89% of Nigerian Workers Don’t Have Retirement Plan -NBS

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89% of Nigerian Workers Don’t Have Retirement Plan -NBS

Over 89 per cent of the Nigerian working population do not have a plan for their retirement, latest data by the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) have shown. According to the data board, only 10.8 per cent of the 69.47 million working population have retirement plans.

NBS in a report released yesterday titled “Retirement Savings Account (RSA) Membership Distribution” said only 7.35 million  workers are registered under the pension scheme as at the end of December 2016.

This the data board said “is not surprising given the largely informal structure of the Nigerian labor force with about 50 per cent of the current workforce engaged in subsistence agriculture and informal trading. Micro businesses for example account for over 90 per cent of total Micro, Small and Medium Scale Enterprises in Nigeria.”
Further  disaggregation  of  RSA  membership  reveal  that  of  a  total  male  working  population  of  36.36 million, only  14.37 per cent  or  5.22 million  male  workers  are  registered  under  the  scheme.  Similarly,  only  2.12 million or 6.41 per cent out  of  a  total  female  working  population  of  33.11 million are  registered  under  the  scheme.
Accordingly, out of the 7.34 million  RSA members, 71.13 per cent were men and only 28.87 per cent were women. This can be compared with the gender split of the working population which has 52.3 per cent men and 47.7 per cent women. As  should  be  expected,  RSA  membership  is  dominated  by  the  Private  sector. 
The  federal level had 1.86 million registered RSA members under the national pension scheme as at  Q4 2016 of which 1.36 million or  73 per cent  were  male  and  503,584  or  27 per cent  are  female.  This  may  indicate  that  there  are  a  lot  more  male employees in the Federal public service than female.
At  the state and  local  government level,  1.51 million state  public  workers  are  registered  under  the national  pension  scheme  with  849,493 or  56.3 per cent  male  and  658,978  or  43.7 per cent female.  This  may  indicate that the Federal Public Service is larger than that of all 36 States combined and similar to the Federal service, men dominate with respect to number of employees.
Private  firms  had  3.97 million registered  RSA  members  under  the  pension  scheme  as  of  Q4  2016  of  which 3.01 million o or 75.9 per cent  were male and 958,569 or 24.1 per cent female. Among  the  three  classes  of  workers  registered  under  the  scheme,  private  firms’  working  population dominated the membership distribution and closely followed by the federal and state working population.
The  highest  number  of  registered  working  population  came  from  the  age  bracket  of  30-39yrs  and  closely followed  by  the  working  population  within  the  age  bracket  of  40-49yrs  and  50-59yrs.  This  is  expected considering ages 25-44 account for about 55% of the total working population However,  the  least  number  of  registered  working  population  came  from  above  65yrs  and  60-65yrs  age bracket.