 Welcome back to The Breakfast Here on Plus TV Africa. Our final conversation this morning is going to be talking about corruption in Nigeria's pension system. A couple of days ago, the BBC put out an investigative report that was done by Yemisei Degoke and, of course, are produced by Katie Mark, exposing a lot of the issues that Nigerians and pensioners have in Nigeria and have been dealing with for many, many years. This morning we're speaking with the producer of that investigative work, Katie Mark. Good morning. Thanks for joining us. Yes, good morning. Good morning. Thank you for having me. All right. I watched all of the nine minutes of that documentary. It was really, really sad for me. So I want us to start by talking about the whole process, what inspired, what brought about the idea of investigating Nigeria's pension system and how did those things feel for you going through the documentary? You know, we were approached by a reporter from Calaver who told us that his mum was about to retire and she was being asked to pay a bribe. And he felt that this issue was wider. So we asked him to see if we could capture this. You know, people shouldn't be paying bribes for their pension. It's money that is legally theirs. He put on, he wore a secret camera and through secret filming we were able to capture him being asked to pay a bribe to get his mum's pension. You know, he was asked to pay three different bribes. And so he approached us and from there we started investigating. We found that there were so many issues in people trying to get their pension. And it was really sad because, you know, these are people that worked their whole lives for this pension and then it's come for them to retire. They paid into this pension. This isn't a favour the government is doing. This is their right. And they paid into the pension scheme and now they can't get it. It was, and to hear these people, you know, having to prove they're alive. Some people have spent years trying to prove their life but to get their money. They've worked hard. They've contributed to this country and now they should be relaxing and instead they are being, you know, struggling to get money that they are owed. So it was, it was, it was really sad. And it's so widespread as well. It's not just, you know, we concentrated on crossover because that's where our budget came from. That's when he asked us to do the investigation. But we found that the issue was happening all over, all over the country. So what are some of the loopholes you found, you know, when you produce this documentary? I want you to especially, you know, talk about the cases of people who were reported dead even though they're alive so they could not get their pension. You know, the bribery issue and all these loopholes, you know, in general. Yeah. So the work, the issue of ghost pensioners was a big one. So in, in Cross River when we're doing it, we found hundreds of names that have been put on a list of, they've been declared dead. So now they have to prove they're alive. This involves traveling to, to Calabar from wherever you are on the stage. You know, these are old people. Imagine eight hour bus journeys if you're 80 trying to get to this place. You have to prove you're alive. When they got there, they told us they were like subjected to, to dehumanizing treatment. They were, they were, there was one woman said they were treated as beggars on the street. There was a man that we spoke to that's been there five times, five times. He's old. He's trying to prove he's alive. He hasn't got any money. He's got, doesn't know anybody there. So he's sleeping on the street, you know, he was there for two weeks. Every day they've been told to come back. He was sleeping on the street in Calabar, this old man, having traveled the day and he's done that five times. You know, there's another man that we spoke to that had been a maths and science teacher for a really long time and it's the auditor general there that decides that if they should be verified, you know, this man knew the auditor general. They know, he knows him personally and he still, she still wasn't verifying him according to him. He asked, she asked him to apologize or asked he wouldn't get his pension. Your pension should not be dependent on apologizing to anybody. It is a right that you have, you know. So there were so many ways that, and we couldn't find the reason why this was being done. You know, we asked, we put our, all our claims to the officials that we investigated and none of them responded. Although since this has come out, there's been a bit more reaction and there's been reactions from people. And I think hopefully they'll be able to respond. Has there been any. So many opportunities to explain why they were doing this and they didn't. All right. So two things. Has there been any reaction from the government besides reactions to the documentary? Has there been any reactions from the government itself? And then also when, when they say people are dead, does that money still get paid out to a different person? No, it's just not paid. So, you know, ghost pension, this is a real, it's a real issue in Nigeria. So there are a lot of fictitious names that are put on lists and then someone is collecting that money. But the experts we talked to said this isn't done by people low down. This is normally done by other people high up that