Stakeholders in the finance and education sectors in Abuja have began discussions on ways of effectively managing pensions in the country.
The meeting is discussing “Manpower Development for Nigerian Universities and the Nigerian Pension Industry”.
The Executive Secretary of the National Universities Commission (NUC), Professor Julius Okojie, said yesterday that legislation alone could not drive the current process of Nigeria’s pensions management.
He said that adequate and proper manpower was required to work with the law to fill in current gaps in the administration of pension funds.
Okojie said the necessary machinery to enforce any policy ought to be put in place before such policies were brought to the fore.
He said the NUC identified gaps that could be properly addressed by the Nigerian University System.
“The Pension Reform Act of 2004 was a major shift to an era of coordinated pension management aimed at ensuring that each Nigerian worker, in both public and private sector, has a well defined plan for their retirement benefits through the mandatory Contributory Pension Scheme.
“Despite the noble idea behind the scheme, available evidence attests to the fact that its implementation has been fraught with weak institutional support and poor manpower administration.
“Presently, the value of assets under the scheme for both the public and private sectors is over N4.0 trillion, thus the urgency and expediency for stakeholders to evolve a mechanism which would promote the efficient management of the assets for the benefit of government and contributors,” he said.
According to him, NUC is conscious of its statutory responsibility and is determined to fast-track production of required manpower for the pension industry by developing actuarial scientists/ actuaries and linkages with highly ranked global institutions in the course training.
Okojie said the workshop would discuss modalities for raising the required fund from institutions, such as the Tertiary Education Trust Fund (TETFund), PenCOM, National Insurance Company and Central Bank of Nigeria for the training of postgraduate students to doctorate level in actuarial science.
He said other issues to be looked at were the review of the curriculum of study in line with current international trends, adoption of modalities for sustainable production of manpower for the pensions industry and identify trainees and partner institutions for staff training and exchange programmes.
In a keynote address, an actuary, Ambassador Godson Echegile, while commending PenCOM, noted that a lot needed to be done to ensure a wider coverage and sustained growth of the pension industry.
Echegile said there should be a plan to accommodate more workers in the scheme, especially those in the states civil service, address the issue of transition of contributors to the new scheme as well as non-remittance of deductions to PenCOM.
He listed the key manpower areas of the Pension Industry as accounting, law, insurance and actuarial science and urged participants to evolve ways of developing effective manpower from the fields.