Thinking of your Retirement by Ibekwe Egbuka

 

 THINKING OF YOUR RETIREMENT

BY

IBEKWE.CHUKU. EGBUTA

Chapter One

THE TIME TO RETIRE

The concept of retirement is based on the general fact that both productivity and the pleasure to work diminish with old age. Under normal circumstances, the employer would lay off the worker when the cost of retaining him outweighs his contribution to the profitability of the enterprise. On the other hand, the worker would desire to effect a final Separation from his job when the physical and mental strain of labour (due to old age) outweighs whatever satisfaction or income he obtains from it. However, in practice, retirement is not strictly based on these two extreme conditions, rather, the basic factors which determine when a worker should retire are:

(a) The policy of his employer on retiring age, and

(b) The volition of the worker to retire earlier than normal age of retirement as stated in his conditions of service.

 

These two factors are not necessarily mutually exclusive, rather, in most cases, the employer’s policy contains the guidelines on the procedure for voluntary retirement. However, the motives and the consequences of retiring at the limit of one’s statutory working life and those of retiring earlier are often so different that the two need to be considered separately.

I. EMPLOYER’S POLICY ON RETIREMENT

 

In Nigeria, where the government is the largest employer of labour, its policies are widely adopted by independent industrial and commercial organizations. This is particularly the case in the issue of retiring age. Thus we can go ahead to discuss the government’s policy on the worker’s retirement age and accept such discussion as the standard for all sectors of the economy in the country.

 

(1) Normal Statutory Retirement

 

The current government regulations on the retiring age of workers is contained in the PENSION DECREE of 1979, known also as Decree No 102. The Part I, section 4 of this decree, states that:

(i) Every officer shall retire upon attaining the age of 60 years, so however that for officers retiring on or before 31St March, 1977, the compulsory retiring age shall be 55 years.

(ii) The Commissioner may require an officer to retire from the service at any time after he has attained the age of 45 years subject to three month’s notice in writing of such requirement being given. Some explanation is needed to make the intents of sub-section (i) above more understandable. The decree itself was promulgated by the Federal Military Government under Alhaji Shehu Shagari. Even though the decree was published in 1979, it was “deemed to have come into force on 1st April, 1974”.

In practical terms therefore, the second part of this subsection is saying that for those officers of the government who retired between 1st April, 1974 and 31st March, 1977, the compulsory retiring age would be 55 years, which was the case before the decree came into effect. As from April 1, 1977, however, the retiring age became 60 years and that is still the o-n-going limit up till now. It is necessary to call attention to the provision made in subsection 2 of this part of the Pension Decree, which gives the Minister in charge of pensions, power to retire officers “at any time after they have attained the age of 45 years subject to three month’s notice in writing, of such requirement being given”. In other words, the Pension Decree provides that the earliest normal retiring age should be 45years while the latest age is 60 years.

2. Retirement Under Unusual Circumstances

 

In addition to the above provisions on the retiring age, the Decree further provides for retirement outside the above normal age range. The conditions under which this can happen are contained in paragraphs (c) to (h) of section 3 of the Pension Decree and could be summarized as follows:

(i) A worker could be compulsorily retired “for the purpose of facilitating improvement in the organization of his department or ministry so that greater efficiency or economy may be effected.

(ii) He could be retired ‘on the advice of a properly constituted medical board certifying that the officer is no longer mentally or physically capable of carrying out the functions of his office”.

(iii) He could be retired if he is totally or permanently disabled while in service,

(iv) He could be retired if as a result of reorganization in his department or ministry, his office is abolished and he cannot be transferred to another office.

(v) The worker could be required to retire by the Public Service Commission on the ground that his retirement is in the public interest, and

(vi) He could be required to retire in order for him “to take up appointment in a local government or as a member or head thereof, with the prior consent of the Minister, if the Minister is satisfied that such retirement is in the public interest.”

