President Bola Tinubu’s government has funded the accrued pension rights of enrolled federal workers who have yet to retire through December 2029, the National Pension Commission (PenCom) says.

PenCom’s director-general, Omolola Oloworaran, disclosed this at the 2026 Pension Correspondents Association of Nigeria conference in Abuja on Wednesday.

Ms Oloworaran, who was represented by Ibrahim Buwai, the commission’s head of corporate communications, said the funding position had moved from 21 months in arrears to a 41-month surplus.

“We are moving from a position where we had, where our full pension rights were 21 months in arrears, to where we are today, 41 months in surplus,” she said.

She said the surplus meant that enrolled federal workers who had not retired had accrued pension rights funded through December 2029. The announcement concerns workers’ accrued rights before retirement.

Ms Oloworaran also said eligible retirees were now receiving their benefits within 48 hours of retirement. The claim relates to benefit processing under the arrangements PenCom described.

Mr Tinubu launched a N52,500 minimum pension guarantee and the PenCare health insurance initiative for retirees on Tuesday. PenCom said 173,209 retirees had been identified as eligible for the minimum guarantee.

The PenCom chief also said the government approved an additional exit benefit equal to 100 per cent of terminal emoluments for eligible retirees, effective from January 1, 2026.

The scheme covers federal civil servants in treasury-funded ministries, departments and agencies who have served for at least 10 years.

The conference also heard about efforts to bring more informal workers into the pension system.

PenCom’s Personal Pension Plan is a voluntary retirement savings scheme for self-employed people and employees of organisations with fewer than three workers.

PenCom’s first-quarter 2026 figures showed that 219,316 accounts had been registered under the plan by the end of March, but only 18,811 had received contributions. The remaining 200,505 accounts were unfunded.

Tunji Andrews, Awabah’s chief executive, said the information required to register for the plan had been reduced from 25 fields to four.

He said Awabah was also enabling registration and contributions through point-of-sale terminals in partnership with Moniepoint and Interswitch.

“As of today, those fields have been reduced to four fields only. Because of that innovation, we’ve been able to put onboarding and payments for PPP on POS terminals,” he said.

Mr Andrews said Awabah’s Pension Oga initiative would send agents to markets and communities to register informal workers, collect contributions and explain pension savings.

The registration changes are aimed at making enrolment easier. PenCom’s figures show that getting registered contributors to make payments remains a separate challenge.