By Ologeh Joseph Chibu
The Nigeria Labour Congress, (NLC), the largest industrial union has said that the nation’s pension scheme has failed to alleviate the concerns of millions workers.
The NLC President Joe Ajaero spoke in Abuja on Thursday during a conference with the Theme ‘Strategic Dialogue to Enhance Private Sector Participation in Pension Scheme,’ organized in collaboration with the National Policy Advocacy Centre of the Abuja Chamber of Commerce and Industry and the Nigerian Association of Chambers of Commerce, Industry, Mines and Agriculture.
The NLC said the defect had led the police force to approach the labor congress to advocate for the removal of policemen from the country’s existing pension scheme.
Ajaero spoke at the roundtable held in Abuja on Thursday at the event with participants including the National Pension Commission.
“We must create a pension system that has integrity, that will attract more people. The police have lobbied us to speak on their behalf so that they will exit the pension arrangement that we have. Why are they doing that?” Ajaero questioned.
He said “The average policeman, when we go out on the field, some of them write to us and ask us to speak on their behalf. They are workers like us and they know how it pinches. I want to be able to use the money I’ve saved. If I cannot use the money now, will it be when I die?” Onyeka Chris, the Assistant General Secretary of the NLC, represented Ajaero and conveyed the statement.
He emphasized that pensions revolve around the well-being of employees once they have concluded their roles in the workplace.
“A worker who had saved about N8m in the last 10 years in his Retirement Savings Account, suddenly with all the economic challenges, the value has crashed. Perhaps if he had used the N8m at that time, he would have been a rich rice merchant.
“But suddenly the worker cannot purchase the bags of rice that he would have wanted to buy. That N8m in the last 10 years has crashed to probably N1m today. That is what we suffer. So, the pension system has not protected the workers,” the President of the NLC affirmed.
Ajaero urged a thorough examination of these matters, additionally mentioning that ‘issues about how we can make the pension system work for workers while they are alive should be looked into.’
“We must also make the pension system attractive to people in the informal sector by protecting the pension funds itself. The government is saying that it wants to borrow from pensions.
“Yes, in other climes, governments borrow funds from the pension system and they pay back. But we are afraid that when our money goes into the pocket of the government, we don’t know what will happen to it. That is our problem.
“Workers are bearing the brunt of the negative impact of our pension system, let us make the system more inclusive and more worker-friendly so that some of us will get involved,” he added.
At the outset of his introductory comments, Al-Mujtaba Abubakar, the President of ACCI, highlighted that the primary purpose of the roundtable was to assess the advancements and obstacles encountered within Nigeria’s pension scheme.
