General
We Pay N16b Monthly To Pensioners—PTAD Boss
By Dipo Olowookere
Acting Director General/Executive Secretary of Pension Transitional Arrangement Directorate (PTAD), Mr Murtala Musa Oluwatoyin, has disclosed that about N16 billion is paid monthly as pension.
The PTAD boss disclosed this and others in a recent interview. Excerpts:
PTAD’s Data Mess
Before I took over, we had a lot of issues. In fact, I have the personal experience of my uncle who applied for over two years and they were asking him to wait for clarification but when I took over and based on that experience, I found out that the problem is that of records. We have updated the records, we have their files and we have done so many of them. And more are still coming. As at last week, we added 178 pensioners with complaints and we paid their arrears.
Our pension liabilities keep reducing every month. Presently, we have been able to pay part of the 33 percent arrears being owed pensioners. I have paid all outstanding 33 per cent increment arrears for those in the paramilitary services from the savings we are making.
Pension Arrears
Similarly, for civil service pension, I have paid 12 months’ arrears and I am still planning to pay another 12 months very soon. For parastatals, we have been able to pay 12 months but we have issue of records with them. Before they were unbundled to us, some of the trust funds have been paying them so now we are asking for information on how much they have been paid. Once that is done, we will move ahead.
All the regular and payment of arrears we have been making are from the normal funds we receive. There have been no additional funds released to us. We make the savings from ghost manes we have been able to remove from the payroll. In one particular week, we closed about 800 different accounts in one day from various banks which we passed to ICPC for investigation. We have signed a memorandum of understanding with ICPC on pension fraud and they have promised to assist us. We are hoping that very soon we will unravel those behind the illegal accounts. It is an ongoing process however and there may be more discoveries.
BVN Has Helped
We have been using BVN to track multiple accounts. Many of such accounts are hurriedly being closed now because they realize we are on to them.
However, there are times that we remove some names because they did not appear for verification, which we later re-inserted if such people come forward and were able to prove that they were either sick or travelled and couldn’t appear for the verification exercise or because their accounts went dormant.
Police Pension
We have not been able to pay arrears of police pension. However, we have been able to establish their records and over the years we have been paying most of them. We have also captured those who were hitherto not being paid. Because most names on police pension payroll are genuine, we have not been able to make much savings from them. Even when I paid 12 months’ arrears across board, I could only manage to pay three months to police pensioners. Even then, I had to harvest from the savings I made from others to be able to pay the three months. We explained this to Police Pension Union. Right now, we have requested for additional funds and once we get this, or by December if we are able to make more savings from the paramilitary, who we do not owe any arrears, we will be able to divert that to pay police.
Challenges At PTAD
The primary challenge that I have is funding. The economy is in recession and so funding is a general problem. Another challenge is that of records and verification. We still have to go for verification. Right now, we are trying to raise funds so that we can embark on verification exercise for civil service pensioners. The verification will also enable us to know our pensioners physically and know the names that we are supposed to remove from our payroll.
When PTAD was established, we did not have any records. We just took over the payrolls that Mr Maina and others were using. It is now that we are cleaning the process with the records we have been able to generate. It is a tedious process, trying to establish an authentic payroll.
On Former PTAD DG’s Case with EFCC
I don’t like beating a fallen horse. If the EFCC decides to make their findings public concerning the investigation of the former Director General, it will be their decision. She has been busy trying to exonerate herself through newspaper writings but EFCC has not made any statement. And it is not for me to pronounce her guilty or innocent either. But she shouldn’t have been referred to EFCC in the first place if there was no prima facie case against her. But I am mindful of the image of PTAD as an organization and do not want to run it down. We are trying to make the agency a responsive and dignified agency and I should not be seen to be running down an organization that I am heading. However, we have already documented what happened and forwarded them to EFCC. I told you that we had issues with data and record-keeping and those are some of the things that she is being accused of. And these are issues for which contracts were awarded and never executed. These are some of the things we sent to EFCC. The question she should answer is whether those contracts were executed. Those are the issues but I do not want to dwell on them since we have handed them over to EFCC. We should just draw a line and move forward. That is why we have been quiet on our end. It is left for EFCC and herself to clear themselves.
