New Niger Pension System Set To Block Leakages —Namaska

The Niger State Pension Board has unveiled a new online portal designed to capture and manage retirees’ records and enable pensioners to access their information from anywhere easily an ensure transparency and accountability in the system.

The director-general and chief executive officer of the board, Alhaji Nasiru Sa’idu Namaska, said the idea was aimed at promoting transparency, improving efficiency, enhance accessibility and reducing administrative bottlenecks in pension service delivery.

Namaska said the initiative represents an important milestone in the board’s commitment to modernising pension administration through technology.

He said the test-run had been done to provide an opportunity to assess the platform’s functionality, identify areas requiring improvement and obtaining valuable feedback from stakeholders before its implementation in two months.

The director general disclosed that the portal was designed to enable retirees have access to their personal information and check their pension benefit status while the active Contributory Pension Scheme would conveniently view their pension contribution records.

He said challenges prompted the introduction of the Pension Administration System (N-PAS), which initially operated on a network accessible only to staff of the board.

According to him, the new portal is a more advanced version of the system designed to give retirees direct access to their pension records, regardless of their location.

The Head of Service in Niger State, Abubakar Sadiq Idris, called for a closer partnership between the board, office of the Head of service, and the Ministry of finance to have a seamless data base.

He advised that a more sustainable data storage be used to ensure that the data and all documented files of pensioners remain intact while also advocating that staff of the board undergo capacity training to ensure sustainability of the digital platform for pensioners.

The chairman, Forum of Retired Permanent Secretaries in Niger State, Mohammed Madugu, said it would assist pensioners and the state government in saving funds and ease the burden of pensioners.