“When we talk of the N12.7 trillion I mentioned today, this money is a contribution that belongs to 9.3 million people, including people who are working for the federal government, the states and, largely, private sector.
“About 5.8 million are actually people from the private sector. The private sector owns over 70 per cent of this money because they contribute more. When we remove the state, we can see that the amount that belong to the federal government employees and contributors is generally less than 10 to 20 per cent. So we need to put this thing into perspective: that you can’t take private sector money for the public sector because when we were talking about reform initially, there were contentious issues that we were confronted with by the private sector that we were going to take their money and use it for the public sector,” he said.
He blamed the inability of PENCOM to carry out a review of the pension retirement benefits on the 33 per cent from the consequential adjustment benefits following the implementation of the N30, 000 minimum wage, even as he said the commission had cleared all pension arrears up till December 2020 from the N100 billion which was approved last month by President Muhammadu Buhari.
Also speaking at the event, Head of the Civil Service of the Federation, Dr Folashade Yemi-Esan, said the federal government was considering a review of the Pension Reform Act, 2014.
She said that the government had already received submissions from the Contributory Pensions Union of Nigeria and a number of officers urging the review to enhance the welfare of workers.
Yemi-Esan disclosed that her office had paid over N2.4 billion to over 594 beneficiaries as death benefits to the next of kin of deceased officers from the N2.5 billion released by the federal government.
