PenCom: Retirees Now Get Benefits Approved in 48 hours, Not 21 Months
By Patience Ikpeme
Nigerian retirees who once waited as long as 21 months for their benefits to be approved would now get a decision within 48 hours, the Director-General of the National Pension Commission (PenCom), Ms Omolola Oloworaran, announced on Tuesday.
Speaking at the 2026 PenCom Media Conference in Abuja, Ms Oloworaran said the new timeline is not a distant goal. “It is a mandatory service standard,” she said, adding that it binds every Pension Fund Administrator (PFA). She summed up the change in four words: “Twenty-one months. Forty-eight hours.”
In a separate presentation at the same event, the Head of the Corporate Communications Department of PenCom, Mr Ibrahim Garba Buwai, said the 48-hour rule can decide “whether a family waits for money to pay an urgent medical bill, school fee or rent.” He said that for retirees, the difference between months and two days goes well beyond efficiency.
Ms Oloworaran said retirees under the Contributory Pension Scheme (CPS) have received their first across-the-board pension increase. She said the increase, called Pension Boost 1.0, raised the monthly pensions of more than 241,000 retirees. Total monthly pension payments rose from ₦12.15 billion to ₦14.83 billion, she said. For a retired teacher in Ilorin or a retired nurse in Enugu, she said, that means food on the table, a settled bill or a filled prescription.
Mr Buwai said the rise, which is about 22 per cent, gives retirees more to spend on food, housing, medicine and utilities, and puts more money into local communities and the households that depend on retirees.
Ms Oloworaran said pensioners of the defunct Nigeria Social Insurance Trust Fund (NSITF) had their pensions reviewed for the first time in 21 years. Their payments had not changed since 2005. She said the Commission used its legal powers to order a full review, which produced an increase of 1,173 per cent.
According to the Director-General, the combined monthly pensions of 2,116 NSITF retirees rose from ₦12.56 million to ₦159.95 million, and ₦8.70 billion in arrears has been paid. She gave the example of one retiree who used to receive about ₦18,000 a month and now collects about ₦206,000.
Mr Buwai used the same case to show what the numbers mean for one person. He said the new pension is about 11.4 times the old one. “For this pensioner, the reform was not a percentage,” he said. “It was the difference between ₦18,000 and ₦206,000 arriving every month.”
Mr Buwai also named a separate adjustment of ₦32,000 a month for more than 100,000 eligible pensioners of federal ministries, departments and agencies (MDAs), linked to the new national minimum wage. For one such pensioner, he said, that adds up to ₦384,000 more a year.
Ms Oloworaran announced that Nigeria now has an Exit Benefit Scheme, which began on January 1, 2026. Employees of federal MDAs funded from the Treasury who have served at least ten years receive an extra payment equal to their full annual earnings, on top of their regular pension. She said the first 175 retirees received about ₦1.1 billion in August. She called it “a full year’s pay, as the thanks of a grateful nation.”
Mr Buwai said people who spent decades “teaching, nursing, administering, defending” should not begin retirement with money worries.
The Director-General said the Federal Government has paid off pension debts it inherited, some outstanding since 2007. She said President Bola Tinubu approved a ₦758 billion Federal Government Pension Bond, and payments from it have reached 957,045 people. The debts, she said, had passed from one government to the next until this administration settled them.
Mr Buwai added that the position of accrued pension rights moved from 21 months in arrears to a 41-month surplus, a swing of 62 months. He described this as one of the biggest structural improvements in the scheme since it began.
Ms Oloworaran said accrued rights are also being paid on time, and often early. Through a one-time verification and enrolment exercise, the rights of enrolled federal employees due to retire up to December 2029 have already been credited to their accounts. Under the Zero Waiting Time policy, federal retirees now begin receiving pensions as they leave service, in step with the monthly salary cycle. “The era of retiring into a queue is ending,” she said. She urged all eligible employees and agencies to finish enrolment before the exercise closes in December 2026.
On workers whose pension deductions never reach their accounts, the Director-General had a firm message for employers. Money taken from a worker’s pay but not sent to the Retirement Savings Account (RSA) is, she said, “a breach of trust and a breach of the law.”
She said recoveries from defaulting employers set a record last year, and this year’s figure has already passed it. Cumulative recoveries stood at ₦36.6 billion as of July 2026. “We will find what is owed, we will recover it,” she said.
Mr Buwai said the amount recovered compares with ₦28 billion in all earlier years combined, and that employer compliance improved by 28 per cent. He described an unremitted deduction as the worker’s retirement money being withheld, not a technical lapse.
Ms Oloworaran said total pension assets rose from ₦20.79 trillion in July 2024 to ₦31.48 trillion in June 2026, a gain of more than ₦10.7 trillion in under two years. She said 938,229 Nigerians joined the CPS over the same period.
Mr Buwai said the money belongs to contributors and pensioners and not to government. He said it also gives the economy a deeper pool of long-term local capital for investment. He described the new contributors as people who moved from having no formal retirement savings to having an RSA and a structured path to a pension.
The Director-General added that the pension industry has, for the first time, agreed to commit its own money to infrastructure. The industry’s leadership council has backed a US$250 million consortium, with US$200 million coming from pension fund operators over ten years and a further US$50 million being sought from development finance institutions. “This is a beginning, not a ceiling,” she said.
Ms Oloworaran said two major programmes will begin during National Pension Week, from October 26 to 30. The first is PenCare, a healthcare programme for retirees on low incomes. It will provide essential medical care at no cost to those who qualify, beginning with 30,000 retirees. “No Nigerian should retire into poverty,” she said, “and no Nigerian should retire into ill health.”
The second is the Minimum Pension Guarantee. She said this protection has been part of pension law for over a decade but has never taken effect. It will set a floor below which no qualifying CPS retiree will fall.
Looking ahead, Mr Buwai said success will depend less on how quickly existing assets grow than on how many Nigerians with no pension account are brought in. He named four groups: the market woman, the artisan, the transport worker and the farmer.
Ms Oloworaran said the Commission has built a national network of Accredited Pension Agents who will carry the Personal Pension Plan to markets, motor parks, farms and workshops. She said each agent accredited is also a new source of livelihood. Mr Buwai said the plan’s flexible digital contributions are meant to remove the barriers that kept such workers out.
He called this next phase “Pension Revolution 2.0” and listed six goals: inclusion, technology, investment, governance, jobs and retirement security.
The Director-General said the Pension Industry Leadership Council approved on September 24 an independent assessment of how the industry measures up against international standards. She added that PenCom is preparing a Pension Transformation Agenda 2030 to set clear priorities and measurable targets. At the event she unveiled the first edition of *PenCom Chronicles*, a record of the reforms and decisions shaping the pension system, and launched the official website for National Pension Week.
She urged young Nigerians to know their PFA, read their statements and ask where their contributions are. She asked journalists to keep the Commission under scrutiny. “Hold us to account,” she said, and asked them to bring the voice of the retiree to the public. She also invited state governments and private employers to follow the Federal Government’s example by remitting faithfully, widening coverage and rewarding long service.
Crediting President Tinubu for the progress, Ms Oloworaran said: “Statesmen are remembered for what they paid.” She said the President has chosen to be judged by that standard.
She admitted that the work is not finished. More Nigerians must be brought in, employer compliance must deepen and benefits must grow to meet the pressures households face, she said.
Mr Buwai ended on a similar note. “Pension reform is ultimately about people, not numbers,” he said.
