The Federal Government has cleared inherited pension liabilities dating back to 2007 through a N758bn intervention bond, providing financial relief to 957,045 pension beneficiaries across the country.
The Director-General of the National Pension Commission, Omolola Oloworaran, disclosed this on Tuesday at the 2026 PenCom Media Conference in Lagos.
Speaking in her keynote address titled, ‘From Reform to Reality: Renewed Hope, Pension Security for All Nigerians,’ Oloworaran said the settlement marked the resolution of pension obligations accumulated across successive administrations.
“The Federal Government cleared all inherited pension liabilities, some dating back to 2007. These obligations passed through multiple administrations, but this government chose to settle them. That is statesmanship—a debt paid, not just a promise,” she said.
Oloworaran said the payment represented a significant shift from the prolonged delays that had characterised the settlement of pension obligations.
“Every nation makes a promise to the people who build it—those who serve faithfully and diligently. When your working years are done, your country should not forget you. For too long, that promise was kept slowly, partially, or not at all. Today, I can report that this has changed—not in aspiration, but in actual fact,” she added.
She said the liquidation of the legacy federal pension debts was part of wider institutional reforms being implemented under the administration of President Bola Tinubu.
As part of the reforms, PenCom disclosed that accrued pension rights for federal employees scheduled to retire up to December 2029 had already been credited to their Retirement Savings Accounts.
The commission said the advance crediting followed a comprehensive one-time verification and enrolment exercise aimed at preventing delays in the payment of retirement benefits.
To prevent new pension backlogs, PenCom has also introduced a Zero Waiting Time Policy, which is designed to align retirement benefit payments with monthly public service salary cycles.
Under the new arrangement, workers are expected to transition into retirement without financial gaps, while benefit processing time has been reduced from as much as 21 months to 48 hours.
The commission also announced a major increase in payments to retirees of the defunct Nigeria Social Insurance Trust Fund following a 21-year review conducted under relevant statutory provisions.
The review resulted in an average increase of 1,173 per cent in payments to 2,116 NSITF retirees, alongside the settlement of N8.7bn in arrears.
PenCom further disclosed that its Pension Boost 1.0 initiative had increased monthly disbursements under the Contributory Pension Scheme from N12.15bn to N14.83bn.
The increase directly raised monthly pension payments for more than 241,000 retirees nationwide.
Oloworaran said the effectiveness of government’s worker welfare policies should also be measured by how it treats workers after their years of service.
She said, “The true measure of how a government values its workforce lies not only in how it treats its employees while in service, but in how faithfully it fulfils its pension obligations after retirement.”
Meanwhile, PenCom unveiled additional welfare initiatives, including the PenCare free healthcare support programme, which will initially target 30,000 low-income retirees.
The commission also announced plans to activate a statutory Minimum Pension Guarantee baseline and expand the Micro Pension Plan to informal-sector workers, including traders and artisans, through a nationwide agent network.
