Managing Director, Nigeria Deposit Insurance Corporation (Ndic), Alhaji Umaru Ibrahim (left) and the new Managing Director, Fidelity Bank Plc., Mr Nnamdi Okonkwo, who paid a courtesy visit to Ndic in Abuja, recently

The 2014 Pension Reform
Bill has been signed into law by President Goodluck Jonathan.
By the action, the 2004 Pension Reform Act has been repealed with prescriptions among others including upward review of penalties and sanctions to pension defaulters and employers that fail to remit deducted monies of their employees.
The new law was passed between May 27 and June 3, 2014 by the National Assembly respectively by the House of Representatives and the Senate.
The Tide gathered that the signed document “The Pension Reform Act 2014 also made provision for the creation of additional permissible investment instruments to accommodate initiative for national development.
Such investments include infrastructure and real estate development without compromising the paramount principle of ensuring the safety of pension fund assets.
According to some of the highlights in the new Pension law, the inadequacies provided under the 2004 Reform Act were no longer good for checking against infractions of the law.
It further took note of the fact that currently, more Sophisticated methods of diversion of pension assets were not addressed by the PRA 2004.
There fore the PRA 2014 has provided new offences and created for stiffer punishment that would serve as deterrent against mismanagement and diversion of pension funds or assets under any guise.
The new law provides that “persons who indulge in mismanagement of pension funds would be liable on conviction to not less than 10 years imprisonment or fine of an amount equal to three times the amount so misappropriated or diverted or both imprisonment and fine”.
The 2014 Act also empowers Pencom, subject to the fiat of the Attorney General of the Federation to institute criminal proceedings against employers who persistently fail to deduct and /or remit pension contributions of their employees within the stipulated time.
This provision was however not provided in the 2004 Act which only allowed Pencom to revoke the license of erring pension operators but does not provide for other interim remedial measures.
However, the Senate had earlier in the year passed a version of the National Health Bill, (NHB) that was rejected by some health workers under the aegis of the Joint Health Sector Union (JOHESU) and Allied Health Professionals Association, (APHA).
The members include pharmacists, nurses, medical laboratory scientists, physiotherapists, radiographers among other health workers apart from medical doctors.
They unanimously enjoined members of the House of Representatives to conduct a proper public hearing to redress outstanding issues in the NHB 2014 rather than adopting a concurrence of the flawed version passed by the Senate in the public and professional interest.