This is some rather strange comment from the Edo State Governor as reported in Thisday.
The Governor of Edo State, Mr. Adams Oshiomhole, has faulted the investment of pension asset in the capital market, saying the fund should rather be deployed to areas that would benefits contributors directly.
Toeing his line of argument, the umbrella body for workers in the country, Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC), said pension assets should be used to provide houses for the working people.
Oshiomhole made this assertion while sharing his thoughts on how best to deploy pension assets to grow infrastructure at the just concluded World Pension Summit (WPS) “Africa Special” in Abuja recently.
The summit with theme “Shaping the Future” was jointly organised by the National Pension Commission (PenCom) and WPS.
He noted that using the current guidelines on the investment of pension assets in the country, the fund would not benefit contributors directly.
He observed that the fund is largely being invested in government bonds and quoted stock in the capital market.These instruments, according to Oshiomhole, benefit the rich who have the capacity and connections to access the fund to do business and make profit while the workers who are contributing the fund don’t have access to it.
The governor said investing pension assets in the capital market is tantamount to pooling the resources of the poor for the benefit of the rich.
This, in his thinking, negates the spirit and objectives of the contributory pension scheme.Oshiomhole, therefore, charged the pension regulator, operators and other stakeholders to design ways of deploying pension assets largely in such a way that workers and contributors benefit directly from their retirement savings fund.
It appears he sees pension funds as a form social security run by the government.
Ignorance at it’s peak