Ebere Nwoji
The National Pension Commission (PenCom) yesterday disclosed that as of March 2026, uncredited pension contributions stood at approximately N99.28 billion.
PenCom stated that, having made efforts to identify the true owners of the contributions without success, it would soon take a decision on the huge funds.
The figures represented deductions made by employers from their workers’ salaries as part of their pension contributions to be saved in their Retirement Savings Accounts (RSAs), but which were not credited or paid into the accounts.
The commission disclosed this at the one-year anniversary of the introduction of the Pension Contribution Remittance System (PCRS), organised by PenCom in collaboration with the Pension Operators Association of Nigeria (PenOp), the umbrella body of Pension Fund Administrators, and the Nigerian Employers’ Consultative Association (NECA) in Lagos.
Speaking on the topic, “Strengthening Trust Through PCRS: Safeguarding the Future of Pension Remittances,” Director, Surveillance Department of PenCom, Saleem Muhammad, said about 70 per cent of the uncredited pension contributions came from private sector employers, while the remaining 30 per cent came from public sector employers.
He traced the accumulation of the uncredited contributions to weaknesses in the manual remittance system previously employed by pension sector operators.
According to him, uncredited contributions mean that the funds have entered the pension system but cannot be allocated because of reasons such as invalid RSA PINs, missing schedules, incorrect PFA details, and data inconsistencies.
He described this as primarily a reconciliation and data issue.
“Key causes of uncredited contributions include missing contribution schedules, invalid or incorrect RSA PINs, mismatch between RSA PIN and PFA, database inconsistencies, unidentified payment sources, remittances from personal accounts, weak employer payroll controls, weak KYC and data remediation, and separation of payment from schedule submission,” he stated.
The PenCom director said these weaknesses increased reconciliation efforts and delayed the allocation of contributions.
He further explained that the owners of the accumulated pension deductions were mainly casual workers from some construction firms, such as Julius Berger Plc, who had left the services of their companies and could no longer be traced.
He said the commission, having made several efforts to trace the workers who own the money without success, would soon take a decision on the funds.
According to Muhammad, due to the series of problems associated with manual remittances, the commission instituted the PCRS on April 1, 2025, and enforced mandatory migration to it on June 1, 2025.
“The PCRS replaced a fragmented manual process with an automated, validated, and digitally traceable remittance platform. The objective is to prevent errors before funds enter the pension system,” he stated.
He highlighted the key objectives of the PCRS as automating contribution remittances, validating employee data before payment, linking schedules directly to payments, improving allocation accuracy, reducing uncredited contributions, enhancing transparency, improving regulatory oversight, and creating a complete audit trail.
He identified the key stakeholders in the PCRS as PenCom, which provides regulatory oversight and maintains validation infrastructure, among other roles; employers, who deduct the correct contributions, upload accurate schedules, remit within statutory timelines, and resolve rejected transactions; pension fund custodians, which receive pension contributions and process them into contributors’ Retirement Savings Accounts, among other functions; contributors, who maintain accurate RSA information, complete KYC requirements, monitor RSA statements, and report missing contributions promptly; and Payment Solution Service Providers (PSSPs), which serve as the technology and payment interface between employers and the pension remittance infrastructure.
He outlined their roles as employer registration and onboarding, provision of the schedule-upload platform, validation of employer and employee information, generation of payment references, facilitation of electronic payments, transmission of validated payment information, provision of transaction receipts and reports, resolution of payment-channel issues, and maintenance of system security and operational control.
At the one-year anniversary celebration of the digital pension remittance system, tagged PCRS, many pension desk officers from various organisations testified to the effectiveness of the system, saying it has made the remittance of pension contributions seamless.