Read this Preye Aganaba WONDERFUL ARTICLE BY SEGUN ADENIYI ... THISDAY BACKPAGE PenCom & the N4 Trillion Pot of Gold It was one of those brilliant memos in 2001 from then Director-General of the Bureau for Public Enterprises (BPE), Mallam Nasir el-Rufai, to which President Olusegun Obasanjo was instantly sold. However, he didn’t like the fact that el-Rufai would suggest that only Mr. Tajudeen Fola Adeola could midwife a reform of the pension scheme in Nigeria. Aside the fact that Obasanjo doesn’t enjoy being dictated to, he also was/is not a friend of Adeola, a feeling that I understand is mutual, even though both of them hail from Abeokuta. Notwithstanding, preliminary checks by the former president revealed that el-Rufai and Adeola were not particularly close so he concluded that the recommendation must have been based on some objective criteria. Vice President Atiku Abubakar, as chair of the National Council on Privatisation, would later explain to the president how an actuarial consultant’s report on the N43 billion underfunded pension liabilities in NITEL had exposed the looming danger about pensions in Nigeria and the necessity for a comprehensive reform. What eventually tilted the scale was that Adeola, who was at that period still at his duty post in Guaranty Trust Bank (GTB) as founding managing director, told intermediaries who sounded him out on the offer that he was not interested in working for Obasanjo under any circumstance. However, following the intervention of several people, particularly then Habib Bank MD, Mr. Akin Kekere-Ekun and the Vice President himself, Adeola accepted to take up the assignment. A broad-based steering committee on Pension Reforms in Public Enterprises was then established with him as chairman and Mrs Aisha Dahiru-Umar as Secretary while el-Rufai served as coordinator. The committee included representatives of the Nigerian Labour Congress (NLC) and other stakeholders. The focus of this committee was specific to pension in public enterprises but Obasanjo felt that the entire pension scheme in Nigeria needed a similar overhaul. This was what led to the establishment of a National Taskforce Team on Pension Reforms that retained Adeola as chairman. He agreed to take the assignment on two conditions: One, he would work with his personal money without taking anything from government, and throughout the life of the two committees, he stuck by that rule. And it must have cost him a lot because the second committee travelled to several South American countries like Mexico, Chile, Argentina etc. where they spent considerable time studying their pension systems and he foot his own bills. Two, Adeola demanded for a brilliant lawyer, preferably someone young, as his secretary. That was how el-Rufai assigned to the committee Mrs. Chinelo Anohu-Amazu (the current acting Director General of PenCom) whom he had invited home from the UK to join the telecoms team of BPE. She holds a Master’s degree in Telecommunication and Information Technology Law from the London School of Economics. Other respected actuarial, accounting and legal professionals like Mr. M.K. Ahmed, Dr. Musa Ibrahim and Mr. Timi Austin-Peters were also brought in. At the end, the Adeola committee came up with the reports (and draft legislation) that led to the enactment of the Pension Reform Act 2004 which established the Contributory Pension Scheme (CPS) and PenCom as the regulator. It also eventually led to the licensing of 24 Pension Fund Administrators, 4 Pension Fund Custodians (PFCs) and 7 Closed Pension Fund Administrators (CPFAs) with the private sector effectively mobilized for what has become a robust pension scheme in the country. How the duo of Obasanjo and Adeola worked together in the early days to achieve the pension reform remains a testimony to the character of the two Egba men but it was also no surprise that the story would end the way it did. Although Obasanjo would later reluctantly appoint Adeola PenCom chairman and also requested for his nominee for the post of Director General (Adeola nominated Mr. M. K. Ahmed who had served diligently in his committee), the mutual resentment towards each other continued. With rumours in 2006 that Adeola was seeking to contest the Ogun Central Senatorial District ticket on the platform of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) then also being sought by Obasanjo’s first daughter, he was unceremoniously sacked from PenCom and Transcorp Plc of which he was pioneer CEO. And Dr. Iyabo Obasanjo-Bello, at that period the Ogun State Commissioner for Health, would then rub it in: Here is somebody that has never contributed anything to his community,” she began. “Fola Adeola has never contributed in any charitable way to Abeokuta and its environs. He has his beautiful house and beautiful wife in Lagos, now he thinks he could come here and try to buy our people’s votes. He thinks he can intimidate me but I can tell you, we are going to fight it out. He is going to have me to deal with.” As it would turn out, Adeola did not seek the PDP senatorial ticket for which he lost two jobs in one day but the efforts of his team remain the reason PenCom has become one of the successful stories of the economic reforms under the current democratic dispensation. It is therefore to his credit and that of Obasanjo and el-Rufai that an agency that started with practically nothing in 2004 today boasts of a N4 trillion pension funds just a decade after coming on board. Not only that, the reform has been so successful that African countries like Ghana, Tanzania, Malawi and others now copy it as their model. I have recounted the foregoing story essentially for those who may have wondered why the trio of Obasanjo, Adeola and el-Rufai featured so prominently at the tenth year anniversary of PenCom three weeks ago. But it is also to the credit of President Goodluck Jonathan that he has a sense of history by inviting and specially recognizing them at the occasion, regardless of whatever political differences he might have with at least the duo of Obasanjo and el-Rufai. It is even all the more remarkable that the president only recently signed into law the Pension Reform 2014 Act to consolidate the gains of the sector and address some of the observed lapses in the implementation of the previous Act. The expectation is that the new legislation will help to enhance the protection of pension funds and assets and strengthen the regulatory and enforcement capacity of PenCom. It is also expected that the Pension funds will become a catalyst for the development of our country, especially in the area of critical infrastructure. But first, let us examine the compelling features of the Pension Reform Act 2014.thisdaylive/articles/pencom-the-n4-trillion-pot-of-gold/184351/ PenCom & the N4 Trillion Pot of Gold, Articles | THISDAY LIVE thisdaylive
Posted on: Thu, 24 Jul 2014 09:52:29 +0000
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