they can get away with it, right? And so it is a problem that needs to be fixed. But the real people that are being told their ghost pensioners, most of them are alive and in Cross River, 99% of them were alive. They were just told, there was suddenly one day the pension was stopped and looked on the list. So they, you know, they try and prove you're alive. It's obvious if, you know, we did it in one day, we went to a village where most people in that village have been put on the list of ghost pensioners. In one day, we were able to prove they're alive, you know, back statements, cards. Why is it taking the government years to do what we could do in one day? You know, if that's the case, if they're really trying to verify, then we need a better system that can do that. Reaction to the, you know, reaction from it, there's been so much positive reaction, you know, since it's gone online, because everybody, a lot of people seem to know somebody that this affects, right? And even if you're young, you think it doesn't affect you, it affects everybody, because if it's not working now, it's not going to work for us when we get there. You know, there's so much debt to pensioners to clear it. They need to start doing something about it now. You know, we spoke to Senator Shani, who told us that a lot of, you know, politicians get a lot of money for their pension. So why aren't ordinary people getting that money? That, you know, so he told us that like one governor, the pension of one governor could settle the pensions of three to four thousand teachers or something like that. You know, it's, it's really a lot. Yeah. Looking at this reality of how much a governess, you know, earns as pension for serving the government for just four years, and what a pensioner gets, which is essentially zero in most cases, after working for almost 60, 65 years of their lives, how did this make you feel, especially getting so involved in the story? Now, it's so sad, you know, because you can, you can, you can see the disparity and the, you don't need, you know, there was, there's some places where if you're a governor, you can get four times what you were being paid as your pension, you get health costs, you get medical costs, you get cars, you get houses, you know, the state dedicates so much to one person when they're thousands of people that aren't getting anything. And so, and when you hear their personal stories, you know, they're not even asked for much. Some people are getting nine thousand Naira a month as pension. Why can't they pay nine thousand Naira a month, you know, if you can pay hundreds of thousands of Naira for someone that served four years. And, you know, some states are trying to do something about it, not all states, some states are worse than others, and some people are trying to do something about it, but it hasn't been enough, you know, that our pensioners are suffering, and there's a lot of them. All right, so what would you expect to happen next? What do you expect to be, it should be the response after this documentary? We hope to get some sort of, you know, when we were doing it, we tried to get official response, it was hard. But now, since this has come out, we hear that there's going to be a response from across the state government, we hope to get a response from across the state government to explain to these people because we didn't come, they told us these stories, we weren't trying to elicit these stories. We found, we thought, we didn't realize how big it was until we started doing it, so there were so many pensioners that were suffering, they should give us a response, and we gave them so much opportunity, we approached them numerous times to give us a response, so we hope there's a response from them. We hope just that people can see that this is happening, you know, just also just awareness, because now people think it's happening to them, to see that it's happening to a lot of people, that brings awareness, that brings a conversation, and we hope that conversation turns into action, you know. And you also expect the woman who, you know, was filming the video collecting bribes, I think she got 5,000 nair from one of the things that I watched, would you expect a person like that to be fired or to at least be punished for being a part of the corrupt system that is limiting people from getting their pensions? Yeah, so altogether she actually took 21,000 nair because she asked for three separate books, she kept asking, just seeing how far she could push it, right? But you know, I also don't want to, you know, she's not the problem, she's part of the system that's problematic, so I don't want it to be like she's the one to blame for this. If people are getting paid properly, it goes way higher than her, so I don't want it to be like she's a scapegoat and that's what happens, because that's not the problem, if they don't change the system, it doesn't matter if they fire her or not, there'll still be problems in the system, and I don't want it to be like just one individual is being told that she's to blame, it's not like that, it's a problematic system, it's an inefficient and corrupt system that we have for pensions. So now that, you know, we know the scale of the problem, lots of people who are alive, declared dead by the government, being denied their pension, you know, people working in those government