Pension Harmonisation to Restore Fairness for Retirees—PTAD

By Adedapo Adesanya

The Pension Transitional Arrangement Directorate (PTAD) has said the implementation of the Defined Benefit Scheme Pension Harmonisation is a reform meant to advance and enhance pension payment equity in the country.

The chief executive of PTAD, Mrs Tolulope Abiodun Odunaiya, said this initiative was a landmark reform designed to restore fairness, improve retirees’ welfare and strengthen confidence in the administration of the country’s legacy pension system.

The harmonisation exercise marks one of the most significant policy interventions in the Defined Benefit Scheme since PTAD was established in 2013 to take over the management of pensions under the old federal pension arrangement.

Unlike periodic pension increases that merely raise existing benefits by a percentage, she stressed that pension harmonisation was further than that by recomputing pensions using the latest approved salary structures that existed before the closure of the Defined Benefit Scheme.

She noted that the objective is to ensure that retirees who held similar positions and rendered comparable years of service receive equitable pension benefits regardless of their retirement dates.

The initiative comes against the backdrop of years of agitation by pensioners over historical disparities in pension computation.

She added that the PTAD’s harmonisation programme seeks to resolve that challenge by restoring parity within the system. According to her, pension harmonisation is the formal recomputation of pensions using approved salary structures applicable before the DBS cut-off date.

In practical terms, it ensures that pension outcomes are determined by rank, grade level and years of service rather than the year of retirement.

The Directorate believes the exercise will significantly improve social justice by correcting historical inequities that disadvantaged thousands of retirees.

The harmonisation applies primarily to pure Federal Government pensioners as well as eligible retirees under the Parastatals Pension Department (PaPD), Defunct and Transferred Agencies Pension Department (DTAPD), and the Education and Health Pension Department (TEHPD), particularly those who initially served under the Federal Government before their agencies were transferred to state governments.