Wednesday, February 28, was a historic day in the annals of NPF Pensions Limited, Nigeria’s most thriving Pension Fund Administrator (PFA), with the seamless transfer of leadership baton from the Dr Hamza Sule Wuro Bokki-led management to a new team led by Dr Kolade Morakinyo.
Hamza Bokki, the pioneer Managing Director led the mono-clientele PFA to a dizzying height in the last ten years. And having completed his tour of duty after serving the statutory two terms, it was time to say goodbye. Shortly after the handover ceremony, Dr Morakinyo, the new helmsman, a pioneer staff of NPF Pensions and financial expert who served as the Chief Risk Officer (CRO) before his elevation sat down with IKECHUKWU AMAECHI in an exclusive interview to talk about his vision and priorities.
You assumed a new position today as the Managing Director of NPF Pensions Limited. You must be ecstatic, no doubt?
I am cool even, as I appreciate the import of the moment. I thank God for the opportunity to be where we are today, for the continuing success of NPF Pensions Limited and for the vision of the new Inspector General of Police, Kayode Egbetokun, Ph.D, NPM to ensure that we have a new pension regime that will take good care of police retirees with a welfare package that is better than what it is now.
When did you join NPF Pensions Limited?
By the grace of God, I am one of the pioneer staff of this organisation. We midwifed it from the beginning to what it is today under the leadership of Dr Hamza Sule Wuro Bokki.
NPF Pensions Limited has been a runaway success. When you people started ten years ago, did you foresee that?
My answer is no because when we started, we were practically groping in the dark. We didn’t know what was actually going to happen. It was a leap of faith. It was like moving from certainty to uncertainty because we were all in different organisations before we were beckoned upon to come and work in NPF Pensions. And at that particular time, our Assets under Management (AUM) was zero.
So, we started from a small room and later we had a whole building. And today, we have a magnificent edifice as our head office; and our AUM now stands at N1.3 trillion. It has been an incredible journey with so many milestones and we thank God for all that.
What will you attribute this level of success to?
First and foremost is the National Pensions Commission (PenCom) and the extraordinary leadership it has provided in its regulatory duties. We thank the police institutions, who are the major shareholders and the various Inspectors General of Police that have served in the last ten years since our inception for their unwavering and steadfast support to ensure that police have better pension. We also thank all members of our Board of Directors. In fact, we have been exceedingly lucky to have men and women of impeccable character who are committed to enhancing the welfare of officers and men of the Nigerian police as Board members. We thank them for their solid support and belief in us.
NPF Pensions Limited stands on this tripod of support and they have never wavered up to this moment and we are grateful.
At the management level, we have a culture of collaboration. We support each other and we engage our stakeholders. We also have the philosophy of growing the funds so that the return on investment (ROI) will be higher at any given time than the benchmark set for us by the Board. And today, by the grace of God, we are one of the best in the industry, if not the very best in terms of investments and the accruing returns. The records are there for all to see.
In the past two years and still counting, we have been the best in the industry. The company achieved the highest investment income returns for clients in 2022, 2023, and January 2024.
But you surely had some issues. It couldn’t have been a smooth sail all the way. What were those problems encountered and how were you able to surmount them?
There were a lot of challenges, no doubt. But the major issue that became an existential threat to the survival of the company is the issue of exit. Police want to exit from the contributory pension scheme. But it took the wisdom of government and PenCom to say that the old scheme, that is defined-benefit scheme, was prone to fraud, with very high administration costs and, therefore, opted for the contributory pension scheme.
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But because police salary is historically very low, they have very poor salary, and the issue of pension is a function of salary, so, in which case, their take home, that is, their pension salary, is also very poor. Therefore, they were agitating to exit because they are there comparing their pension package to those of military and DSS personnel. They want to be placed on the same level of pension but I thank God that we have a new visionary father-figure in the person of the current IGP, Kayode Egbetokun, who wants a better pension package for policemen.
So, that is what we are doing right now, implementing his vision to ensure that policemen get better pension package every month. The journey has started and we will ensure that we will support him so that police retirees will get deserving pensions. He is leading the way.
So, the real threat to this organisation is the issue of agitation by policemen who want to exit. And you know that this is a mono-clientele PFA that is exclusively responsible for the pension assets of all police personnel in Nigeria. So, any agitation for exit is an existential threat. However, by the grace of God, and with the support of Government, this will become a thing of the past.
But as a PFA solely responsible for the pension assets of all police personnel in Nigeria, on our own, we have also tried as much as possible to help retirees. The Board of NPF Pensions Limited initially approved a N400 million annual Retiree Resettlement Support Scheme (RRSS) in 2017 from its internal funds to cater for retirees while awaiting their accrued rights from the Federal Government. Colossal as the sum was, it was scaled up to N450 million in 2018. Today, it is a whopping N500 million, paid to retirees gratis from the income the PFA makes to alleviate their suffering. Till date, NPF Pensions remains the first and only PFA to embark on such corporate social responsibility (CSR) to its clients – the Retirees.
