Director-General of the National Senior Citizens Centre, Dr Emem Omokaro, talks to EMMANUEL OJO about the challenges facing aged persons in Nigeria and what the agency is doing to assist them, among other issues
You have a doctorate in Sociology from the University of Calabar and your profile shows that you had an award-winning dissertation that interrogated the quality of care of older citizens in the country. What did you find interesting about this area of study?
The interesting thing is that, traditionally, because of norms of reciprocity, everybody assumes that family is there to care; adult children will do the needful and they (the older citizens) will be covered through their benevolence. So, my dissertation interrogated the quality of care and the consistency of the care assumed that adult children give to their parents. Let’s assume that by faith and doctrines of our major religions, the children should take care of older people. Outside that, whatever thing that will determine whether they care at all depends on income security, the stage at which they are, whether they are newly married or not, whether they have children that need to be catered for and the emotional bond of parents to children, so, they found out really that it was just an assumption. That children should care really does not mean that children can care. It doesn’t translate to that.
Sometimes, even when you have emotional bonds, does income security not directly affect care? And it affects the priorities of expenditures, so, what the children think about is their priority. So, if these children have children of their own and they need to pay school fees, the question is: Would they drop that to care for their parents? The outcome just shows that they can’t depend on family without any systems created by the government, especially because at the time I conducted that research, we didn’t have a policy; so, there was no legislation apart from pensions. So, it is assumed that family was a policy and that made it interesting because it opened a new vista for the government to intervene, to create systems and policies, to ensure that older persons are integrated into the development process of society.
What are the objectives and visions of the NSCC?
The NSCC was principally established by the National Senior Citizens Act. It was signed into law in 2017 and was inaugurated in 2021 to identify the needs of the senior citizens in Nigeria; to cater for those needs, which are huge; and integrate us into the national policy, that we have developed. The function of the NSCC is in many folds, which we have now been able to put into seven categories or thematic areas. The first is to ensure income security for older people and that will be in the area of initiating activities that help older people to be able to develop their skills in their arts and crafts, articulating what they want to do and helping them to do that.
We started with the National Institution of Indigenous Arts and Crafts across the country. We worked with the National Directorate of Employment to identify older people across the country. These are pilot projects. So, we were able to identify, build their capacity and then empower them with grants, and we are working with the Small and Medium Enterprises Development Agency of Nigeria to cluster them into cooperatives across the country, so we can include third-party financing.
How is the NSCC ensuring income security for older citizens?
For income security, we piloted working with farmers to facilitate their access to farms and farmlands. Coming into the community, we worked with traditional institutions and then transferred the community land to the proposed society belonging also to members of the community. We surveyed and facilitated the land, signed a third-person agreement with off-takers, who will buy the harvest from them, and I tell you, using this multi-purpose cooperative, we were able to leverage it to get insurance coverage with the NSCC piloting projects. We worked with the Federal Capital Territory Primary Insurance and the Primary Health Care agencies to teach them about the packages that the National Health Insurance covers. We go with this multi-sector partnership; we don’t just go give them money and run out. We see what they want to do, we then aggregate their capacity and then support them to really expand access to those social services, and also help them to enhance their capacity to make more profit.
What is the agency’s relationship with the Ministry of Humanitarian Affairs and Poverty Alleviation?
Of course, we are partnering with our ministry to ensure that older people are included in the palliatives distribution and we are working very hard under this thematic area to ensure that we can secure old age grants or lifelong grants for older people who are frail, feeble and who really do not have familial transfers from their children. Those names have been submitted and the challenge that we have now is to ensure how we can register all of them with the National Identity Management Commission and enrol them for the National Identification Number, without which they cannot be verified; so, we are working with the NIMC on that for the enrolment of these people.
The next is health and social care; what we have done is to partner with those in the social health industries. We work with the National Board for Technical Education to identify care of older persons as a skill. It has never happened in this country. So, the care of older persons has been admitted into the National Skills Qualification Framework and we have developed the National Occupational Standards, National Benchmark and Minimum Academic Standards for training caregivers. So, caregivers can’t be treated anyhow or looked down on because they are going to be certified. This opens up employment opportunities for our youths, instead of them running abroad. We are also working with the National Health Insurance Authority. We have worked on the revision of the National Social Protection Policy and included a new policy measure on social care and we are working with all the stakeholders.
According to the agency’s standard, from what age can a person be regarded as a senior citizen?
Sixty years. That’s what our policy says because that’s the age most employees retire from public service.
With the approval to train people in geriatric care as caregivers in Nigeria, do you think most senior citizens would be able to afford their services or would the government shoulder this responsibility?
I will tell you here that the population of older persons is quite diverse. Older persons who are quite comfortable can also use the services of these caregivers. For older persons who retired from public service and are covered by health insurance, we are building a system that will be easy because of the care quality assurance and the care agencies and caregivers who are part of the development of this standard procedure. If you want to discuss family insurance, look at care agencies that are also primary health insurers in social care, and make the argument that senior citizens can also be covered. You see what happens abroad; it’s because they have been able to build a system, they have a policy, they have the ecosystem and that’s what the NSCC has been doing.
For the category of older persons who cannot afford this and don’t have a retirement plan, what are the plans for them?
