NBS: 89% of Nigeria’s workforce are without pension accounts

The National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) says 89% of the country’s workforce have retirement savings account.

According to the NBS retirement savings account report released by the bureau on Thursday, the highest number of registered working population are in the private sector.

“The retirement savings account (RSA) membership distribution data for Q2 2017 reflected that 7,589,936 workers are registered under the pension scheme out of a total working population of 69,470,901 (data for Q2 2017 will be updated as soon as it is available) recorded as at Q4 2016,” it read.

“This represents 10.93% of the total working population. This is not surprising given the largely informal structure of the Nigerian labour force with about 50% of the current workforce engaged in subsistence agriculture and informal trading.”

Data available on the NBS website shows that 1.89 million of the total figure are federal workers while 1.53 million are state workers and 4.15 million work for private firms.

“The least number of registered working population came from above 65 years and 60-65 years age bracket.

“The highest number of registered working population came from the age bracket of 30-39 years and closely followed by the working population within the age bracket of 40-49 years and 50-59 years.

“This is expected considering ages 25-44 account for about 55% of the total working population.”

According to the 2014 pension reform act, employers are mandated to make contributions from salaries of employees into retirement savings account effective from July 2014, in the following proportions: employee 8% and employer 10%.

The categories of people exempted from the contributory pension scheme are members of the armed forces, the intelligence and secret service of the federation.