The director-general of the State Pension Board, Alhaji Usman Tinau Mohammed, who disclosed this to journalists in Minna, the state capital at the weekend, noted that as the state resumed the Contributory Pension Scheme, measures have been put in place to ensure that their funds are well managed.
He disclosed that unlike in the past that only one lead Manager from the 19 Pension Funds Administrators (PFAs) in the state was appointed to manage the entire contributions, the government has decided to increase the lead managers to five, for efficiency.
According to him, the five PFAs selected to be lead managers of the contributions were scheduled to manage the state workers, local government staff, the State Universal Basic Education Board (SUBEB) staff, the 5% deduction for the state and local governments, accordingly.
Mohammed said that the decision of the government to recommence the CPS has been communicated to PENCON, saying that “PENCON responded happily.
They advised that we should have Service Level Agreement (SLA) with the PFAs, which we have done”. While stating that no less than 22,000 civil servants in the state civil service are enrolled in the Contributory Pension Scheme, he added that the Board has not been able to get up to date and accurate figures of those in the local governments.
He said all these measures have been put in place to ensure the safety of the fund, even as the state governor, Alhaji Abubakar Sani Bello has set up a committee headed by the Deputy Governor Ahmed Mohammed, including representatives of organised labour to ensure that the stakeholders in the line of managing the contributions play their roles transparently and effectively.
He, therefore, said that the fears of the Labour on the resumption of the scheme was unfounded, emphasising that organised labour was represented by the NLC chairman Comrade Garba Yakubu and his TUC counterpart, Comrade Tenimu Yunusa in the committee that recommended the resumption of the CPS in June.
“No asset is so guarded in Nigeria like pension asset, it cannot be taken, all accounts are transit accounts that the funds cannot stay more than seven days” he explained further.
