The National Pension Commission (PenCom) has recovered a total of N17.05 billion as outstanding pension contributions from defaulting employers in the last eight years.
Data sourced from PenCom showed that the recoveries were made from 655 defaulting employers from July, 2012 to January, 2020.
The total amount recovered from the pension defaulters comprised both the principal contributions, which the employers failed to remit as and when due, and penalty for default.
Section 11, subsection seven of the Pension Reform Act, 2014 (PRA, 2014) provided that both the principle contribution and penalties should be remitted into the respective employees’ Retirement Savings Accounts (RSAs) by the employers.
A breakdown of the recoveries showed that N8.64 billion or 50.67% of the total amount were recovered as unremitted principal contribution while N8.41 billion or 49.33% were recovered as penalty.
The apex pension regulator in Nigeria said the Commission received 3,595 complaints on non-remittance of pension, out of which 2,646, being 67.3% were resolved while 949 others or 32.7% are on various stages of being resolved.
Recently, the Acting Director-General of PenCom, Aisha Umar-Dahir told the House of Representatives Committee on Pensions that 69 employers are in court for failure to remit pension contributions.
“The recovery exercise has made remittance of pension contributions more timely as majority of employers now remit contributions as and when due to avoid penalty for late remittances. The exercise has created awareness among employees as more people now write to the Commission to report non-compliance with the PRA, 2014,” Umar-Dahir said.
High rate of noncompliance with the scheme forced PenCom in 2012 to engage the services of Recovery Agents (RAs) for the recovery of outstanding pension contributions and penalty from defaulting employers.
The RAs were mandated to review the pension records of the employers assigned by the Commission with a view to recover outstanding pension contributions with penalty.
In addition to the services of RAs, Pension Compliance Certificates became compulsory for employers to be eligible for some government services.
