While the Contributory Pension Scheme (CPS) has been fully established and to a large extent taken care of workers in the formal sector including public and private establishments, the micro-pension plan for the informal sector came on-board fully this year with a major launch by the Federal Government.

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The scheme, which went through the usual teething problem associated with every new programme, has, however, appeared to be taking shape with a recent disclosure by the industry regulator, National Pension Commission (PenCom) that the Pension Fund Administrators (PFAs) have started registering the targeted workers for the scheme.

Enrolement

Specifically, although coming after eight months, the current record has it that the PFAs have so far registered 28,000 employees in the informal sector for the scheme.

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Disclosing this in Lagos, Head, Corporate Communications, National Pension Commission (PenCom), Peter Aghahowa, said 19 Pension Fund Administrators (PFAs) have registered 28,000 micro pension participants as at November.

According to the breakdown, 21,430 participants were registered as at June 2019,b while in July, 221 participants were registered. In August 2019, 1,299 Nigerians were registered, September, 2737 registered and in October, 2313 participants registered.

Challenges

The scheme is, however, without some challenges as Aghahowa put it, it has been challenged due to low financial literacy, the need for National Identity Number (NIN), which is one of the criteria for registration; low awareness about the scheme and inadequate technology platform to support the registration process.

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