The task of nation building in Nigeria has been progressing at a tortuous pace, perhaps due to the inefficiency of public institutions overseeing most critical areas of our national development. Many public institutions in Nigeria appear to be hamstrung from effectively discharging their mandates typically by lack of robust enabling legislations to address the constantly emerging challenges that characterise contemporary socio-economic and political milieu. Sometimes, the cause of the ineptitude or inertia are traceable to the administrators of such enabling legislations who often prefer to yield themselves to abuse of power from both internal and/or external socio-political and economic influences. The combination or any of these factors could undermine any public institution and render it incapable of achieving the objectives for its creation.
The National Pension Commission (PenCom) is a perfect case study on the challenges of building strong public institutions in Nigeria. PenCom is a relatively young public institution established only in 2004 to regulate and supervise a new pension industry birthed by the pension reform of that year. Its enabling law, the Pension Reform Act made provisions that ensured the establishment of robust institutions for the effective implementation of the pension reform. The federal government also ensured that the pioneer management of PenCom was a blend of tested and trusted professionals who, in turn, head-hunted a crop of competent Nigerians to establish both the regulatory institution and the industry operators. The result of the PenCom experiment was a fantastic score card of unparalleled achievements in financial services regulation in Nigeria. For the first time in its recent history, the country successfully introduced and nurtured a socio-economic reform that became a reference point both at the domestic and continental levels. The operational systems and processes developed by PenCom also became reference points across Africa.
Expectedly, however, PenCom’s management, enabling law, regulations, systems and processes evolved in the course of time. In 2012, PenCom experienced its first management transition. Two years later, in 2014, there was a review and re-enactment of the Pension Reform Act, which introduced many controversial issues that set the tone for certain ensuing challenges of the institution. Since then, the institution became infested by the viruses that had for long plagued most public institutions in Nigeria.
Reading through the abundant literature available in the public space on the first management transition in PenCom, one gets the picture that illustrates how one of these viruses negatively impacted the institution. Traditional public service practice in Nigeria requires that when the whole executive management team of an institution vacates office, the most senior career officer is tasked with the responsibility of holding forth pending the appointment of the substantive management and CEO by the federal government. Thus, when the pioneer executive management led by M. K. Ahmad completed its tenure in 2012, Mrs. ChineloAnohu-Amazu administered PenCom as CEO in acting capacity for 20 months from December 2012 to October 2014. What was, however, interesting about this was that the long management transition was informed by the desire of the political actors at the time to adjust the rules of the game by amending the Pension Reform Act 2004 to allow for the confirmation of Amazu as the substantive CEO of PenCom.
It will interest the reader to know that Amazuwas recruited in 2005 as Company Secretary and Legal Adviser on General Manager grade which is equivalent to a Director in the public service, just eight years after graduation. Thus, public service rules were bent and abused through her placement on directorate cadre in the same organization where senior and far more experienced officers, including the person that signed her first employment letter at the Bureau of Public Enterprises (BPE), were placed on lower grades.
That was the incident, or should we say the virus, that put the first management transition in PenCom on a wrong footing. Based on the provisions of the Pension Reform Act 2004, Amazu did not possess the 25 years minimum qualifying experience for appointment as a substantive CEO of PenCom. However, private interest gained pre-eminence and national political authority was deployed to drive the legislative process of statutory amendment to make possible what was otherwise impossible. This fast-tracked the process of the enactment of Pension Reform Act 2014, which, three months after, made it possible for Mrs. Amazu to be appointed as the substantive CEO of PenCom. In the process, many other fundamental issues that needed to be addressed by the amendment were either left out or superficially addressed, because the objective of the expedited exercise was clearly not in the public but private interest. The institution was, therefore, left with the challenge of grappling with a weakened legislation that left many questions unanswered. Nigerians would recall how the National Assembly inexplicably ignored the numerous cautions raised between 2013 and 2014 by pension industry stakeholders as well as the general public against lowering of the qualifications for appointment to the office of the Director General of PenCom. The rest is history.
An age-old adage says habits die hard. This is more so when these habits bring about advantages to the individual. Thus, although the dissolution of her management team in PenCom in April 2017 came together with the dissolution of the management of 22 other federal government agencies, Amazu refused to leave office and waited to be sent packing by security agencies. Thereafter, she elected to challenge her removal from office through various methods and platforms including exerting pressure on members of her political and social circles as well as ethnic, media and legal platforms. She further embarked on campaigns against her successor, Mrs. Aisha Dahir-Umar, who is merely holding forth the same way Amazu did after the exit of the pioneer management. For almost two years now, Mrs. Amazu has refused to move on, but instead, continuously uses all manner of tricks to fight her way back to the leadership of PenCom.
Perhaps, if PenCom was a privatised or commercialised institution, Mrs. Amazu’s tenacious determination to return to its management would have been understandable. The weak legal arguments she attempted to use to justify her cause seemed to have fallen flat as the government appears to have relied on cogent provisions of the PenCom Act and other sound legal arguments to put her case to rest. Thus, in addition to the provisions of the Pension Reform Act 2014, lawyers have explained that Mrs. Amazu must recognize the president’s express constitutional powers to appoint and remove chief executives of all public institutions in Nigeria.
Her direct and indirect overtures have either created or contributed to the apparent impasse on the issue of appointment of the executive management of PenCom despite two attempts by the federal government. About two months ago, the battle ground seems to have moved to the National Assembly. Nigerians that had the time and opportunity to attend the public hearing held on Thursday, February 7, by the House of Representatives adhoc committee set up to investigate PenCom must have been either utterly disappointed with the lawmakers or harboured a feeling of despair on the viability of the Project Nigeria. The event was unequivocally a hatchet job carried out by mercenary elements to foster a private interest at the expense of overwhelming public interest. This is certainly a sad commentary for Nigeria where agencies or organs of government allow themselves to be used to undermine other public institutions.
In order to salvage the integrity and moral authority of PenCom from further erosion, the federal government should immediately address the issue of reconstitution of the board of PenCom. Nigeria is blessed with very qualified, capable, resourceful and experienced persons that can effectively lead PenCom without compromising the law and public service rules and values. Accordingly, Nigerians earnestly look forward to having a PenCom board and management manned by people with the right philosophy, competence, experience and above all, integrity, which are the necessary ingredients for building an effective and efficient regulatory institution.
- Akintunde is a concerned stakeholder.