Leah Katung-Babatunde.
The National Pension Commission (PenCom) says more than 241,000 retirees have benefited from increased monthly pension payments under reforms introduced by the administration of President Bola Tinubu.
PenCom Director-General, Ms Omolola Oloworaran, disclosed this on Tuesday at the 2026 PenCom Conference for Journalists in Abuja.
She said the adjustment, implemented through the Pension Boost 1.0 initiative, raised the beneficiaries’ combined monthly pension payments from N12.15 billion to N14.83 billion.
According to Oloworaran, the increase marked the first across-the-board pension adjustment for retirees under the Contributory Pension Scheme (CPS).
She said the measure was intended to improve retirees’ financial security and ensure that pensioners benefited from ongoing reforms in the pension industry.
The PenCom chief also announced a major pension adjustment for eligible retirees under the Nigeria Social Insurance Trust Fund (NSITF), whose benefits had remained unchanged for 21 years.
She said the review, facilitated by the commission under relevant legal provisions, resulted in a 1,173 per cent increase in pensions for 2,168 beneficiaries.
The adjustment raised their combined monthly pension payments from N12.56 million to N159.95 million.
Oloworaran added that the Federal Government had paid N8.7 billion in outstanding pension arrears owed to the beneficiaries.
She further disclosed that the government had approved a N758 billion intervention to settle inherited federal pension liabilities, some of which had remained unpaid since 2007.
According to her, payments under the intervention had reached hundreds of thousands of beneficiaries, while efforts were ongoing to ensure that eligible federal employees received their accrued pension rights before retirement.
She said a verification and enrolment exercise had covered workers scheduled to retire up to December 2029.
To address delays in pension payments, Oloworaran said PenCom had introduced a zero-waiting-time policy designed to ensure that federal employees began receiving their pensions upon retirement.
She added that retirement benefit applications, which previously took as long as 21 months to process, were now subject to a mandatory 48-hour service standard for Pension Fund Administrators (PFAs).
The commission had also introduced an exit benefit scheme for eligible employees of treasury-funded ministries, departments and agencies with at least 10 years of qualifying service.
Under the scheme, eligible retirees receive an additional benefit equivalent to 100 per cent of their annual emoluments, in addition to their regular pension benefits.
Oloworaran said 175 retirees received approximately N1.1 billion under the scheme in August.
On expanding pension coverage, she said PenCom was intensifying efforts to bring more Nigerians in the informal sector, including traders, artisans, farmers and transport workers, into the pension system.
The commission is deploying accredited pension agents to markets, workshops and other business locations to encourage self-employed Nigerians to enrol in the Personal Pension Plan (PPP), she said.
Oloworaran said the initiative was expected to address low pension participation among informal-sector workers and help them build savings for retirement.
Giving an update on the industry’s growth, she said 938,229 Nigerians joined the pension scheme between July 2024 and June, while pension assets rose from N20.7 trillion in July 2024 to N31.48 trillion in June.
She also disclosed that PenCom had recovered N36.6 billion from employers who deducted pension contributions from workers’ salaries but failed to remit the funds to their Retirement Savings Accounts (RSAs).
According to her, recoveries in 2025 set a record for annual collections since the introduction of the CPS, with collections in 2026 already exceeding the previous year’s record.
She warned employers against withholding pension contributions, describing the practice as a breach of trust.
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