaming administrations that left office nearly two decades ago.
