From Basil Obasi, Abuja
The National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) has indicated that the Retirement Savings Account (RSA) membership distribution data for 4th quarter of 2016 reflected that 7,348,028 workers, representing 10.8 per cent of the total working population were registered under the pension scheme out of a total working population of 69,470,091 as at 4th quarter of 2016.
This was not surprising given the largely informal structure of the Nigerian labour force with about 50 per cent of the current workforce engaged in subsistence agriculture and informal trading.
Further disaggregation of RSA membership report reveals that of a total male working population of 36,363,042 only 14.37 per cent or 5,226,897 male workers are registered under the scheme.
Accordingly, out of the 7,348,028 RSA members, 71.13 per cent were men and only 28.87 per cent were women. This can be compared with the gender split of the working population, which has 52.3 per cent men and 47.7 per cent women.
The report further stated that the federal workers accounted for 1,866,850 registered RSA members under the National Pension Scheme as at Q4 2016 of which 1,363,266 (or 73 per cent) were male and 503,584 (or 27 per cent) were female.
At the state (including local government) level, 1,508,471 state public workers are registered under the national pension scheme with 849,493 (or 56.3 per cent male and 658,978 (or 43.7 per cent) female.
According to the report, private firms had 3,972,707 registered RSA members under the pension scheme as of Q4 2016 of which 3,014,138 or 75.9 per cent were male and 958,569 or 24.1 per cent female.
The highest number of registered working population came from the age bracket of 30-39 years and closely followed by the working population within the age bracket of 40-49 years and 50-59 years.