And the philosophy that undergirds the RRSS is simple. As the name connotes, it is a retiree support scheme to ensure that between the time a policeman retires and the time his accrued right is ready for pension payment, he is given some amount of money to help in attenuating whatever financial difficulties the person may encounter while waiting for his pension.
But, it is not enough. It is only a stop-gap measure and cannot take the place of better pension welfare. So, we are moving ahead in collaboration with the police management led by IGP Egbetokun to ensure that police have better pension package.
L-R: New MD of NPF Pensions Limited, Dr. Kolade Morakinyo, with his predecessor, Dr. Hamza Sule Wuro Bokki
You are now in charge of a PFA with AUM of N1.3 trillion. Are you not intimidated?
No, I am not. Fortunately, we are not doing this for the first time. By the grace of God, I am a financial expert with years of cognate experience in this business. We have the capacity to deal with financial issues, no matter how colossal. Besides, we have an investment philosophy in this organisation and we have a regulator in the industry. So, I am not alone and it can never be a burden managing the N1.3 trillion AUM. Instead, we are looking forward to growing the AUM further. That is my dream.
The huge AUM is, therefore, not a challenge. It is an opportunity. If anything, the challenge will be how to double it in the next couple of years. And that is our focus and it is achievable. We must drive the AUM far beyond the expectations of our stakeholders.
As the MD of NPF Pensions Limited, what is your vision going forward?
My vision is to continue progressively from where Dr Hamza stopped, to focus on how police retirees could get better pension and also to continue in our robust stakeholder engagements. My vision is to make sure that the value of our investments is not eroded. We will build on our extant investment status.
You have said so much about your predecessor, what kind of a leader was he, what was your working relationship with him like and how did that impact on the fortunes of NPF Pensions Limited?
Dr Hamza is a visionary leader, a man who foresaw tomorrow. He is a very humble fellow and very compassionate particularly when dealing with the staff. He ensured in the ten years he was on the driver’s seat that we operated within the ambit of PenCom’s regulatory guidelines.
He not only had the dream but also concretised his dream by making it a reality. That is why I said he is a man that anticipated tomorrow.
We had a good working relationship. Of course, there were bound to be differences from time to time, but nothing personal. It was all for the good of the company. He is a man who listens and takes on board superior arguments while making the ultimate decisions. At no time was there any personal issue between him and any staff, not to talk of me. So, whenever we had issues, we talked it over by looking for solutions and moved on. The overarching interest is the company. There was never a time issues were personalised.
What can you say about the pensions industry in Nigeria? Is it delivering on its promise? Are you satisfied with the way it is?
My answer will be yes and no. I am satisfied because we have a good regulator, PenCom. For your information, pensions industry is the most regulated industry in Nigeria. What we see is the computer screen, nobody sees the cash. And that is why you can hardly see any fraud in the system. There may be fraud in other sectors of the economy but not in the contributory pension scheme. So, that accolade goes to PenCom.
But the challenge we are facing is the low pension and that is why I said I am not satisfied. Unfortunately, it is outside the control of PenCom. It is the responsibility of the Federal Government, the employer of police, to ensure that they are well remunerated. The more you receive better salary, the more your pension gets enhanced. So, the government should try and do something about it.
PenCom as the regulator has been doing its bit extremely well. So, my appeal to the government is to ensure that pensioners are paid well than what they are getting right now. There are lots of financial engineering that could be deployed in bridging the gap and solving the problem without necessarily creating extra financial burden for the Government.
There is also the issue of accrued rights which is unnecessarily delayed. That is a problem. Retirees are senior citizens grappling with a lot of challenges. They are grappling with health issues and how to feed their families. Now, with the current hyperinflation, it is even worse. How can they take care of their families with the peanuts government is paying them as pension? Now, when payment of accrued rights is delayed, and considering the fact that pension cannot be paid without the release of the accrued rights by the government, it becomes double jeopardy.
So, government has to come to the aid of retirees, particularly police retirees to ensure that they receive better pension packages that can sustain them.
Who exactly is Dr Kolade Morakinyo?
I am someone who has been in the financial sector for a long time. I have worked in the oil and gas, insurance and banking industries and in the capital market. And when this pensions industry came on stream, we joined. So, I joined the industry right from inception and here we are today. There is nothing in the industry that is beyond our knowledge by the grace of God.
By my nature, I am a simple, value-driven person. I am someone who is ready to learn. I like acquiring knowledge because I firmly believe that every new knowledge is valuable and I learn every day. That is why the only way you can get at me if you really want to punish me is to divorce me from my books. I believe in continuous learning because when you are mentally alert, you will be good to yourself, family and the society.