By Emma Ujah

The decision by President Bola Tinubu to appoint Ms. Omolola Bridget Oloworaran as the new Director-General, DG, of the National Pension Commission, PenCom, has been applauded by analysts as the industry needs rejuvenation and refocus.

Oloworaran, a finance and banking expert comes to the job with many years of experience and is expected drive a new growth trajectory for the pension industry.

“The President anticipates a goal-oriented leadership to drive efficiency and superlative performance in the National Pension Commission as the prime regulator of the Nigerian Pension Industry,” Chief Ajuri Ngelale, the President’s spokesman had said in the press statement, announcing the appointment, penultimate week.

Specifically important is the need to expand the number of Nigerians who are contributors in the pension scheme.

There have been efforts in the past at bringing those in the informal sector into the Contributory Pension Scheme, CPS. However, not much has been achieved in this regard. This should engage the attention on the new D-G to make it very attractive . With inflation rate at over 34 percent, saving of money is not attractive to business operators because the value is easily eroded. Therefore, Ms. Oloworaran will have to go the extra-mile to deploy her financial expertise with a view to coming out with products that can attract operators in the informal sector into the pension scheme.

Maximizing the utilization of the pension assets in the country put at around N20 trillion is also an area where the new D-G has to re-work the operational guidelines of the operations of the Pension Fund Administrators, PFAs, such that they can more-easily invest some of the huge pension resources in infrastructure where gaps of investible funds clearly exist.