Don’t borrow from workers’ pension funds

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The craving by the Federal Government to leverage workers’ N20 trillion pension funds, among other sources of funds in the savings industry, to presumably ramp up infrastructure and housing will not augur well for workers and the economy.

President Bola Tinubu ; Minister of Finance and Coordinating Minister of the Economy, Wale Edun; his Agriculture and Food Security counterpart, Abubakar Kyari and Minister of State for Agriculture and Food Security, Aliyu Abdullahi, during the Federal Executive Council meeting at the Presidential Villa, Abuja.

Since it came on board in 2004 through the Pension Reform Act , repealed and reenacted in 2014, the Contributory Pension Scheme allows both employer and employee to set aside 18 per cent of an employee’s emolument as retirement savings. The savings are put under a Pension Fund Administrator for investment to earn a return. The scheme provides a source of hope for workers to retire in dignity, against the former indecent arrangement whereby retirees suffered great humiliation.

Labour equally alleged that the government had already accessed nearly 70 per cent of the entire pension fund value. We remind the government that if indeed it has accessed the funds, it is unacceptable and we demand that it withdraws from tampering with the funds. This government must listen to Labour unions, the representatives of the workers, who are the major contributors to the funds and the beneficiaries.

Need we remind the minister that the Federal Government under former President Muhammadu Buhari frittered away N22.7 trillion Ways & Means credit from the Central Bank of Nigeria , with little or no infrastructure to show for it! Worse still, the National Assembly approved the securitisation of the loans in an arrangement that placed them on a tenor of 40 years. Buhari has since left office, but the loans remain with us and for future generations of Nigerians.

 

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