Eight years after the Pension Reform Act, 2004, which mandated the six pension departments of the Federal Government to submit to regulation by the National Pension Commission was enacted, the departments have been operating without any supervision.

They are the civil service, military, police, customs, immigration and prison pension departments.

Thus, the pension officials in the departments have been having a field day, tampering with funds, with no regulator checking up on  their activities.

The Director-General, PenCom, Mr. Muhammad Ahmad, while explaining the reason why the commission had not implemented the section of the Act that mandated it to regulate the pension departments, said that the departments did not subject themselves to due regulation.

He said, while appearing before the Senate Committee on Pension Matters, that, “Section 35 (1) of the Act provides that the commission should supervise and regulate the pension departments and offices.

“The operations of the pension offices had over time generated regulatory concerns for the commission, particularly, in ensuring compliance with the provisions of the PRA 2004.”

Ahmad said that the pension offices had operated within their parent ministries, departments and agencies, with co-mingled administrative and operational structures.

This arrangement, he added, weakened the regulatory and supervisory oversight of the commission over the offices and departments due to lack of centralisation of the oversight functions.

Ahmad said, “This has resulted in a situation where the commission is unable to exert supervisory control over the pension offices as they have little regard for the commission’s supervisory role over them in clear violation of sections 30 to 38 of the PRA 2004. 

“This is in spite of the fact that the commission and the offices had jointly worked out a supervisory framework and issued regulations on the conduct of the offices.”

A former President, Association of National Accountants of Nigeria, Dr. Sam Nzekwe, said frauds prevalent in the old pension scheme might have been averted to a large extent if the pension departments had submitted to regulation by PenCom as stipulated by law. He described as alarming and disturbing to the pensioners and the country at large the level of fraud being uncovered under the old pension scheme.

Source: Punch/Nike Popoola