The Pension Transitional Arrangement Directorate (PTAD) is looking for a mechanism to recoup nearly N40 billion in unremitted investment earnings held by several underwriters on behalf of a number of defunct organizations from whom the Directorate has inherited liabilities.
The Directorate further stated that over N17 billion has already been spent on clearing different outstanding pension arrears and that substantial progress will be recorded in pension payouts once the N40 billion now held by underwriters is received.
Dr. Chioma Ejikeme, the PTAD Executive Secretary, made the announcement in Abuja on Tuesday during the official completion of the payment of inherited unpaid liabilities to defunct federal agencies’ retirees.
The major aspect of the event, according to her, was that the Directorate utilized it to announce the total settlement of the liabilities of two defunct agencies: the New Nigerian Newspapers and the Nigeria Reinsurance Corporation.
“We’re no longer in arrears with them.” In terms of the liabilities we have with insurance underwriters’ investments, we have a few of them who haven’t paid the monies they have; around N40 billion. If we are able to obtain the funds, it will go a long way toward assisting us in the liquidation of our outstanding liabilities.”
The pension liabilities that must be paid today are the arrears that accumulated between the time the lump sum pension was first paid and October 2018, when the disengaged ex-workers were enrolled in the monthly pension by PTAD, and thus represent the unfunded pension liabilities that were due to these pensioners when the Directorate inherited them.
Mrs. Zainab Ahmed, Minister of Finance, Budget, and National Planning, had earlier praised PTAD for reviving pensioners’ hopes, saying that the Directorate had automated its procedures to make them more frictionless.
She praised PTAD in particular for paying N1.6 billion to 597 ex-Biafran soldiers, as well as other settlements.