 

“If a worker relinquishes his job before he is 60 years old and before he has sewed up to 15 years, he is not regarded as having retired but merely as having withdrawn his service. In that case, he does not qualify for retirement benefits except that he could be paid some gratuity if he has served for up to 10 years”

Retirement resulting from the above circumstances occurs far a part among workers, and do so in such a random manner that we should not ordinarily bother about them. Besides, most people who are retired under

these circumstances do not consider themselves terminally out of full employment. They usually hope to, and often succeed in getting alternative jobs somewhere. However, the employment squeeze in the country has reached a degree where this category of retired people should not be too optimistic of readily getting alternative jobs. Therefore, it behoves the worker to make an early start in the planning of his retirement so as to be able to withstand the jolts of early compulsory retirement if it occurs.

II. VOLUNTARY RETIREMENT

 

Except in a few service areas such as the National Youth Service and the Security Services during national emergencies, the ordinary worker n Nigeria has the right to withdraw his services at will under given procedures. However, in official terms, not every such voluntary withdrawal of service is regarded as voluntary retirement. By definition under existing laws, voluntary retirement is the voluntary withdrawal of service by the worker who has not attained the retiring age but has put in at least fifteen years of service. If a worker relinquishes his job before he is 60 years old and before he has served for up to 15 years, he is not regarded as having retired but merely as having withdrawn his service. In that case, he does not qualify for retirement benefits except that he could be paid some gratuity if he has served for up to 10 years.

The worker’s volition to retire is motivated by a myriad of factors, among which are failing health, leisure needs, family and community pressure; need to attend to pet ambitions, and frustration at the work place. As we examine each of these factors in details, let it be borne in mind that in many cases, the persons involved are not always ready and willing to disclose the real factors that occasioned their retirement.

(1) Failing Health

 

The Nigerian worker enjoys free or highly subsidized medical services. This benefit is not normally available to his unemployed, retired or self-employed counterparts in the country. For this reason, the average worker who has the problem of failing health would not

be in hurry to retire voluntarily on that account. He will do his best to put up with his ailment and hold on to his job as long as possible because once he is out of employment he will have to meet his medical expenses from his personal resources. This is why we have more people whose employers retired on account of ill-health then we have those who voluntarily retire on the same ground. Nevertheless, some workers still do retire voluntarily on the grounds of failing health. Such workers are mainly those whose ailments are directly linked with their jobs and whose chances of survival are believed to improve only if they relinquished their jobs. There was a case of a 37 years old secretary who retired from one of the Federal Ministries last May. This lady had a bad case of asthma that was not responding to medical treatment. Eventually, her doctors determined that her ailment was being incensed by paper dust which she inhaled as she worked on the numerous files that passed through her each working day. She therefore, had to choose between her life and her job. Of course she: choose the former

(2) Leisure Needs

 

Some workers retire voluntarily from their jobs because they want to create some leisure for themselves. Leisure here refers to the time available for one to engage in what really interests one most, without any external regulatory constraint. In general, those who retire in order to create leisure for themselves are mostly people whose jobs are normally so absorbing that they cannot have any worthwhile leisure while they remained in employment. Certainly, the average Nigerian civil servant does not fit particularly well in this group. He is normally light-scheduled on the job and works for fairly short hours and therefore, he is better leisured than this counterpart in the private sector. It is perhaps for this reason that those who retire for leisure reasons remain very few in number and are made up, almost entirely, of non-government workers.

While collecting materials for this book, we met with four people who said they retired to have some leisure to themselves. Of the four, three are women and two of them were bank workers. The third woman was a nurse and worked for sixteen years in a private hospital before she retired. The only man in the group, retired from the American International Insurance Company after a service period of seventeen years. He retired at the age of forty-two years and he was already a budding jeweler at the time. He explained that he was a successful insurance salesman but that he had to work so long and hard each day that he could not have time to engage in those things that interested him. He loved insurance salesmanship but it did not give him the time to travel outside the country as much as he wanted. His new business satisfies that need completely and he is happy.

Of the two ex-bank workers, one was forty-seven years while the other was fifty-three. The younger lady worked with the Union Bank of Nigeria Limited for twenty-nine years and decided on early retirement in order to devote more time to her family. She had already enrolled in a catering school where she hopes to specialize in cookery. She might become a commercial baker in time, provided she owned her bakery and controlled the tempo of things in it. The older woman is a widow and at the time we met, she was helping one of her sons to run the hotel business left behind by the late husband. She was not and did not intend to be full-time in the hotel business. She occupied her leisure hours in reading and travelling.

