Ebere Nwoji
The National Pension Commission (PenCom) has stressed the need for small-scale business operators to embrace its Micro Pension plan for their benefit.
PenCom made the call at the just concluded Lagos International Trade Fair.
The commission said participation in the yearly trade fair was one of the strategies it used to sustain the momentum of the micro pension.
“The trade fair is a forum that attracts business people and stakeholders that we feel should be part of the micro pension system and this is a forum for us to interact with those stakeholders to explain to them what benefits they stand to get from the micro pension, ”the commission explained
Speaking at PenCom’s special day at the fair annually organised by the Lagos Chamber of Commerce and Industry (LCCI), Head of the Micro Pensions Department at PenCom, Dauda Ahmed, said the commission made impressive outing at the fair.
He said response gotten by the commission on the Micro pension has been quite encouraging, adding that the commission had been having interactions with participants at the fair and have been enlightening them on what the Micro pension plan was all about and how they could benefit from the initiative.
Also speaking on the progress of the MPP initiative, the Head of South West Zonal Office, PenCom, Sola Adeseun, who represented the Director General, Aisha Dahir-Umar, affirmed that participating at the trade fair was just one of the commission’s strategies in creating awareness about the Micro pension scheme.
He said PenCom also reached out to market women across the country to have sessions with them so that they could also contribute to the micro pension plan to have something to fall back to in their retirement age.
The President of the Lagos Chamber of Commerce and Industry, Dr. Michael Olawale-Cole, in his welcome address commended the pension industry for its success over the years, with total pension assets of N17.35 trillion as of September 2023 and a contributors’ base of about 10.1 million people.