offices, collecting bribes from pensioners who are basically suffering. Now that we know, you know, just how serious this situation is, talking about the federal government, not just the state government, what's the expected response? This is the problem, because each, because the states, you know, we've been told for a really long time that the system is going to change, we've had promises from the top, the pensioners are going to be taken care of, they're going to clear the backlog, we know that in 2019, it was something like 400 billion naira was owed to pensioners, right? So they need to step in. And also, you know, recently, we know that they're trying to like invest pensioners' monies and all that kind of thing. So the federal government does need to step in to do something, but obviously we're in a federal system. So each individual state has its responsibility, they can do something individually, whether the federal government steps in or not. I think that, yes, we should hear something from the top, we should hear someone saying this is unacceptable, and something needs to be done about it. But states can start right now to do something like that, they can start cubbing the excessive pensions of governors, you know, and start giving that money to people who worked for the state for the whole time. But I know that they've been promises, and I just hope they come through with those promises, they keep saying they're going to, but we're not seeing any change on the ground. Katie Mark, thank you very much for your time and your thoughts you've shared with us on the breakfast. And this very important issue of, you know, the pensions, scam the pension fraud, and basically the corruption in our pension system. And we do hope, like the government says, that it would do something about it. Thank you so much for having me. All right, have a great day. And I hope it's not a conversation that ends after the, you know, documentary drops, you know, the BBC every now and then carries out these types of investigative work. It's important to see the reaction from the government. It's one of the things that we both asked, what's the reaction from the government? What's the reaction from the people? That's where the change should come from. You know, if everyone stays silent and, you know, just says, oh, sad, and then goes, you know, to sleep, nothing would change. Just too many of these people who've dedicated 35, 40 years of their lives to service in Nigeria, both on a local, state and federal levels, that don't deserve to be treated this way. Nobody wants to see an 80-year-old man struggling to fill paper, work for his pension. I mean, in the documentary, it's one of the men, one of the, you know, the pensioners mentioned how he had to withdraw his kids from school because he could not afford the cost of education. So the government doesn't have to do something. And how much is it really? Nine thousand. These pensions that we're talking about. I mean, how much, even if it's a hundred thousand, even if it's 60,000 nair, how much is it really that Nigeria cannot afford? You know, and where does the money go to when you write off people and declare them as dead? You know, where does the money then go to? Even if you write them as dead, no efforts to reach out to the next of kin because they should be able to receive some form of benefit. And like she said, it's a system that is flawed and it's a bad system that needs to be fixed. Yes, that woman doesn't need to suffer for the use of it, but she needs to be fired also if she's collecting money from people. How many people have she collected that bribe? She said, you're coming to a shrine, so you have to be an offering. Yes. So how many, let's now imagine how many people she's collected bribe from just to get their pension. She's going to retire someday, so she should be fired. Let her understand the gravity of the crowd. But you know what? She learned that from people she met there in the office. So since those ones weren't caught, she should be fired. So the person who takes over her position understands why she was fired. And yes, it may not fix the rotten whole system, but she shouldn't go home and give that $5,000 to her husband. But I doubt they would fire her because, you know, these people are involved in this. I probably need to cut out that part of the documentary and just post it by myself, just to ensure that she gets more publicity and she's fired. Because I know, I know, do you know what it means for a 70-year-old, a 65-year-old and 80-year-old to be begging for their pensions after giving 40 years of their lives? And you're giving a Nigerian worker who's also earning salary from government, giving her $21,000 so that she can process your papers. Has she actually gotten her salary in the past three months? That's another question we need to ask. She should be jailed. But anyway, that's actually private because she should be jailed, not just fired. Why not join in on the conversation? Well, on Plus TV Africa, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, everywhere you go, find us, watch replays on all our social media platforms as well, and on our YouTube channel at Plus TV Africa. And please follow our new YouTube channel at Plus TV Africa Lifestyle. I am Annetta Felix. And I am Osaugi Ogbonwan. We wish you a beautiful Tuesday ahead. See you tomorrow. And take it easy.