For many market women, roadside traders, artisans and other self-employed Nigerians, saving for retirement is often a battle between preparing for tomorrow and surviving today.
With incomes fluctuating and household expenses rising, putting money aside consistently for old age can easily give way to food, rent, school fees, transport and working capital.
That tension is increasingly showing up in Nigeria’s Personal Pension Plan (PPP), where thousands of Nigerians have opened retirement savings accounts but have yet to make contributions.
Data from the National Pension Commission (PenCom) show that 219,316 Retirement Savings Accounts (RSAs) had been registered under the PPP from inception to the first quarter of 2026.
But only 18,811 accounts, representing 8.6 percent, had received contributions.
The remaining 200,505 accounts, or 91.4 percent, were unfunded.
The figures expose one of the biggest challenges facing Nigeria’s drive to extend pension coverage beyond the formal workforce: getting people to register is one thing and getting them to save consistently is another.
For a market woman whose earnings can change from one day to the next, committing a fixed amount every month can be difficult. The same challenge confronts artisans, transport operators, small business owners and other informal-sector workers whose incomes depend largely on daily sales.
When income is uncertain, and living costs continue to rise, retirement can appear too distant to compete with immediate financial needs.
Yet, the consequences extend beyond individual households.
A larger pool of regular pension contributions would give Nigeria more long-term domestic capital to invest in infrastructure, businesses and financial markets, while helping more workers build financial security for retirement.
Nigeria’s pension industry had accumulated N29.52 trillion in assets by the end of the first quarter of 2026. Against an estimated N441.54 trillion gross domestic product, pension assets represented about 6.69 percent of economic output.
That ratio underscores the relatively shallow penetration of long-term retirement savings in Africa’s most populous economy.
The comparison with other markets is revealing. Nigeria’s pension assets-to-GDP ratio of about 6.7 percent compares with approximately 13 percent in Ghana, 6.5 percent in Kenya, 68 percent in South Africa and about 63 percent for the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) average.
The differences reflect more than pension policy. Countries have different levels of formal employment, income, demographics, financial-market depth and pension structures.
But the figures illustrate the scale that pension savings can reach when large sections of the workforce contribute consistently over many years.
South Africa’s pension assets, for instance, are equivalent to about 68 percent of GDP in the comparison provided, while the OECD average is around 63 percent. Such large pools of retirement savings can provide substantial long-term capital for investment.
Nigeria remains some distance from that level of pension penetration.
The country had 11.18 million RSA holders against an estimated workforce of about 110 million, putting pension coverage at roughly 10.2 percent, according to recent data by EFInA.
This means a large majority of Nigerian workers remain outside the formal contributory pension system.
There are signs of progress, however, as PPP contributions rose from N103.30 million in the fourth quarter of 2025 to N147.16 million in the first quarter of 2026.
That represents an increase of N43.86 million, or 42.46 percent, in one quarter.
Cumulatively, the scheme had generated N1.66 billion in contributions from inception to the first quarter of 2026.
But the size of the contribution base remains small compared with the number of registered accounts, highlighting the difficulty of converting enrolment into sustained savings.
For a salaried worker, pension deductions can be automatic, but for a trader or market woman, saving may depend on remembering to make a payment after a good day’s sales, having enough cash when business is slow and resisting the pressure to deploy every naira towards immediate needs.
This makes convenience, flexibility and sustained engagement critical to expanding personal pensions among informal-sector workers.
Kenya offers a useful example of how sustained reforms and higher contributions can deepen pension savings. According to the Retirement Benefits Authority (RBA) of Kenya, pension industry assets under management rose to KSh2.255 trillion (about $17.4 billion) by December 2024, up 14 percent from KSh1.979 trillion six months earlier. The RBA attributed the growth partly to increased member contributions following the implementation of the National Social Security Fund (NSSF) Act of 2013, as well as stronger investment income.
Under the second phase of the NSSF Act, the lower contribution limit was increased from KSh6,000 (about $46) to KSh7,000 (about $54) a month, while the upper limit rose from KSh18,000 (about $139) to KSh36,000 (about $278). The higher contribution thresholds helped increase the flow of savings into the pension system.
The lesson for Nigeria is not that it can simply replicate another country’s pension system.
Rather, Kenya’s experience shows how sustained contributions, policy reforms and wider participation can gradually transform pension savings into a significant pool of long-term capital.
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Nigeria’s challenge is therefore both a household problem and an economic one.
For millions of informal workers, the question is how to put something aside for a future they cannot clearly see while meeting expenses that confront them every day.
For the pension industry and policymakers, the bigger question is how to make retirement saving flexible enough for irregular incomes while building the discipline needed for long-term accumulation.
Nigeria’s pension pool shows that the country has already established a sizeable foundation.
But the 91.4 percent of PPP accounts without contributions shows how much further the system has to go before pension saving becomes a mass-market habit rather than an option largely associated with workers earning predictable incomes.