The National Pension Commission has revealed that 12,241 Retirement Savings Account holders from the informal sector have contributed about N967.19m between 2020 and the third quarter of 2024 under the Micro Pension Plan.
This was disclosed in its newly introduced Pension Industry Performance Dashboard, which offers a comprehensive, user-friendly overview of historical vital pension statistics.
The Pension Reform Act 2014 expanded coverage of the Contributory Pension Scheme to the self-employed and persons working in organisations with less than three employees. The Micro Pension Plan was launched in 2019 to provide retirement savings for people.
working in the informal sector.
According to a recent study by Jobberman Nigeria in partnership with the Mastercard Foundation, the informal sector accounted for 76.7 per cent of employed Nigerians, highlighting the critical importance of the sector to Nigeria’s economy.
The PenCom dashboard revealed that since inception to Q3 2024, the total micro pension registration count stood at 164,031.
“Specifically, the number of informal sector workers with funded RSAs was 12,241. From 2020 to Q3 2024, the number of funded RSA registrations increased by 5,971, and the total amount saved in the RSAs of Micro Pension Participants was N967.19m as of Q3 2024, which represented a growth of N878.07m from the 2020 figure of N89.13m,” part of the dashboard read.
The dashboard further provided a breakdown of the MicroPension Plan RSA count in the last five years, which grew from 6,270 in 2020 to 8,260 in 2021, 8,807 in 2022, and 8,950 in 2023 before the 36.77 per cent rise it witnessed in 2024, indicating more efforts had been exerted to bring in more of the informal sector into the CPS.
Similarly, contributions into the funded MPP RSAs had grown steadily over the last five years.
In 2020, the contributions were valued at N89.13m; in 2021, it rose to N224.05m; a further increase was recorded in 2022 to N368.03m, and it nearly doubled to N680.16m in 2023 before moving closer to the N1bn mark at Q3, 2024, when it stood at N967.19m.
At a workshop for journalists in December 2024 in Lagos, the Director-General of the National Pension Commission, Omolola Oloworaran, revealed that the micro pension scheme would be remodelled to boost participation.
She said, “What we are doing with a micro pension is treating it a little differently from how we were doing it before. As we know, the micro pension doesn’t resonate with everyone within the informal sector, and some operators have shared feedback about the players saying, ‘I’m not micro; I’m making millions in a month, and you want me to open a micro pension account.’ We want to rebrand the micro pension plan into a new one that will speak to every sector of the economy, including people who are at the bottom of the social strata.
“What we want to do is remodel the micro pension plan and let it speak to individuals in the informal sector directly, so whether you are a farmer, fashion designer, gatekeeper, etc., we will be meeting their needs with the products that will be coming out, and I’m sure we will be able to get more people in.”
Oloworaran added that operators in the sector have not been pushing the micro pension scheme as desired.
He said, “Operators are not driving it. I can understand the challenges that some of them have highlighted. When we finish revamping the scheme, I believe everyone will come on board to drive it. In addition to rebranding, we are also looking at the technology that can work for us. The numbers we are looking at are enormous. Right now, we have over 10 million contributors under the CPS in the formal sector, but under the informal sector, we have tens of millions of people.
“Based on the last numbers I saw, it was north of 70 million. If we can drive this micro pension, I expect us to get up to 20 million Nigerians getting on the scheme, and the only way we can do that is with technology. It is a lot of work we are going to do on that and working with the operators so that we can ensure that between now and next year, we have more contributors.”