By Favour Ulebor
Civil Society Organisation, CSOs, Under the auspices of Coalition of Civil Society Organisation, CCSG, on Wednesday has urged the President, Bola-ahmed Tinubu to sustain support towards the Pension Sector in Nigeria.
The Chairman of the Coalition, Ohaleye Wisdom said this during a press briefing on Wednesday in Abuja.
Wisdom said the support will provide a collective success in the interest of senior citizens and all other members of the society.
“We call on President Bola Tinubu to sustain the federal government’s support towards the total overhaul of the country’s pension sector for a collective success in the interest of our senior citizens and all other members of our society” he said.
While dismissing the corruptions allegations against the director general of the National Pension Commission (PenCom), Aisha Dahir-Umar, Wisdom said the accusations are false, frivolous, unfounded and malicious.
Wisdom noted that the management of PenCom under the headship of Mrs. Aisha Umar-Dahir was accused of receiving a humongous amount of money in estacode among other issues contained in the petition.
His words: “At the risk of sounding immodest, it is safe to say that the Director General through her sterling performance has dwarfed the records of all her predecessors and has gone ahead to raise the country’s pension asset from N6.42 trillion Naira in 2017 when she came on board to N15.5 trillion Naira as at February 2023.
“The successful recapitalization of the pension industry from N1 billion to N5 billion, which she supervised has without any shadow of doubt built the confidence of investors and indeed every stakeholder within the pension value chain.”
They further said that another first in the nation’s pension industry is the approval of structured reduction of fees on the Net Asset Value of pension fund assets as well as the introduction of the Micro Pension Plan for the participation of informal sector workers in the Contributory Pension Scheme.
They added that among many other brilliant innovations she has introduced is the mortgage scheme for retirement savings account holders, which enables RSA holders to use the balance of their RSA savings for the purpose of mortgage.
According to them, the DG’s visible reformatory drives led to the approval by former President the sum of N159.466 billion for the payment of outstanding accrued rights and other pension liabilities of the government’s retirees. That is an open expression of confidence in the leadership of PenCom under Mrs. Dahir-Umar.
They said, “It is also laughable that these same accusers have made it their stock-in-trade to attempt to curry favour from any administration that comes on board by fabricating avalanche of unsubstantiated falsehoods against heads of institutions and parastatals. They did same under former President Muhammadu Buhari and failed.
“While we pass a vote of confidence on the Director General of PenCom, we appeal to all stakeholders to ignore the unfounded allegations against her and continue to offer support as she is poised to give all Nigerians a life worth living post-retirement” he said.
Source: Vanguard