Ondo State Governor, Lucky Aiyedatiwa has commenced the payment of N2.6 billion in gratuities to retired workers in the state, continuing his administration’s phased effort to clear a longstanding backlog of pension entitlements owed to public servants across the state.

The latest disbursement adds to a growing record of gratuity payments under Aiyedatiwa’s watch. Since assuming full office, the governor has consistently flagged off batches of bulk gratuity releases covering retirees from different years of exit from public service. An earlier payment of N2.4 billion was disbursed in March 2026 to 733 retirees who left service in 2018 and 2019, while a release of N2.2 billion was made in October 2025 to cover retirees from 2016 and 2017.

Gratuities for the 2015, 2016 and 2017 Batch B sets had also been disbursed in January 2026, with a total of over one billion naira paid out in that round alone.

Governor Aiyedatiwa has described the payments as a moral obligation rather than a political gesture, repeatedly stressing that his administration uses year of retirement as the sole criterion for determining disbursement priority.

The approach, he has said, is designed to eliminate the selective and politically influenced patterns that characterised gratuity payments in the past, where pensioners with connections often received their entitlements ahead of others who had waited longer.

The governor has traced the origin of the initiative to his time as deputy governor, when he first championed a savings mechanism within the state government to ensure funds were periodically set aside specifically for gratuity payments. That model has continued under his full tenure and is widely credited by pensioners and civil society observers as the reason Ondo has been able to sustain consistent batch releases where other states have struggled.

The Nigeria Union of Pensioners in Ondo State has repeatedly praised Aiyedatiwa for the consistency of the payments, with the state chapter chairman, Johnson Osunyemi, describing him as one of the very few governors in Nigeria to also approve the implementation of the new minimum wage for pensioners. Retirees who have benefited from the disbursements have publicly expressed relief, with many noting that they had all but abandoned hope of ever receiving their full entitlements before the current administration’s intervention.