Pension Transitional Arrangement Directorate (PTAD) 40 Years Wait for Police Pensioners is over

Pension Transitional Arrangement Directorate (PTAD) has said it has put an end to the endless waiting for 750 pensioners made up of 529 regular police retirees and 221 Next of Kin (NOKs) who have never been paid any pension or gratuity for upward of 10 years after retirement.


According to Nellie Mayshak, Director General of PTAD in a statement on Wednesday, said: “It is indeed gratifying and a rare privilege to finally put smiles on the faces of this group of pensioners.”

A total of 750 regular police pensioners and NOKs have started receiving their gratuity and monthly pensions into their accounts last week.   Of these 750 police pensioners, 477 who are entitled to gratuity, also received their full gratuity.

The statement added: “The payment of pension and gratuity to this group of 750 police pensioners is a significant milestone in the activities of PTAD which was established in August 2013 in compliance with the provision of Section 30 (2) (a) of the Pension Reform Act (PRA) 2004 as amended in 2014. PTAD is charged with the responsibility of pension management of the Defined Benefit Scheme, (The old Pension) for pensioners who did not transit to the Contributory Pension Scheme (CPS).

“Prior to the establishment of PTAD, these pensioners were cheated out of their entitlement. Previous pension managers (the old police pension office) did not payroll them. Finally, PTAD has been able to obtain the required data through its verification exercise to payroll these long suffering pensioners and bring smiles to their faces.”

PTAD had conducted the verification exercise for police pensioners in March 2015 in which over 18,000 police pensioners were verified.

Following the verification exercise, about 3,000 bogus pensioners were dropped from the list of pensioners (as at May 2015), amounting to about N100 million saving in monthly pension payments. The verification exercise also enabled PTAD identify areas of duplication, overpayments/underpayments and other outstanding payments.

With the concluded police pension verification exercise, PTAD now has a credible and digitalized data base of police pensioners with which it has been making monthly pension payments.

“A similar verification exercise has just been concluded in August 2015 for the customs. immigration and prison pensioners. The verification for the civil service pensioners will commence before the end of the year.  The Parastatals, Universities and other pension groups will thereafter also be verified.  It is expected that at the conclusion of all the verification exercises, PTAD would have generated an accurate, credible and digitalized data base of pensioners under these pension groups for monthly pension payments and other benefits.”