The New Pension Scheme: A cry for help

The Pension Reform Act 2014 (the Act) was signed by the President and Commander-in-Chief of the Nigerian Armed Forces into law on 1 July 2014. With that, the act now repeals the Pension Reform Act No.2 of 2004 and would continue to govern and regulate the administration of the uniform Contributory Pension Scheme for both the Public and Private sectors in Nigeria.
Since the signing of the saw over a year ago, workers, especially in the public sector have been complaining of non-remittance of their pension contribution into their Pension Retirement Savings Account. I joined the services of Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria in 2011 and up to September, 2015 a kobo was not remitted to my PRSA, despite deductions every month from my salary. I am not alone in this, in fact, most staff employed even before this time, their accounts were not credited. Initially, we thought it was normal, but after 4 years in active public service and with what we saw happened to retirees in recent past, we are forced to voice out.
The new pension scheme is also riddled with so many problems. First and the biggest problem is the non-remittance of the contributions. Pension and gratuity is very important to employers because of the belief that their future needs are guaranteed. Pension and gratuity ameliorate workers fears and motivate them to contribute positively to their
Organization’s output. While we try to give our best, we are also wary of an uncertain future as a result of poor management of our lifesavings.
Another problem is where to take your complaint to. Other colleagues and I have written to the university management and our Pension Administrators, but it seems the problem is from PENCOM. Stories of misappropriation of funds abound and are enough for one to start asking questions on how his pension contribution is managed.
Some of us feel it is time for the new administration to, as a matter of urgency, look into the administration of workers’ pension contributions and what happened to our contributions over the years, which has been trapped between our employers, PENCOM and our pension administration
Kabiru Danladi Lawanti, Department of Mass Communication, Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria-Nigeria.