Scamming of Pensioners
We have placed several adverts, warning pensioners from patronizing touts and also against paying money to anybody to help them process their papers. We also have call centres for people to make direct enquiries. If you are computer literate, you can make email enquiries. We are also now trying to link up with the call centre of the Head of Service. We spent a lot of money to do the link up so that pensioners will have a wider means to contact us. And we have been telling them through their unions. In fact, I am going to do radio jingles very soon to warn people not to pay to anybody. If we contact you for records, we will contact you on how it will get to us. We have online medium that pensioners can use. We have state offices where they can submit them. We will never ask you to pay a dime but we still find some people who will say some people are asking them to pay money. Even enlightened people are falling for such scam. A lawyer once approached me saying that someone asked him to pay for his mother in law to be verified and I asked how a lawyer should fall for such. And when you hear the way they present the issues, if you are logical and not greedy, you shouldn’t fall victim. For instance, if someone tells you that PTAD is about to pay you N10 million, you are supposed to know if you are entitled to that amount in the first place.
Our telephony system makes it difficult to track people. I have been working with Department of State Security Service (DSS) and all the phone numbers that people give me I forward to DSS to track but up till now, they have not been able to apprehend anybody. It is not easy to track people. We pay about N16 billion pensions monthly. It is a lot of money.
Allegation of holding two positions
It is not fair for anybody to accuse me of holding two offices. I am a director in the office of Accountant-General of the Federation. It was because of the mess created in PTAD that I was seconded there as acting Director-General. You can see than I still maintain my office in the Accountant-General’s office and whenever a substantive Director-General is appointed, I will return to my office. But up till now, no substantive Director-General has been appointed.
http://leadership.ng/business/552170/we-pay-about-n16bn-pension-monthly-ptad-acting-dg
By Adedapo Adesanya
Nigeria’s crisis-response bill seeking to establish a single, toll-free, three-digit emergency number for nationwide use passed for second reading in the Senate this week.
Sponsored by Mr Abdulaziz Musa Yar’adua, the proposed legislation aims to replace the country’s chaotic patchwork of emergency lines with a unified code—112—that citizens can dial for police, fire, medical, rescue and other life-threatening situations.
Lawmakers said the reform is urgently needed to address delays, miscommunication and avoidable deaths linked to Nigeria’s fragmented response system amid rising insecurity.
Leading debate, Mr Yar’adua said Nigeria has outgrown the “operational disorder” caused by multiple emergency numbers in Lagos, Abuja, Ogun and other states for ambulance services, police intervention, fire incidents, domestic violence, child abuse and other crises.
He said, “This bill seeks to provide for a nationwide toll-free emergency number that will aid the implementation of a national system of reporting emergencies.
“The presence of multiple emergency numbers in Nigeria has been identified as an impediment to getting accelerated emergency response.”
Mr Yar’adua noted that the reform would bring Nigeria in line with global best practices, citing the United States, United Kingdom and India, countries where a single emergency line has improved coordination, enhanced location tracking and strengthened first responders’ efficiency.
With an estimated 90 per cent of Nigerians owning mobile phones, he said the unified number would significantly widen public access to emergency services.
Under the bill, all calls and text messages would be routed to the nearest public safety answering point or control room.
He urged the Senate to fast-track the bill’s passage, stressing the need for close collaboration with the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC), relevant agencies and telecom operators to ensure nationwide coverage.
Senator Ali Ndume described the reform as “timely and very, very important,” warning that the absence of a reliable reporting channel has worsened Nigeria’s security vulnerabilities.
“One of the challenges we are having during this heightened insecurity is lack of proper or effective communication with the affected agencies,” Ndume said.
“If we do this, we are enhancing and contributing to solving the security challenges and other related criminalities we are facing,” he added.
Also speaking in support, Senator Mohammed Tahir Monguno said a centralised emergency number would remove barriers to citizen reporting and strengthen public involvement in security management.
He said, “Our security community is always calling on the general public to report what they see.
