By ROSEMARY ONUOHA

Mr. John Ugana (not real names) is a retired police officer who served in the Nigerian Police Force for 35 years. Before he retired, the Contributory Pension Scheme, CPS, came on stream and all his pension entitlements were transferred to his Retirement Savings Account, RSA. Ugana retired and relocated back to his village in Benue State and went back to his farm without collecting his pension.

When Ugana’s PFA discovered that he did not come to claim his pension, the PFA tried reaching him on his telephone line, but it was not connecting. The PFA contacted his former office and was told that they know nothing of his where about. The PFA went to the address he submitted as his residential address and his former neighbours said he just left without telling anybody where he was going.

Luckily for Ugana, in the process of trying to locate him, a close friend who knew of his whereabouts briefed the PFA about it, so the PFA went to his village to look for him. When he was eventually found, he was asked why he didn’t bother to collect his pension; Ugana said he never knew the pension scheme was real and he never believed in it.

Scenarios like this are becoming commonplace with the CPS due to various reasons.  Reasons such as, RSA holders changing addresses and not informing their PFAs; RSA holders changing phone lines and still not informing their PFAs; account holders not telling their beneficiaries about their pension before dying; as well as RSA holders not writing Will to specify who their benefits should go to in case of death.

Only recently, Pension Fund Operators, PenOp, lamented that un-accessed pension benefits is growing on daily basis and it is becoming a big challenge to the pension sector on how to locate the actual beneficiaries.

Your contribution in the CPS is not money that you need for day to day living. Hence, there is need for you to give accurate information to your PFA so that when you finally retire, controversy won’t arise. More so, if a retiree is not around to enjoy his pension benefits due to death, his/her real beneficiary is not in doubt.

Since pension remittances are made by employers and not even by individuals, there is need for the individual to update his/her PFA on recent developments which the employer might not be aware of.

The desire of Pension Fund Operators is to grow the subscriber base of the CPS from about 5.2 million at present to over 20 million in the future. However, the desire is that every subscriber enjoys his pension and retirement at the end of the day.