- Moi University retirees have waited up to 25 years to receive pension dues they are owed.
- A Sh185 million pension obligation has accumulated more than Sh1 billion in interest over almost 25 years.
- Kenyan courts and Parliament have confronted similar pension delays in 2025, with some claims outstanding for over 26 years.
There is something profoundly troubling about a country that can build universities, appoint administrators, pay executives and produce graduates, yet cannot find the money to honour the people who spent their working lives building those institutions.
The plight of Moi University retirees, some of whom have waited up to 25 years for their dues, is not merely an administrative failure. It is a moral scandal. These are not people asking for favours. They are demanding money they earned.
A quarter of a century is longer than it takes a child to grow into an adult. It is long enough for governments to change, vice-chancellors to come and go, policies to be rewritten and buildings to rise and decay. Yet for some former employees, retirement has become a waiting room with no exit.
One retiree’s plea, “Give me my money before I die,” should shame everyone responsible. That sentence captures the brutal reality of delayed justice: when institutions procrastinate long enough, they can effectively defeat justice through mortality. A retiree who is 60 when he leaves employment cannot reasonably be expected to wait until 85 to receive what was owed to him at retirement. What kind of pension system tolerates such cruelty?
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Moi University has faced severe financial difficulties, including debts and financial pressures that have threatened its operations. A Sh185 million obligation has accumulated interest of more than Sh1 billion over almost 25 years. But financial hardship, while explaining a problem, cannot become an excuse for abandoning human beings.
The tragedy is that retirees are often among the least able to absorb institutional failure. They have left the labour market. Their earning years are behind them. Medical bills rise. Children may still need support. Inflation eats away at savings. Every year of delay therefore carries a cost far greater than the amount printed on a payslip.
There is another injustice: the institution does not experience the passage of time as an individual retiree does. A university can survive another financial year. A bureaucrat can postpone a file. A committee can schedule another meeting. A government can promise another intervention. A 75-year-old retiree cannot postpone old age.
Kenya has seen similar cases elsewhere. In 2025, the courts and Parliament were confronted with pensioners who had waited decades for their dues, with some claims outstanding for more than 26 years. This is bigger than Moi University alone. It exposes a culture in which pensioners are treated as paperwork rather than people, and that must end.
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The government and university leadership should establish a transparent, time-bound settlement plan, publish the outstanding liabilities and identify the retirees most vulnerable because of age, illness or prolonged delay. Those who have waited the longest should not be buried beneath newer claims. Parliament, too, should stop treating pension arrears as another line in an interminable budget debate.
Retirement is supposed to be the reward for decades of service. In Kenya, for too many people, it has become another test of endurance. Nobody should have to beg for money they earned while they were still strong enough to work, and nobody should have to say “pay me before I die” for the state to remember that behind every unpaid claim is a human life.
Moi University retirees have waited long enough. Pay them before another anniversary becomes another funeral.
By Moi University Alumni
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