Alhaji Atiku Abubakar, a former Vice President of Nigeria, has come under intense fire from many Nigerians for criticising the plan by the federal government to encourage utilisation of pension funds, insurance funds and other investment funds to finance infrastructure growth especially in the housing and mortgage sector as the country attempts to bridge its infrastructure deficit.
Atiku Abubakar had on Wednesday called on the Minister for Finance, Wale Edun to jettison the move by the federal government to tap into these local sources of funding for infrastructure on the ground that the initiative, which he called “misguided” could lead to disastrous consequences on the lives of Nigeria’s hardworking men and women who he said, “toiled and saved and who now survive on their pensions having retired from service”.
Atiku described the move as an attempt to perpetuate illegality by the federal government and alleged that it was in contravention of provisions of the Pension Reform Act of 2014, along with the revised Regulation on Investment of Pension Assets issued by the National Pension Commission (PenCom).
Specifically, he noted that on line with provisions of the extant regulation on investment limits, pension funds can invest no more than 5% of total pension funds’ assets in infrastructure investments. He therefore stated that there was no free pension funds for the Minister of Finance to “fiddle” with.
While reacting to Atiku’s position on the use of pension funds, some commentators called out the 2023 PDP presidential candidate drawing his attention to one of his presidential campaign manifesto (The Atiku Plan) where he promised to tap into the trillions of naira resident in pension funds to address what he described then as Nigeria’s “immense infrastructural funding needs”.
They described Atiku as hypocritical for turning around to criticise the Tinubu administration for trying to carry out what he had long advocated for in his own manifesto.
One commentator wondered if Atiku could not remember what he promised to do in his manifesto if elected president or that he never planned to implement the content of the manifesto if he had won the presidential election.
A financial analyst who weighed in on the matter described Atiku’s opposition as rooted in ignorance. He pointed out that the Pension Reform Act 2014 that Atiku Abubakar referenced did not place any limit on the amount of pension fund assets that can be invested in infrastructure funds.
The analyst went further to state that even the PenCom regulations Atiku was referring to on investment limit did not place a blanket 5% limit on investment of pension funds in infrastructure fund, rather it was stipulating the maximum investment limits under the Multi-Fund Structure within a PFA and segmented it to global limit, limit per issuer and limit per issue. The fund types according to the analyst include Fund I, II, III, IV, V and VI.
Atiku Abubakar, he pointed out simply did not understand the content or intent of the said regulation or he was probably playing politics with the interpretation. That notwithstanding, the financial analyst emphasised that these regulations are not cast in stone and are subject to review by the PenCom in line with the powers the PRA 2014 donated to it.