The poor state of the Nigerian economy that has weakened business activities and household spending has worked against the effective take off of the country’s micro pension plan (MPP).
The micro pension plan launched in March 2019 as part of President Mohammadu Buhari’s second term campaign promise, was projected to increase the Retirement Savings Account (RSA) under the Contributory Pension Scheme (CPS) from 8.5 million at that time to 20 million in five years.
But four year down the line, the RSA has marginally increased to 9, 862,129 with the MPP having just 89,327 RSA holders.
According to the Nigerian Bureau of Statistics (NBS), the 2022 Multidimensional Poverty Index survey reveals that 63 percent of persons living within Nigeria (133 million people) are multi-dimensionally poor.
The survey was a collaborative effort between the NBS, the National Social Safety-Nets Coordinating Office (NASSCO), the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), and the Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative (OPHI).
The survey, which sampled over 56,000 households across the 36 states of the federation and the FCT, was conducted between November 2021 and February 2022, and provided multidimensional poverty estimates at senatorial district level.
The National MPI is 0.257, indicating that poor people in Nigeria experience just over one-quarter of all possible deprivations. About 65 percent of the poor (86 million people) live in the north, while 35 percent (nearly 47 million) live in the south.
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Poverty levels across states vary significantly, with the incidence of multidimensional poverty ranging from a low of 27 percent in Ondo to a high of 91 percent in Sokoto.
Over half of the population of Nigeria are multidimensionally poor and cook with dung, wood or charcoal, rather than cleaner energy. High deprivations are also apparent nationally in sanitation, time to healthcare, food insecurity, and housing.
Meanwhile, a Joint PenCom/PenOp Committee has continued to strategise trying to come up with pragmatic steps to successfully drive the implementation of the MPP.
Part of the initiatives developed by the committee in driving the MPP include, but not limited to the creation of awareness, the development of incentives such as health insurance and the adoption of shared services platforms towards improving service delivery.
