TheCable

The Pension Transitional Arrangement Directorate (PTAD), says it is working with the National Salaries Income and Wages Commission to harmonise pensions.

Chioma Ejikeme, executive secretary, PTAD, said this on Thursday during a press briefing on pension services in Abuja.

Ejikeme said that the harmonisation would address complaints of inequity and structural imbalance.

“Your pension is calculated based on the salary structure that was operational at your point of retirement,” Ejikeme said.

“So, that is to say, that over years, when salary structure changes, you are still where you were; nothing changes; and anybody who has retired after you on the same grade level, same step, same number of years put in service but with a different salary structure operational at his point of retirement, will be earning more than you.”

Ejikeme, while speaking on the agency’s recovery on legacy funds, said PTAD recovered £26.5 million from investment agents in the United Kingdom as pension funds for colonial pensioners.

“In 2021, we got £26.5 million of pension funds managed by the Crown Agents Investment Managers Limited in the United Kingdom. And we also use that to defray pension liabilities in 2021,” she said.

According to her, the government had invested these funds with the Crown Agents Investment Management Company in the United Kingdom, adding that part of it was civil service funds that were used to pay the colonial pensioners who had gone back to the UK.

“These were the first group of pensioners that Nigeria started paying pensions. So it turned out that all those colonial pensioners are now deceased,” she explained.

“So the funds that were left and then other investments made by the pension funds of the Cocoa Research Institute. So those two funds are put together.

“What we did then was to ask them to repatriate the funds to us because we need the money to pay pensioners here and it is also repatriated with the investment interest and everything bought back to Nigeria for us to pay pensioners.”

Speaking further on pension increment, she said the pension increment implemented under President Muhammadu Buhari was the most impactful.

“This particular pension increment has been adjudged the most impactful, the most equitable in the history of pension increments in Nigeria, and I think we should thank President Muhammadu Buhari for implementing this increment,” she added.

“The increment was approved in May 2021, it took effect in April 2019. So at that point, we had incurred 24 months. I also realise another novel thing about this pension increment, and is that we got the approval by May, by June, we had implemented it, and before the end of 2019, we had finished servicing all the arrears.

“It has never happened in the history of pension increment in Nigeria.

She, however, added that the agency had paid over N610 billion from January 2015 to December 2021 in monthly pensions, adding that it had achieved 90 percent of its mandate.

“We made regular monthly payments of pension without fail since inception as and when due,” she said.

“Payments of long outstanding arrears to pensioners across all the pension departments, most significantly the huge arrears inherited from the defunct/privatised agencies.

“Regular engagements with pensioners and other stakeholders across all the six geo-political zones to update pensioners on activities of the directorate.”