The National Pension Commission has renewed its push to bring tens of millions of informal-sector workers into Nigeria’s retirement savings system, as its Director-General, Omolola Oloworaran, said the revamped micro-pension framework is central to closing the country’s widening pension gap.
Speaking in Abuja on Thursday at the Annual Conference of the Pension Correspondents Association of Nigeria, Oloworaran, who was represented by the Head of Corporate Communications, Ibrahim Buwai, said the redesigned scheme, now operating as the Personal Pension Plan, was introduced to address the limitations that hindered the uptake of the Micro Pension Plan launched in 2019.
Oloworaran said the scale of exclusion in the informal economy remained a national vulnerability. She noted that “Nigeria’s informal workforce is estimated at between 70 and 80 million people,” yet most have no structured retirement savings.
She described earlier participation levels as inadequate, saying the micro-pension programme attracted “about 200,000 contributors and roughly $1bn in assets,” which she stressed was “far below the scale of the challenge.”
She warned that artisans, traders, gig-economy workers, freelancers and market operators power the nation’s everyday economy but remain outside formal pension protection. “For far too long, many of these individuals have had little or no access to structured pension arrangements,” she said.
The reworked Personal Pension Plan, she explained, was designed to accommodate the realities of workers with irregular incomes. The scheme allows participation from age 18, supports flexible digital contributions through multiple channels, and splits every contribution into an emergency portion and a long-term savings portion to prevent workers from being discouraged by liquidity needs.
Oloworaran said PenCom placed strong emphasis on digitisation to rebuild trust and reduce barriers. “Contributors receive instant acknowledgement of their contributions and have real-time access to their statements,” she said, adding that Pension Fund Administrators and Accredited Pension Agents would deploy mobile-friendly, technology-driven solutions to simplify onboarding.
She added that contributions under the PPP would be managed through a dedicated investment structure with conservative and growth options tailored to contributors’ preferences. The PenCom boss said the redesigned model aims to deepen financial inclusion, mobilise long-term domestic capital and secure dignified retirement outcomes for millions currently left out.
She appealed to journalists to support the campaign, saying, “Help raise awareness about the PPP and explain it in simple and relatable terms.” She also addressed informal-sector workers directly, assuring them that retirement security is within reach.
PenCom said the revamped programme forms a key pillar of its Pension Revolution 2.0 initiative to widen the reach of the Contributory Pension Scheme nationwide.
Also speaking at the event, the Acting Chief Executive Officer of the Pension Fund Operators Association of Nigeria, Ms Anthonia Ifeanyi-Okoro, said the new Personal Pension Plan had become essential to closing the long-standing pension gap that had left millions of informal workers unprotected.
She described pensions as “social contracts that translate decades of labour into dignity, security and independence,” warning that Nigeria could not achieve meaningful social stability without extending coverage beyond the formal sector.
Ifeanyi-Okoro recalled that the 2004 pension reform transformed a “fiscally unsustainable” pay-as-you-go system into a funded, privately managed and transparent scheme, but noted that artisans, gig workers, traders, farmers and micro-entrepreneurs remained outside its reach.
She said the PPP provides “a practical pathway to inclusion,” allowing lower contributions, flexible entry points, digital channels and portability suited to irregular incomes.
According to her, the plan’s design, backed by technology, consumer education and trusted distribution partners, would “turn millions of informal workers from pension outsiders into pension participants.”
She added that expanding coverage through the PPP was “an investment in Nigeria’s social and economic future,” stressing that the goal remained to ensure every worker could look forward to a stable and dignified retirement.
Also speaking, the President of the Pension Correspondents Association of Nigeria, Nana Musa, said the debate on pension inclusion had become urgent, given that “over 80 per cent of Nigeria’s workforce” operates in the informal sector but remains largely outside formal social protection systems.
She noted that the conference was designed to foster “robust engagement between regulators, operators, policymakers, labour unions and the media” on how to make pension participation more accessible and attractive.
Musa commended PenCom and operators for ongoing reforms under the Personal Pension Plan, formerly the Micro Pension Plan, but stressed that “much remains to be done,” especially in awareness creation, trust building and technology-driven enrolment. According to PenCom data, the Personal Pension Plan expanded from N185.18m in August 2021 to N1.58bn in August 2025. Intermediate growth markers of N313.46m in August 2022, N560.06m in August 2023 and N968.27m in August 2024 were recorded before it crossed the N1bn threshold this year.
