By Joy Odor Reportcircle News
By the time Assistant Director of Information Technology (IT) of the Pension Transitional Arrangement Directorate (PTAD), Adamu Ismail, finished his presentation in Abuja on Thursday, one message rang unmistakably clear: technology has ripped open Nigeria’s pension system and forced out decades of fraud, inefficiency and human suffering.
Speaking at the PTAD Capacity Building Workshop for Labour and Pension Correspondents and the Corporate Online Editors (ACOE), Ajayi pulled back the curtain on a silent digital revolution that has reshaped how Nigeria pays its retirees and how it has quietly saved the Federal Government billions of naira.
He did not begin with numbers. He began with a confession.
Despite the labyrinth of pension policies, reforms and administrative layers, despite the speed at which retirees now receive benefits compared to the nightmare era of endless queues and unpaid arrears, Ajayi said the true engine of change was simple: technology.
“Within a short timeframe, we have achieved what once took years. And we will achieve even more—if funding is provided,” he told the packed hall.
Nigeria’s over ₦26 trillion pension industry, Ajayi revealed, is powered largely by the Contributory Pension Scheme (CPS) and that success, he said, is inseparable from automation.
From complex actuarial computations to real-time record reconciliation, digital systems now crunch in seconds what once consumed months of manual labour.
The result is a pension sector that is faster, more transparent and accountable than at any point in Nigeria’s history.
Before the 2004 Pension Reform Act and its 2014 amendment, Ajayi reminded his audience, pension administration was a humanitarian disaster.
“Unfunded schemes. Endless backlogs. Pensioners treated in ways that were completely inhumane,” he said.
Today, digitalisation has replaced chaos with clarity.
“Now we know who did what, what changed and when it changed. Accountability is no longer optional,” he said.
Ajayi disclosed that PTAD’s current verification platform already runs on early-stage Artificial Intelligence, even though many Nigerians may not recognize it as such.
From facial validation to identity checks, pensioners can now verify themselves from anywhere in Nigeria or even abroad.
“No special attachments. No physical stress. You can walk into a business centre and complete it. It is secure. It is convenient. It is ubiquitous,” Ajayi said.
Beyond convenience, the platform has slashed logistics costs, eliminated dangerous verification journeys, and protected elderly pensioners from kidnappings, road accidents and extortion.
“It is health, safety, convenience and peace of mind,” he added.
Then came the revelation that sent a ripple through the room.
Since the launch of the Amalife digital verification platform in April 2022, over 69,000 pension accounts have been suspended.
Of that number, around 13,000 were later reinstated after proper verification.
The financial implication is staggering.
Ajayi disclosed that the Federal Government has recorded savings running into billions of naira—about ₦2.6 billion directly linked to the cleanup exercise.
With PTAD’s pension database standing at about 240,000 names, nearly 30 percent were flagged and dropped during verification.
“Some of these individuals are sadly no longer alive. But we are not assuming. We are reaching out again through unions and stakeholders,” he said.
Still, a hard truth remains: about half of Nigeria’s pension population has not fully embraced digital verification, even after three years.
Ajayi painted a chilling contrast between the past and the present.
In the past, pension verification meant dangerous interstate travel for elderly people, exposure to kidnappers, physical exhaustion and humiliation.
Today, it means zero transport cost, zero risk and total dignity.
“It is host avoidance. It is time saving. It is data integrity,” he emphasized.
Beyond payments, the technology now strengthens government planning itself.
“Any policy without clean data is just paper. Technology has purified the pension database,” Ajayi declared.
But beneath the success story lies a brewing crisis.
Ajayi warned that most of PTAD’s core digital systems are over 11 years old and rapidly becoming obsolete.
Technology evolves fast. Funding, he admitted bluntly, does not.
“Technology is expensive. Without sustained funding, the gains can be reversed,” he warned.
He also identified system integration failures as a major bottleneck.
While PTAD prepares pension payrolls, actual payments pass through multiple banking systems many of which do not yet speak directly to PTAD’s technology.
Ajayi proposed full integration with the National Identity Management Commission (NIMC) as a strategic solution to identity fraud.
With NIMC controlling Nigeria’s core identity database, he said, real-time verification across borders would become effortless.
“A pensioner in America can be verified instantly,” he said. “That is the future.”
As he concluded, Ajayi laid out PTAD’s three urgent demands:
1. Sustainable funding for technology upgrades
2. Massive public awareness for digital verification
3. Full integration across government identity platforms
Without these, he warned, the pension system risks being trapped between yesterday’s tools and tomorrow’s demands.
What Ajayi revealed in Abuja was not just a technical update, it was a declaration of a silent digital war against fraud, waste and suffering in Nigeria’s pension sector.
The numbers tell only part of the story.
Behind them are elderly Nigerians who no longer travel in fear, no longer sleep on pavements waiting for verification, and no longer beg for what they earned in service.
Technology did not just fix a system.
It restored dignity.