Once you have a group of mainly 10 persons, you can buy health insurance that is cheap and can cover for the whole year. What we have done is to aggregate the people by using a multipurpose cooperative. For instance, we have been able to buy health insurance that has covered all of them. There are provisions but it depends on how the stakeholders want to approach it. We have also made them able to earn. So, they can also support themselves and the ones who cannot, who are frail and sick, those are the ones we are seeking for this health insurance and thank God for the National Health Insurance Act, the provision for the Vulnerable Group Funds and the older persons are listed.
With the rise in the cost of living in Nigeria, do you think many senior citizens can survive the times? Have there been periods where some, especially those with several months of unpaid pensions, came to you for food and other items?
First and foremost, I want to give kudos to non-governmental organisations that have an interest in helping the vulnerable. They are core agencies. We also have the National Investment Programme, which deals in the distribution of palliatives, and with the new minister now, Nigeria wishes to lift 15 million households out of poverty. We have agencies working across the 36 states that now list the names of these older people to empower them. Most times, these pensioners are looking for how to support themselves in a dignified way because most of them have skills and want to do something. There are builders, farmers, vulcanisers and other artisans in arts and crafts. What they need is support on what they are doing and that’s why I was telling you about all the diverse programmes we have been doing.
If you are asking whether they (senior citizens) come here (to the NSCC), most of them will come here because of loneliness and that is why we are trying also to launch and to build one community, one senior citizen centre for some who are willing to be engaged voluntarily to work, and you know that the NSCC is a service agency. We don’t have money like that to give out and we don’t have palliatives; we are not funded for that yet and we don’t give social funds, but a time will come when the NSCC will be able to do that on its own. We are dependent on our mother ministry, which is the custodian of the palliatives, conditional cash transfers, and so on.
The average life expectancy in Nigeria is very low, compared to what obtains in many Western countries where people live up to 80 years and above. What do you think could be responsible for this?
Well, the average life expectancy in Nigeria has made considerable progress. It used to be less than 50, but it’s now about 56 or 57. If you are comparing Nigeria with those countries where they live up to 98 and so on, you might not be able to match that. It’s a lifetime of poverty and lack of access to health. I will say that there are inequalities across life’s course. For instance, you find somebody who dropped out of school, who didn’t have an opportunity and is struggling to eat and then growing old with that trajectory. Of course, that’s going to be a lifetime of poverty. The poor old woman you see today was the girl child many years ago who was denied the opportunity to be in school, was married off very early, or maybe was hawking in the street because she didn’t go to school and there was a poor parental background and growing into old age was tedious in terms of nutrition, access to health care and a lot of things. Also, poor environment, a lack of access to information; so, at the end of it, you see that they end up accumulating disadvantages, and then, ill-health and vulnerability.
You don’t just wake up in old age and be poor; it’s a lifestyle; it’s a trajectory and that is why programmes and interventions, from maternal health to infant health, adolescent health, to youth, to finding employment so that they can start earning money and have a future. So, it’s life opportunities that we see and they are also government policies and programmes and how those programmes are implemented to deliberately design equity.
Some senior citizens are not respected and given special preference in the use of public facilities in Nigeria as is seen in the Western world. Why is that so?
I don’t know what happened to our norms. When you hear us in Africa say we respect our elders, we pay obeisance to our elders; that is one thing that is now receding. We don’t know if that’s a result of westernisation or something or even social media. I think there was a breakdown of inter-generational synergies and then, there was also a breakdown of moral education. Socialisation failed us because if you look back, you will also see some generations that still hold that respect, even though they are a ‘young-old,’ they still respect the ‘old-old.’ But you see a much younger generation; they are like the youth but it’s as if they are at war with the older generation. This can be breached.
Do you think it has anything to do with a sense of dissatisfaction?
The youth feel that the system has failed them, so they take it out on the older people. The system has failed them, there is no equality, there is so much iniquity and they have wasted the resources that could have built them a better future; so, they (youths) take it out on anybody who is 60 years and above regardless of whether they were ever part of governance or not. What the NSCC is trying to do now is to restore that inter-generational synergy and to develop a network of support and understanding about what ageism is.
Sometimes, it’s ageism, a negative stereotype about older people and the prejudice that comes with the fact that old age is ugly or old people have witchcraft. So, those are the myths of old age and the mixture of so many things has brought about the disrespect. Not only disrespect, it brings about violence and abuse on older people. So, the NSCC is working very hard to bring an understanding to it because a youth of today is a future older person and the way you make your bed is the way you lie on it. So, we need to make that network of support and understanding. We even launched a programme called ‘Elder Justice’ and we are trying to create an Elders Justice Club in secondary schools, making them want to understand the abuses, values and contributions of older people, and we are looking at partnering with Nollywood and many other industries to project this advocacy programme.
What are the programmes lined up by the President Bola Tinubu administration for older persons in the country?
The Federal Ministry of Humanitarian Affairs and Poverty Alleviation has a purview over the National Senior Citizen Centre, so, the deliverables of the ministry are the deliverables that the NSCC also needs to align with, which is to reduce the poverty in the nation, especially in the areas of income security and the initiatives to create activities for older people who are willing to work. There are programmes lined up for senior citizens and the challenge is to get across to senior citizens across the federation. So, we would like to plead with the executive governors to domesticate the National Senior Citizens Act and have a focal person on ageing because ageing is multi-sectoral.
