Fifteenth International Conference on Interdisciplinary Social Sciences

Abstract

The social and economic maladies pervading retirees from the public services of Jigawa and Kano States provokes misgivings about role of elite, both in and outside government. While retirees agonise over pension payment, health, and housing debilitations, corporate interests enjoy access to government and to economic benefits of pension administration. This paper considers retirement policy frameworks of Jigawa and Kano states around themes of philosophy and objectives, stakeholder interests, political support, implementation, and evaluation. Elite theory, MSSD strategy and comparative approach were the framework and methods deployed to explain patterns in the retirement policies and their practices. Observations are based on key informants, in-depth interview techniques, and stratified random sampling. Findings reveal that the elite structure was not entirely closed, pyramidal, and unresponsive in terms of retirement policy making, implementation, and monitoring. Stakeholders and retirees were involved in all these stages. Although the consensual democratic element was absent at legitimation stages, eventual compliance by retirees and critical stakeholders with the rules and processes of the policies implied acceptance. Retirement policy execution would remain less than ideal if anomalies happening among State Pension Offices and Fund operators are not taken into account. Mechanisms of evaluation, presently largely absent, must be entrenched and observed to determine effects of the retirement policies. Recommendations involve improving better engagement on necessity, kind, and content of the retirement policy during policy framing. Incremental approach reflecting unfolding events rather than the will of government and corporate elite in policy making positions should guide decision making.