By the end of the first quarter of 2022, the percentage of under-40-year-old workers covered by the Contributory Pension Scheme (CPS) had increased from 73 per cent at the end of 2021 to 86.4 per cent.
The National Pension Commission (PenCom) provided this information in its quarterly report for Q1, 2022, titled “Age and Gender Distribution.”
This demonstrated the CPS’s rising sustainability level, according to PenCom.
The report also revealed that men made up the majority of those who held retirement savings accounts.
It stated, “Analysis of new registrations on the CPS for the quarter ended 31 March 2022 showed that 86.4 per cent were below the age of 40 years.
“This points to the increasing sustainability of the CPS, as the younger generation are actively enlisted into the scheme.
“Regarding gender distribution, 66 per cent of those registered during the quarter were male, while 34 per cent were female.”
9,621,979 employees had retirement savings accounts at the time of the review, according to PenCom.
According to the statistics, there were 3.5 million workers under the age of 30, 3.35 million between the ages of 30 and 39, 1.79 million between the ages of 40 and 49, 709,748 between the ages of 50 and 59, 65,136 between the ages of 60 and 65, and 27,632 over the age of 65.
Ivor Takor, director of the Center for Pension Rights Advocacy, stated that businesses prepared for their employees’ old age by setting up pension plans for them.
“Pension is a retirement plan that provides monthly income in retirement,” he said.
According to him, the Pension Reform Act incorporated provisions aimed at creating a system that was sustainable and had the potential to reach the ultimate goal of offering each worker in the nation a secure, predictable, and sufficient source of retirement income.
The Contributory Pension Scheme, which Nigeria currently employs, has built-in checks and balances ingrained into the system, according to the Pension Funds Operators Association of Nigeria, which spoke about the security of the pension funds.
It stated, “The model is such that the Pension Fund Administrators who administer and make investment decisions do not have custody of the funds. The custody of all the pension funds is held with separate and independent entities – the Pension fund Custodians.
