They said pensions would be our safety net. That after years of sweat and sacrifice, there would be a cushion. Not luxury, not abundance, just enough dignity to hold a frail body upright in the evening of life. But in Ghana, pensions have become a stage where politicians perform cruelty disguised as reform.
I remember the day Ken Ofori-Atta, then Finance Minister, picked up the shears and gave pensioners what he called a “haircut.” It was not a barber’s chair they sat in, it was the blistering sun outside the Ministry of Finance. Old men and women, bones fragile, hearts weary, clutching placards. He shaved away their bonds, their savings, their futures. What we still don’t know is the style he gave them. Was it punkie Joe, was it sweat, or was it a ruthless sakora? We only know that the cut was so deep it sent some to early graves. That was not haircutting,it was headhunting.
This wound did not appear in isolation. It is a scar carved into a long, ugly body. In 2012, when the reformed pension system was still tender, the regulator itself became a predator. Three acting CEOs fled in 18 months, chased away by a board chair who signed cheques like a conjurer with no witnesses. Workers who had paid since 2010 retired with nothing.
By 2014, twelve unions could take no more. They walked out, shutting schools, scaling back hospitals. The government responded not with answers but with an ex parte order. Doctors stood in defiance: better prison than surrender our pensions to political capture. The numbers themselves betrayed the truth. GH¢440 million, GH¢1.2 billion, GH¢1.64 billion, GH¢2.1 billion. One day, four figures, none trustworthy. It was as if the balance sheet had been turned into a hall of mirrors.
In 2018, the government celebrated paying GH¢3.1 billion in arrears to custodial accounts. Yet even as workers clapped, COCOBOD’s Tier 3 scheme was being mauled by political teeth. Ministers leaned on trustees, threatened independent oversight, and tried to replace capable managers with cronies.
And here we stand in 2025, still counting our wounds. IMANI warns again. Political appointees in state enterprises are cancelling contracts, seizing funds, and handing them to allies. The pensions industry now manages more than GH¢80 billion. To a Ghanaian worker, that is the promise of bread in old age. To the political class, it is a trough, a pot of gold.
We must not be fooled. Pension money is not state capital. It is sweat capital. It is the mason’s cracked palms, the nurse’s night duty, the teacher’s voice gone hoarse. To cut into it is not a financial operation. It is an amputation. And each time we allow politics to touch pensions, another limb of trust is severed.
The so-called haircut was more than a fiscal measure. It was a public humiliation of the elderly. It was the state shaving off dignity with the cold blade of arrogance. And until we repair that moral injury, no quarterly report, no press release, no assurance from a minister will restore confidence.
We know the path forward:
• Amend the law so that only workers and their unions can choose trustees.
• Ring-fence pension funds so no minister can ever direct them into bailouts or vanity projects.
• Restructure SSNIT, cut its administrative fat to below 10 per cent, and abolish its secrecy oath.
• Mandate quarterly dashboards: assets, returns, breaches, disclosed to the public.
• Criminalize political interference in pension governance.
President Mahama has spoken of resetting governance. He has already begun, but he must extend that reset to pensions. For pensions are not numbers on a ledger. They are memories carried in old age, the last dignity of labour, the very breath of life for those who built this nation. To protect them is to protect the covenant between labour and the Republic. To betray them is to slice at the very throat of our democracy.
The haircut of Ofori-Atta is not just past tense. It is a warning. If we do not fight, others will come with sharper blades, and more graves will be dug.
Our pensions are not political spoils. They are the last dignity of Ghanaian workers. Let us guard them as we guard our lives.
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Kay Codjoe is a freelance writer and an associate of IMANI.*