The ex-nurse had become the manager of a large chemist shop owned by her husband. As a manager, she does light supervisory work except on weekends when she does a few hours at the dispensary. She spends the bulk of her time with her children at home.

From the account of the tour people discussed above, and as we shall see from the discussions on later chapters, it is evident that retirement aimed at creating leisure for oneself calls for a great deal

of advance planning. This is because any miscalculation on the part of the retiring individual could land him in a less leisured situation than he was before retirement.

(3) Family and Community Pressure

 

In this country, occasions do arise for a family or a community to request its son residing and working away from home, to retire and take up home responsibilities. Such responsibilities include care of aged parents, caretakership of family properly, priesthood of important gods or shrines and ascension to chieftaincy stools. It is difficult to find out the exact home-duties a particular individual has been called upon to take up, unless it is the ascension to an important chieftaincy stool whose coronation ceremonies are usually widely publicized. It may be instructive to examine the circumstances that compel a worker to abandon his service career for a chieftaincy post.

Usually, the person invited to ascend a chieftaincy stool is the next in line in the ruling house. The call may be abrupt, perhaps as a result of the sudden death of the incumbent paramount chief, and in that case the heir may not have prepared his mind for such a call at the time. In some cases, he may not even have served out the minimum retirement qualification period on his job and then the sudden call will present him with a choice of either to abort his service career or decline acceptance of the chieftaincy stool. Once again, it is very difficult to know who have ever chosen the last option, but we have records of people who withdrew their services to ascend the chieftaincy stool.

Where, however, the invitation to take up the chieftaincy job comes after the heir has completed the minimum service period on his job, he would have less problem in making the choice.

There is no doubt that the average Nigerian worker would choose to retire into such suzerainty as enjoyed by the Oba of Benin or the Makama Nupe. Nevertheless, it is important that before bowing to

the family pressure in favour of acceptance of the chieftaincy office (or any other family responsibility) or to the lure of the glory and privileges of such offices, the worker needs to weigh the implications of his action and satisfy himself that the circumstances of his choice are likely to provide him with the fulfilled retired life of his dream.

(4) Need to Attend to Pet Ambitions

 

It is very common for workers to find themselves in careers for which they have the least aptitude. This situation gives rise to widespread job dissatisfaction among workers. Job dissatisfaction itself is the most common cause of early retirement among Nigerian workers who then make attempts to find fulfillment in other areas of their real interest.

If our opinion sample is anything to go by, our estimation is that as much as 30% of the Nigerian working population both in the public and private sectors now intend to retire early from their jobs in order that they may pursue other careers in which they think their life ambitions would be fulfilled.

Unlike workers who retire to have more leisure, those who retire to find fulfillment in other careers are unlikely to have made the type of success they desire in the jobs from which they have retired. As a result, they become more ambitious and hard-driving in their new areas, perhaps in the realization that age and time are no longer on their since vis-a-vis their pet ambitions. They are more likely to fall back into full-time jobs which may be more demanding in terms of time and energy than the ones they retired from.

“Some people discover, after they have retired that they-underestimated the requirement of heir cherished area of interest and therefore cannot even take off

Or September 15, 1988, the newspaper, LAGOS LIFE, carried a brief profile on a young man, Dr. John Abebe, in its “Personality” page. Abebe worked in the UAC as an industrial physician, but in his nine

years of service, he nursed the ambition of becoming a businessman, controlling a chain of companies. In late 1987, he left the UAC and plunged into his pet ambition. As at the date of thee newspaper report, he had four companies under his entrepreneurship. Ironically, none of them is directly in the medical business. One of the companies is a technical outfit that supplies equipments and spare parts to industries. There is another that is in export business, and a third in carpet and upholstery cleaning. The fourth is a food processing company that specializes in baby foods. From all indications, Dr Abebe is a satisfied entrepreneur who enjoys the challenges of a multi-firm enterprise.

