Festus Keyamo, Minister of Aviation and Aerospace Development, says President Bola Tinubu is clearing unpaid pensions and gratuities owed to former Nigeria Airways workers following the airline’s liquidation in September 2004, when Atiku Abubakar was vice-president.
Keyamo was reacting to a statement by Atiku, presidential
candidate of the African Democratic Congress (ADC), who blamed the Tinubu
administration for the rising cost of living in Nigeria.
Atiku accused Tinubu of implementing economic policies that
have made the country more expensive for businesses and households, promising
to reverse the trend if elected president.
Responding in a post on X on Wednesday, Keyamo accused Atiku
of hypocrisy, alleging that the Olusegun Obasanjo administration, in which
Atiku served as vice-president, liquidated the national carrier and left
thousands of workers without their pensions and gratuities.
“To add salt into their wounds, you refused to pay them
their pensions and gratuities, running into billions of Naira,” the minister
said.
“Twenty-two years later, after many of them have died out of
frustration, President Bola Ahmed Tinubu @officialABAT is now clearing the mess
you left behind.”
He said Tinubu approved and released N36 billion more than a
month ago to settle the outstanding benefits and being succour to the affected
families.
According to Keyamo, the former workers have started
receiving payment alerts, while their union recently gave Tinubu an award in
recognition of the intervention.
“Yet you sit down there and pontificate? It’s only the
younger ones who don’t know your history you can attempt to hoodwink, but we
will expose you to them. You cannot disguise your inordinate ambition in a
cloud of rhetorical gibberish,” he said.
“When it is convenient for you, you claim some credit of the
Obasanjo-Atiku government and when not convenient, you say Obasanjo was in
charge and not you as Vice-President. The proper posturing of a con artist!”
The federal government had concluded payment of outstanding
severance benefits to 2,100 former workers of Nigeria Airways Limited, more
than two decades after the national carrier was liquidated.
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