The Nigerian Labour Congress (NLC), has vowed to deal with both foreign investor employers and their local counterparts who deny their employees adequate pension plan slating June1, 2026, as a decisive date to crack down on such employers.
The Congress insisted that days were gone when Nigerian workers were enslaved in their own father land without adequate plans for their rainy days.
The Chairperson NLC Lagos State Chapter Council, Funmi Sessi, who spoke at an interactive session on the Contributory Pension Scheme organised by the National Pension Commission ( PenCom) between executive members of the Lagos NLC chapter andPenCom in Lagos Tuesday, noted that some foreign investor employers in particular who came from their own countries where labour laws were clearly stated organised and obeyed to the letter come to Nigeria to establish businesses, employ Nigerians and determine to continue to disorganise labour system in the country.
She said indigenous investors and employers follow suit in this regard leaving workers to toil in vain.
Insisting the Congress has come out to give hope for the hopeless workers and speak for workers who have no body to speak for them, Sessi said beginning with Lagos, labour laws must be obeyed to the letter so that Nigerian workers retire with dignity.
She said from June 1st, the Congress would declare a statewide enforcement action against government institutions and private companies that have failed to remit workers’ pension deductions and those that have failed to set up a pension plan for their workers.
She warned that defaulting employers would face prosecution and public exposure beginning June 1, 2026.
She noted that there has been alarming increase in complaints from workers whose pension contributions were deducted monthly from their salaries but allegedly not remitted by their employers to their respective Pension Fund Administrators (PFAs).
Sessi said the union had concluded plans to deploy monitoring and enforcement teams across Lagos State in collaboration with PenCom compliance department and other stakeholders to identify and sanction employers violating the Pension Reform Act.
According to her, the failure of employers to remit deducted pension contributions has continued to endanger the retirement future of thousands of Nigerian workers, many of who only discover the infractions when approaching retirement.
“It is unacceptable that despite monthly deductions from workers’ salaries under the Contributory Pension Scheme, many employers have deliberately failed to remit these funds to the appropriate Pension Fund Administrators,” this must stop.
“We can no longer open our eyes to watch Nigerian workers toiling in vain without future, we are the hope of the hopeless, defender of the defenseless and speaker for the speechless”.
She warned employers that henceforth it would no longer be business as usual as the enforcement team would go a long way to make things difficult for such employers.
Earlier, the PenCom DG, Ms. Bridget Omolola Oloworaran, had vowed to use every instrument at her disposal to make life unbearable for any employer who denied his employee opportunity of pension plan.
Ebere Nwoji
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