PenCom targets a million casual girls for pension

The Nationwide Pension Fee has formally launched an formidable drive to enrol a million girls into the Private Pension Plan, marking a big shift in its technique to increase monetary safety to Nigeria’s huge casual sector.

The initiative was unveiled by the Director-Common of PenCom, Ms Omolola Oloworaran, throughout an outreach marketing campaign held to commemorate Worldwide Ladies’s Day on Tuesday in Lagos.

Talking to market girls and entrepreneurs at Mile 12 Market in Lagos, she highlighted the pressing must bridge the hole for many who gas the financial system however lack formal retirement safety.

The marketing campaign, themed ‘Give to Achieve – Save Small At the moment, Achieve Huge Tomorrow’, seeks to combine market merchants, farmers, and artisans right into a structured pension system. PenCom is incentivising this transition with a week-long ‘matching contribution’ window from 9 March to 13 March 2026, the place the Fee will match private contributions as much as N20,000.

The Director-Common stated through the occasion, “Nigerian girls get up very early within the morning, generally as early as 3 a.m. or 4 a.m., to open their outlets, run their market stalls, farm the land and assist their households. Regardless of contributing a lot to the financial system, many ladies within the casual sector stay their lives with out monetary safety for his or her retirement years.”

Emphasising the accessibility of the plan, Ms Oloworaran defined that the construction is designed to accommodate irregular earnings patterns. “Meaning once you save, we additionally add to your financial savings. It’s a direct funding within the dignity and monetary independence of the Nigerian lady,” she added.

Addressing potential issues in regards to the safety of the funds, the PenCom chief reiterated the robustness of the present framework: “The pension trade has been in existence since 2004, and it has proved to be secure and safe. We’re concentrating on a million girls to register underneath this scheme inside the yr. Some individuals suppose it’s a excessive goal, however contemplating the scale of the casual sector workforce, it’s achievable,” she assured the attendees.

Because the outreach programme strikes to cowl all geopolitical zones, the Fee has urged girls to develop into ambassadors for the scheme. The message is evident: by leveraging skilled administration and digital channels, the initiative goals to rework how casual sector employees plan for his or her golden years, making certain that their onerous work immediately leads to a safe, impartial tomorrow.

The fee additionally prolonged the initiative to the Lagos State Authorities, the place the Director-Common and his crew engaged with roughly 132 girls drawn from numerous associations. A few of the associations represented included the Lagos State Tailors and Style Designers Affiliation, the Nigerian Affiliation of Hairdressers and Cosmetologists, and the Lagos State Barbers, Hairdressers and Cosmetology Affiliation, amongst others.

Talking to The PidomNigeria at Alausa, the Chairman of the Lagos State Council of Tradesmen and Artisans, Engr Lawrence Ajayi, counseled PenCom and the Lagos State Authorities for the initiative. He famous that the programme was focused at girls to mark Worldwide Ladies’s Day, whereas urging the PenCom Director-Common and his crew to increase the initiative to males sooner or later.

He stated, “We’re blissful that this initiative is coming to us within the casual sector of the financial system. They need to lengthen it to cowl males too. Each women and men underneath LASCOTA are as much as seven million, and that could be a huge plus for this initiative.”

Additionally in attendance was the Director of the Entrepreneurship Improvement Division on the Ministry of Wealth Creation and Employment, Ajose Taiwo, amongst others.