The Organised Private Sector of Nigeria (OPSN) has reiterated commitment to the success of the Contributory Pension Scheme (CPS).
Director-General of the Nigeria Employers’ Consultative Association (NECA), Adewale-Smatt Oyerinde, an umbrella body for organisations in the OPS, said this during an interactive session on the CPS by the NECA and National Pension Commission (PenCom).
He said the OPS would always support the scheme as long as private sector operators’ concerns are addressed.
While he called on critical stakeholders to ensure the success of the scheme, Oyerinde recalled that before the Pension Reform Act 2014, life after retirement was uncertain and unpredictable.
However, he maintained that with the enactment of the Act and with successive PenCom leadership, there have been improvements and innovations in the pension scheme.
Similarly, PenCom Director-General, Aisha Dahir-Umar, said the interactive session was to enlighten the OPS on the workings of the CPS, share thoughts on emerging developments in the Nigerian pension space and provide the opportunity for pension operators to interact with members of the OPS.
Noting that the contributions of the OPS in the CPS could not be over-emphasised, the PenCom boss gave some statistics in the third quarter of 2023, where she mentioned that the number of Retirement Savings Accounts (RSAs) under the CPS stood at 10 million while the size of the pension asset under management is now N16.76 trillion.
She said the Commission had continued to take giant strides towards ensuring the smooth implementation of the CPS through the revision of existing regulations and guidelines as well as the development of new ones.
Specifically, she said the Commission has deplored the Enhanced Contributors Registration System (ECRS) for the pension industry.
Following the deployment of ECRS, she said the Commission also introduced the Data Recapture Exercise (DRE), which mandatorily requires all RSA holders, who joined the CPS before July 1 2019 to update their information with their respective Pension Fund Administrators (PFAs).
