Money saved by public and private sector workers in Nigeria for their pension under the National Pension Commission (PenCom) reached the N10 trillion mark in 2019, that is, after 15 years of consistent saving. The National Pension Commission, the regulatory body watching over private-sector pension entities that are the Custodians of the money and Pension Fund Administrators that operate like fund retailers, are the ultimate trustees of the pension money owned by about nine million Nigerians.

The N10 trillion pensioners’ money has attracted the attention of the National Economic Council (NEC). It is being targeted as a source of loan to finance infrastructure projects in the country. Deploying pension fund for infrastructure development is normal, even good; but lending the N2 trillion would take borrowing by the federal and some state governments to over N8 trillion.

When the N2 trillion is lent, and all the monies invested from the Pension Fund in various instruments are put together, the total will be above N9 trillion, well-above the 20 per cent legal ceiling. The investments at August 2019 are Federal Government Securities, N6.81 trillion; Local Money Market Securities, N1.06 trillion; Corporate Debt Securities, N556.2 billion and Mutual Funds, N22.3 billion.

The biggest pension fund in Africa is South Africa’s Government Employees Pension Fund (GEPF) with an asset base exceeding $135 billion or SAR 1.82 trillion. And it has only 1.2 million workers on its register and slightly over 400,000 retirees to whom it pays pensions regularly.

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