Mr. Davidson worked in the Personnel Department of Cadbury (Nigeria) Limited, and had served the company for eighteen years by 1981 when he retired. He said his ambition had been to found and foster a family business which he could bequeath to his children. But because in earlier years, he had no means to run such a business, he had td take up a paid job. At the age of 51, he had set up a supermarket ad he has been working very hard to make it a success.

Mr. Agwu served the Customs and Excise Department for 10 years anti retired at the age of 33 in 1975. He proceeded to read Accountancy in the United States and has since returned to Nigeria with a B.Sc. degree in that subject. He said he feels completely fulfilled as an accountant. At present he works for a motor marketing company but still hopes to pull out and set up an accountancy firm of his own.

Not everyone who has retired and sought fulfillment in other areas has met with success. Some people discover, after the retired, that they underestimated the requirements of their cherished areas of interest and therefore cannot even take off. Others s in such ventures but discover along the line that what the chosen are not able to satisfy their aspirations, and they have to a change.

To start off a new career, particularly at middle age, is in no way easy. For this reason, workers who wish to retire voluntarily view to pursuing what they consider as more fulfilling careers a lot of caution. This is more so when the new careers are unrelated to what they have done before. Such workers require a longer of pre-retirement planning than other retiring workers. In fact, they are the ones who have most need of expert advice.

(5) Frustration at Work Place

 

Our last consideration on the causes of early retirement business organisations and in government is intense dissatisfaction on the part of the worker.

Worker frustration exists in situations where the worker perceives himself as working under intolerable conditions which cannot change either by himself of through the approved channel in the organisation. Generally, such situations manifest themselves the form of role dissatisfaction, personal conflicts and unhealthy physical working environment. Role dissatisfaction arises when one or a combination of the following conditions is present:

(i) The tasks involved in a job are not commensurate w professional or experiential capacity of the incumbent worker.

(ii) The resources supplied to the worker for the performs his functions are always inadequate.

(iii) The authority conferred on the worker is far less than he requires for a particular job performance.

(iv) The workers’ role is intrinsically in conflict with others in the organisational set up.

 

These conditions could be artificially created to frustrate worker or they exist as a result of the nature of the management environmental circumstances of the organisation.

Personal conflicts, are caused by a large number of which we are unable to (and do not find necessary) to state exhaustively here. Some of these causes are so subtle that one can hardly suspect their existence, while others are so obvious that everyone can perceive them. The problem in. personal conflicts may be traceable to the worker himself. His general personality could be too abrasive such that he induces resentment from his colleagues, or so malleable that they manipulate him to his discomfiture. His moods and dispositions could cause incompatibility between him and other workers in the organization.

On the other hand, the problem could well arise from the other workers or from the structure of the organization itself. Whatever their cause, the relevant point about personal conflicts in the work place, is that they are enough to frustrate the worker and induce his exit from the organization.

Lastly, the nature of the physical environment of an organization that could cause worker frustration may include such things as insufficient office or work lot space, faulty ventilation, offensive neighborhood or excessive commuting distance between workplace and home. As in the other two factors, the onus of discerning a frustrating physical environment resides with the individual worker.

The frustrated worker is normally expected to resign from his job as soon as he realizes his situation. As we have noted already, in some organisations, frustration is employed deliberately to get the unwanted worker to resign, and that strategy is known to be effective. The frustrated worker who still has a period of years to serve in order to qualify for retirement and who decides to endure his frustration through such a period, must have very compelling reasons to do so. It should also be assumed that such a worker would use the opportunity of such a time lag to plan out his retirement.

“The best time to start thinking about your retirement is before the boss does” – Anonymous

 

III. CONCLUSION

 

Whether one is retiring according to the rules or by expediency, the most important factor to take along is preparedness. Most retirement educators advise that serious preparation should commence about twenty years to the time of retirement. However, from the recent developments in the labour market, it cannot be too early start preparation for retirement from the first day of employment. Such an arrangement will certainly benefit both the employed and the employer. If the former understands that his future is roundedIy assured he is more likely to remain stable and render loyal service to the latter.

CHAPTER TWO

We need to plan our retirement in order To ensure maximum happiness in later To ensure optimum use of scarce resources To avoid the burden of idleness in latter days To remain prepared for old age