Trust, Compliance Key to All-Inclusive Pensions Scheme in Nigeria.

Byline: Ifeanyi Ugwuadu

IT is irrational for the poor to save for retirement". Rob Rusconi, an internationally acclaimed expert in pension provision must have jolted many Nigerians, particularly, government, when he delivered his paper and made the above quoted declaration at the National Conference on the review of the Implementation of the Pension Reform. His paper, "Securing Informal Sector Participation" was perhaps the most awaited of the seven papers delivered at the 2-day conference.

Certainly, he must have disappointed many people when he said the poor in our country and indeed the whole of Africa were burdened with much government-imposed hardship that it would be another imposition too many to ask them to save the little they have for a future they are not sure will come. In any case, they do not have anything to save as they live from hand to mouth, he observed. Part of the tragedy of Africa is that people work until they die. Ostensibly, not because they prefer to work to their …