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PENCOM alleges blackmail over N3m monthly salary claim

Aisha Dahir-Umar, DG National Pension Commission

• Says DG earns less than N1m monthly

The National Pension Commission (PenCom) has considered allegations making the rounds that each staff of her staff earns N3 million monthly as blackmail by some mischievous people.

The Director-General, PenCom, Mrs. Aisha Dahir-Umar, disclosed this in a statement made available to journalists by the Head, Corporate Communications Department, Mr. Dahiru Abdulkadir.

Warning that the Commission won’t succumb to cheap blackmail, she described the allegations as false and misleading.

For clarity, she stated that the highest paying staff, which is her, earn less than N1 million.

The statement read: “Following the false and misleading information on the compensation package of the commission being circulated in the traditional and social media (not this newspaper), it has become necessary to set the record straight in the interest of the Nigerian public. It is being alleged that the least paid PenCom employee earns a salary of N3 million per month. This has fueled all sorts of false allegations and unfair insinuations. The public is invited to note that the claim is absolutely false.

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“The highest paid official of the Commission earns less than N1 million a month. It is therefore completely illogical and improbable that the least paid will earn a monthly salary of N3 million. We understand that there is an element of mischief and possible blackmail on the Commission’s compensation package. From our understanding, it appears someone calculated all staff costs, including training, staff exit benefit scheme, and employers’ pension contribution, and divided the total by the number of the Commission’s employees and concluded that the least paid employee is on a monthly salary of N3 million. There is a clear difference between staff cost and staff salaries.

“It is imperative to point out that right from the inception of the Commission in 2004, the Federal Government mandated the Board to adopt an employee compensation policy that favourably compares to comparator government bodies in the financial services sector, such as the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), the Nigeria Deposit Insurance Corporation (NDIC) and the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). Section 25(2)(b) of the Pension Reform Act 2014 also empowers the Board of the Commission to fix the remuneration, allowances and benefits of the employees”.

She continued: “More so, the Presidential Committee on the Consolidation of Emoluments in the Public Sector headed by the late Chief Ernest Shonekan, former Head of the Interim National Government, made a number of recommendations which guide the PenCom Board in its compensation review exercises. One of the recommendations is that the pay structure of self-funded agencies should be benchmarked with their private sector comparators so as to ensure relativity in such agencies and attract and retain high-calibre professionals.

The Nation

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