“Old Age Must Not Become A Sentence Of Neglect” Abia Govt Declares
Growing old in Nigeria is increasingly a question of luck rather than policy, and the Abia State Government has stepped into that gap with a fresh declaration that old age must never become a sentence of neglect, abuse or abandonment.
The pledge was made at the state’s commemoration of the 2026 World Elder Abuse Awareness Day in Umuahia, held under the global theme “Beyond Awareness: Making Elder Abuse Prevention Work,” with the government promising to strengthen social protection programmes and press ahead with the implementation of its senior citizens legislation.
The Wife of the Governor, Mrs Priscilla Otti, represented by the Wife of the Deputy Governor, Mrs Adaeze Emetu, said the law was enacted so that growing old would not amount to being forgotten. She described senior citizens as repositories of wisdom, sacrifice and resilience whose contributions deserve recognition and respect.
“Our elderly citizens built the families and communities we enjoy today, yet many still face abandonment, abuse, isolation, poor healthcare and financial insecurity. These realities should trouble every conscience,” she said.
Official Abia State Government records identify the legislation as Law No. 4 of 2025, establishing the Abia State Senior Citizens Centre, which Governor Alex Otti assented to on 27 May 2025 alongside 17 other executive bills. Some reports have referred to it as the Senior Citizens Law of 2023, a discrepancy that has not been formally reconciled in public records.
The law has attracted more misunderstanding than most. Viral social media posts claimed it guarantees a free monthly salary for life to anyone aged 60 and above, a claim the fact checking platform Dubawa rated misleading in February 2026, noting the bill had in fact been signed in 2025.
Briefing journalists after the State Executive Council meeting on 16 June 2026, the Commissioner for Information, Prince Okey Kanu, and the Commissioner for Poverty Alleviation and Social Protection, Mrs Ngozi Blessing Felix, moved to settle the matter. Mrs Felix stated that the law does not provide free salaries for all citizens aged 60 and above, but guarantees access to healthcare services and welfare related support. The state government had earlier issued a statement clarifying that the centre “is not a free money distribution scheme,” but “a structured social welfare and support system designed to provide care, coordination, dignity, and inclusion for senior citizens.”
The World Health Organisation estimates that about one in six people aged 60 and above experienced some form of abuse in community settings in the past year, and that two in three staff in nursing homes and long term care facilities admitted committing abuse within the same period. WHO projects victims worldwide will rise to roughly 320 million by 2050 as the global population aged 60 and above climbs from about 900 million in 2015 to around two billion.
Nigerian evidence suggests the local picture may be sharper than the global average. A review of community surveys across the six geopolitical zones published in the National Library of Medicine archive reported prevalence of any form of abuse ranging between 30 per cent and 81.1 per cent, while cautioning that methodologies varied and most relied on unverified self reports. A cross sectional study of 232 residents aged 60 and above in rural Edo State recorded 79.3 per cent prevalence, with neglect at 73.4 per cent, financial abuse at 64.1 per cent and emotional abuse at 53.8 per cent, and identified the victims’ own children as the main perpetrators. The same study listed stigmatisation at 24.4 per cent, abandonment at 19.4 per cent and fear of retaliatory assault at 19.3 per cent as the leading barriers to seeking help.
Nigeria’s older population is small in share but large in number. Figures cited in a May 2026 Leadership analysis put Nigerians aged 60 and above at more than 14.8 million, roughly five per cent of the population, against a 2025 United Nations life expectancy estimate of 54.9 years, among the lowest globally. World Bank indicators recorded those aged 65 and above at about 3.03 per cent of the population in 2023. Research published in peer reviewed journals notes Nigeria has the highest number of older persons in Africa and the 19th highest globally, with the population aged 65 and above projected to nearly triple by 2050.
The National Senior Citizens Centre was established by the National Senior Citizens Centre Act 2017, signed into law in January 2018, and now sits under the Federal Ministry of Humanitarian Affairs and Poverty Reduction. The National Policy on Ageing, approved in 2021, defines older persons chronologically as those aged 60 and above. Domestication by states has been uneven, and the pace of adoption remains slow, placing Abia among a small group of states that have legislated on the subject.
Mrs Otti said the state has continued to pay pensions promptly, describing the payments as recognition of retirees’ years of service. That claim sits within a longer and contested record. Governor Otti inherited pension arrears put at N30 billion, and paid N10 billion under a memorandum of agreement with the Abia chapter of the Nigeria Union of Pensioners under which retirees were said to have forfeited N20 billion. The union later disowned the agreement, saying it signed under duress, and the dispute drew sustained public criticism through 2025.
At his November 2025 monthly media parley, Otti disclosed that a joint committee with the NUP had found verified gratuity liabilities dating back to 2001 exceeding N60 billion. “It is disheartening that pensions have remained outstanding since 2001,” he said. At the 2026 International Workers’ Day celebration in Umuahia on 1 May, the governor, represented by his deputy, Engr Ikechukwu Emetu, announced that “sums in excess of 10 billion have been earmarked in the 2026 fiscal year for payment of gratuities accumulated over a 20 year period,” adding that modalities for phased payment had been concluded. A Premium Times editorial in March 2026 noted that 12,500 retirees had been paid as of April 2024.
According to Mrs Otti, the administration has implemented economic empowerment programmes, cash support initiatives, medical outreaches and the distribution of food items and clothing to elderly persons across the state’s 17 local government areas. She commended Mrs Felix for initiatives targeted at senior citizens and called on families, communities and institutions to complement government efforts.
“Let us build the kind of Abia we would all be proud to grow old in, a state where every senior citizen lives with dignity, security and respect,” she said.
Mrs Felix said the government was committed to translating awareness into concrete action, noting that a society should be judged by how it treats its most vulnerable members. The state has also established Sexual Assault Referral Centres at general hospitals through an initiative of the Wife of the Governor, covering cases involving elderly persons.
Delivering the keynote address, the Governor’s Special Adviser on Monitoring and Evaluation, Mazi Ugochukwu Okororafor, described elder abuse as a growing global concern driven by loneliness, neglect, age related illnesses and financial exploitation. He commended the state for establishing the Abia Senior Citizens Centre, which registers elderly residents and coordinates welfare services, and urged governments, healthcare providers, communities and families to work together against abuse, exploitation and discrimination.
The Coordinator of the Abia Senior Citizens Centre, Dr Otti Nwaka, who campaigned publicly for the bill before it was signed, described older persons as custodians of society’s history, values and culture. “Our elders are the custodians of our culture, wisdom and history. To abuse or neglect them is to deny our own future,” he said.
Globally, the observance has its own history. World Elder Abuse Awareness Day was launched by the International Network for the Prevention of Elder Abuse and the World Health Organisation in 2006, and formally recognised by the United Nations General Assembly through resolution 66/127 in 2011. This year, the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs marked it with a side event at UN Headquarters in New York on 11 June, held on the margins of the nineteenth session of the Conference of States Parties to the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities.
What follows in Abia will be measured less by declarations than by delivery: the registration numbers at the Senior Citizens Centre, the pace of the phased gratuity disbursement announced in May, and whether healthcare access under Law No. 4 of 2025 reaches older residents in rural communities where, national research suggests, neglect is most common and least reported.