The Pension Transitional Arrangement Directorate says it has paid more than N1 trillion in monthly pensions to retirees under the Federal Government’s Defined Benefit Scheme since taking over pension management in 2015.
The Director of Corporate Services at PTAD, Kabiru Yusuf, revealed the figure in Abuja on Thursday during a training workshop for pension reporters and online editors. He said PTAD had paid about N1.002 trillion to an average of 212,385 pensioners from 2015 to October 2025. He added that the achievement reflects PTAD’s mission to restore order, integrity and dignity to the old pension system.
Yusuf explained that PTAD operates on the core principle of paying the correct pension to the correct pensioner at the correct time. He reminded the journalists that PTAD was created under the Pension Reform Act 2014 to take over pension administration for Federal Government workers who remained under the Defined Benefit Scheme after others moved to the Contributory Pension Scheme.
PTAD is responsible for the pensions of police retirees, Customs, Immigration and Correctional Service pensioners, civil service retirees and pensioners from treasury-funded parastatals. The Directorate operates under the supervision of the Federal Ministry of Finance and is regulated by the National Pension Commission. It also works with the Office of the Accountant General, the Auditor General, the Budget Office and oversight committees of the National Assembly.
Yusuf said pension administration before PTAD was plagued by weak controls, poor funding, ghost beneficiaries and long-standing complaints. He noted that these failures caused financial losses and left many pensioners and families without their entitlements for decades. When PTAD took over, it inherited about 55,000 unresolved cases. These included more than 30,000 eligible pensioners who were not on the payroll and more than 10,000 unpaid death benefits.
He said this breakdown in the old system led to the pension reforms of 2004 and the strengthened Pension Reform Act of 2014, which created PTAD. He added that the Directorate built its operations on technology to avoid the mistakes of the past. These upgrades include a digitised pensioners database, mobile verification for aged or ill retirees, automated computation tools, a modern payroll manager and a complaints portal with a call centre.
PTAD also inherited about N304 billion in unfunded pension liabilities. Yusuf said the figure has been reduced to about N103.5 billion as of September 2025 due to steady funding support from successive governments. He highlighted several presidential approvals secured by PTAD, including health insurance coverage for all DBS retirees and a harmonisation policy that places eligible pensioners on the latest salary structure for their cadre.
He said the government also approved N45 billion in emergency funding to implement three pension increases of N32,000, 10.66 percent and 12.95 percent. In addition, President Tinubu approved the payment of N28.4 billion owed to NITEL and MTEL pensioners and N39.2 billion owed to parastatal pensioners for arrears covering August 2015 to July 2023.
Yusuf acknowledged that some challenges still remain. These include the lack of a legal provision making pension payments a first-line charge and the absence of a clear framework for reviewing pensions every five years as required by the constitution. He said the addition of ex-workers from 14 defunct or privatised agencies has also changed the expectation that the DBS population would shrink with time.
Despite these challenges, he said PTAD remains committed to running a pension system based on fairness, legality and compassion. He added that the goal is a system driven by innovation and empathy where retirees are treated with dignity.
Earlier at the event, the Executive Secretary of PTAD, Tolulope Odunaiya, represented by Yusuf, said the training was organised to help pension reporters better understand PTAD’s mandate and operations. She thanked the media for consistent and accurate coverage and said the Directorate relies on journalists to help clarify issues, correct misinformation and support the welfare of pensioners.
