Socio-Economic Rights and Accountability Project SERAP has sent an open letter to President Muhammadu Buhari urging him to use his good offices and leadership position to urgently instruct the Director-General and Board of the National Pension Commission NPC to use their statutory powers to stop the 36 state governors from borrowing and/or withdrawing N17 trillion from the pension funds for infrastructural development.
The governors last week reportedly proposed to borrow around N17 trillion from the pension funds after receiving a briefing from the Kaduna State Governor, Mallam Nasir el-Rufai, who is the Chairman of the National Economic Council Ad Hoc Committee on Leveraging Portion of Accumulated Pension Funds for Investment in the Nigeria Sovereign Investment Authority.
But in a letter signed by SERAP deputy director Kolawole Oluwadare, the organization said Allowing the governors to borrow from pension funds will be detrimental to the interest of the beneficiaries of the funds.
SERAP expressed serious concerns that the proposed borrowing by the 36 state governors from the pension funds will lead to serious losses of retirement savings of millions of Nigerians.