“There is a need for government to create an avenue where the public can report what they see without any hindrance. The bill would give strength and muscular expression to national calls for vigilance.”
The bill was referred to the Senate Committee on Communications for further legislative work and is expected to be returned for final consideration within four weeks.
By Modupe Gbadeyanka
The former chief of defence staff (CDS), Mr Christopher Musa, has been sworn-in as the new Minister of Defence.
The retired General of the Nigerian Army took the oath of office for his new position on Thursday in Abuja.
The Special Adviser to the President on Information and Strategy, Mr Bayo Onanuga, confirmed this development in a post shared on X, formerly Twitter, today.
“General Christopher Musa takes oath of office as Nigeria’s new defence minister,” he wrote on the social media platform this afternoon.
Earlier, President Bola Tinubu thanked the Senate for confirming Mr Musa when he was screened for the post on Wednesday.
“Two days ago, I transmitted the name of General Christopher G. Musa, our immediate past Chief of Defence Staff and a fine gentleman, to the Nigerian Senate for confirmation as the Federal Minister of Defence.
“I want to commend the Nigerian Senate for its expedited confirmation of General Musa yesterday. His appointment comes at a critical juncture in our lives as a Nation,” he also posted on his personal page X on Thursday.
The former military officer is taking over from Mr Badaru Abubakar, who resigned on Sunday on health grounds.
By Adedapo Adesanya
The Special Adviser to President Bola Tinubu on Energy, Mrs Olu Verheijen, says Presidential Directives 41 and 42 have emerged as the most transformative policy tools reshaping Nigeria’s oil and gas investment landscape in more than a decade, by helping eliminate bottlenecks.
Mrs Verheijen made this assertion while speaking at the Practical Nigerian Content Forum 2025, noting that the directives issued by her principal in May 2025, are specifically designed to eliminate rent-seeking, slash project timelines, reduce contracting costs, and restore investor confidence in the Nigerian upstream sector.
“These directives are not just policy documents; they are enforceable commitments to make Nigeria competitive again,” she declared.
She noted that before the directives were issued, Nigeria faced chronic delays in contracting cycles, which discouraged capital inflows and stalled major upstream projects.
“For years, investment stagnated because our processes were too slow and too expensive. Presidential Directives 41 and 42 are removing those bottlenecks once and for all,” she said.
According to her, the directives have already begun to shift investor sentiment, unlocking billions of dollars in new commitments from international oil companies.
“We are seeing unprecedented investment inflows. Shell, Chevron and others are returning with confidence because they can now see credible timelines and competitive project economics,” Verheijen said.
Speaking on the link between streamlined contracting and local content development, she stressed that the directives were crafted to reinforce, not weaken, Nigerian participation.
“Local content is not an obstacle; it is a catalyst. It helps us meet national objectives, contain costs, and deliver projects faster when applied correctly,” she explained.
Mrs Verheijen highlighted that the directives complement the government’s data-driven approach to refining local content requirements while ensuring Nigerian talent and enterprises remain central to new investments.
“Our goal is to empower Nigerian companies with opportunities that are commercially sound and globally competitive,” she said.
She pointed to the current spike in industry activity, over 60 active drilling rigs, as evidence that the directives are driving real operational change.
“We have moved from rhetoric to results. These directives have triggered a new cycle of upstream development,” she said.
The energy expert added that the reforms are critical to achieving Nigeria’s production ambition of 3 million barrels of oil and 10 billion standard cubic feet (bscf) of gas per day by 2030.
“To meet these targets, we need speed, efficiency, and collaboration across the value chain. The directives are the foundation for that,” she noted.
She also linked the directives to Nigeria’s broader regional ambitions, including its leadership role in the African Energy Bank.
“With a $100 million facility now launched, we are ensuring that investment translates into jobs, technology transfer, and long-term value for Nigeria,” she said.
Mrs Verheijen concluded by urging the industry to uphold the spirit and letter of the presidential instructions.
“These directives are a collective responsibility. Government, operators, financiers, and host communities must work together to deliver the Nigeria we envision,” she said. “We remain committed to ensuring Nigeria remains Africa’s premier investment destination,” she said.
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