PTAD Monthly Payout to Retirees Hits N1trn

The Pension Transitional Arrangement Directorate (PTAD) says it has paid more than N1tn in monthly pensions to over 200,000 retirees under the Federal Government’s Defined Benefit Scheme since 2015.

The Director of Corporate Services at PTAD, Kabiru Yusuf, disclosed this in Abuja on Thursday while presenting a paper at a one-day training workshop for pension correspondents and online editors.

He said PTAD had “paid a total of about N1.002tn as monthly pension to an average of 212,385 pensioners from the time of DBS take over in 2015 to October 2025,” stressing that the milestone reflects the agency’s core mandate of restoring order, integrity, and dignity to the legacy pension system.

According to him, the guiding principle of the directorate has always been “to ensure that one pensioner equals one pension” and “to pay the correct pension, to the correct pensioner, at the correct time.”

Yusuf told the journalists that PTAD was created under the Pension Reform Act 2014 to take over pension management for Federal Government workers who remained under the Defined Benefit Scheme and did not transition to the Contributory Pension Scheme.

As a result, PTAD assumed responsibility for police pensioners, Customs, Immigration, and Prisons (now Correctional Service) retirees, civil service pensioners, and pensioners of treasury-funded parastatals.

He explained that PTAD operates under the supervision of the Federal Ministry of Finance and is regulated by the National Pension Commission, working within a wider ecosystem that includes the Office of the Accountant General of the Federation, the Office of the Auditor General, the Budget Office, and oversight committees of the National Assembly.

He said pension administration before PTAD’s creation was riddled with poor funding, ghost beneficiaries, weak controls, fraud, and years of unresolved complaints.

Yusuf noted that “for many years, these challenges led to the loss of huge government funds and ultimately denied many pensioners and next of kin of deceased pensioners their due pension benefits for decades.”

When PTAD took over, it inherited about 55,000 pension complaints, including more than 30,000 eligible pensioners who were not on the payroll and more than 10,000 death benefit cases.

He said this collapse of the old structures prompted the sweeping reforms that first produced the Pension Reform Act 2004 and later the strengthened PRA 2014, which formally established PTAD.

Yusuf said PTAD has built its operations on technology and strong governance to avoid repeating the failures of the past. He cited the creation of a state-of-the-art data centre, an integrated and digitised pensioners’ database, mobile verification for aged or infirm retirees, automated computation tools, and a payroll manager that ensures accurate monthly payments.

The directorate also introduced a complaints management portal and a call centre to improve service delivery. He added that PTAD inherited about N304bn in unfunded pension liabilities but had reduced this to roughly N103.5bn as of September 2025 through consistent support from successive administrations.

He said PTAD had secured several presidential approvals to improve pensioners’ welfare, including National Health Insurance Authority coverage for all DBS retirees and a policy for pension harmonisation to place eligible pensioners on the most recent salary structure applicable to their cadre.

According to him, approval was also obtained for N45bn in emergency budget funding to implement the N32,000, 10.66 per cent, and 12.95 per cent pension increases.

Also, the President approved the liquidation of N28.4bn in arrears owed to NITEL and MTEL pensioners and N39.2bn owed to parastatal pensioners covering August 2015 to July 2023.

Yusuf acknowledged lingering challenges, including the absence of a statutory provision making pensions a first-line charge and the lack of a clear framework for implementing the constitutionally mandated five-year pension review cycle.

He added that the transfer of ex-workers of 14 defunct or privatised agencies to PTAD had altered the original assumption that the DBS population would gradually shrink, raising questions about the timing of the agency’s eventual sunset clause.

He said PTAD remains committed to strengthening its systems and delivering a pension programme anchored on fairness, legality, and compassion, adding that the goal is a system where innovation and empathy guide decisions and retirees are treated with dignity.

Speaking earlier, the Executive Secretary of PTAD, Tolulope Odunaiya, who was represented by Yusuf, said the training was organised to equip pension reporters and online editors with a clear understanding of the agency’s mandate, operations, and plans.

She said PTAD appreciated the consistent support and accurate reportage from the media, which had helped shape public understanding of pension administration.

Odunaiya explained that PTAD had worked hard over the years to reform pension payments under the Defined Benefits Scheme and was encouraged that the efforts continued to yield results.

She stressed that pension reporting required a proper grasp of where PTAD started, its current responsibilities, and its direction of travel to ensure accuracy. The PTAD boss added that the Directorate relied on the media to sustain pensioners’ welfare, correct misrepresentations, and strengthen collaboration as both sides work toward improved service delivery.