The National Pension Commission says approximately 8.41 million Nigerians are currently contributing to the country’s pension scheme.

The commission said this in its Pension Fund Assets Summary as at December 2018 released to the press on Wednesday.

According to the Commission’s Spokesman, Peter Aghowa, more Nigerians would key into the scheme through the soon to be launched “Micro Pension Scheme”.

PenCom said the Micro Pension Scheme was designed to attract self-employed Nigerians with irregular income and the financially uninformed to pension plan.

The Commission posited that the scheme, which would be formally launched in this first quarter, is expected to grow contributors and accumulate about N3 trillion by 2024.

“We have no idea of the number of Nigerians that would key in at the launch of the scheme.

“However, we intended covering the entire informal sector over time, this is about 60 million citizens,” the Commission said.

Furthermore, PenCom said that total pension assets soared to N8.50 trillion at the end of 2018.

PenCom said the assets soared as six underwriting and 17 broking firms remitted over N426.36 million for their employees as of the period.