Contributions under Nigeria’s Personal Pension Plan reached N1.66bn by the end of the first quarter of 2026, even as 91.4 per cent of registered accounts remained unfunded, data from the National Pension Commission has shown.

PenCom’s first-quarter pension industry data recorded 219,316 registrations under the Personal Pension Plan from inception to the first quarter of 2026.

Of that number, only 18,811 accounts had been funded.

The remaining 200,505 accounts had not received contributions, leaving the vast majority of registrations without funding.

Funded Retirement Savings Accounts therefore accounted for 8.6 per cent of the total registrations.

The Personal Pension Plan is designed to give self-employed people and workers in the informal sector an opportunity to participate in the Contributory Pension Scheme.

The scheme is particularly relevant to workers who may not have access to an employer-sponsored pension arrangement.

The N1.66bn accumulated contribution figure indicates that money is flowing into the scheme, but the distribution of funded accounts shows that participation remains uneven.

PenCom also recorded a significant rise in contributions between the final quarter of 2025 and the first quarter of 2026.

Quarterly contributions increased from N103.30m to N147.16m.

The difference of N43.86m represented a 42.46 per cent increase.

The increase came as the pension industry continued efforts to broaden retirement savings among Nigerians outside the formal employment sector.

However, the number of unfunded accounts remains substantially higher than the number of funded accounts.

The figures suggest that many people who have registered for the Personal Pension Plan have not yet moved to the stage of making contributions.

This distinction is significant because the purpose of a pension account is to accumulate savings over the course of a participant’s working life.

For workers in the informal sector, where income can vary and employment is not always structured around regular payroll deductions, maintaining consistent pension contributions can be more difficult.

The Personal Pension Plan provides a framework for such workers to voluntarily build retirement savings.

PenCom’s latest figures show that the framework has attracted hundreds of thousands of registrations, but the relatively small number of funded accounts indicates that further participation is needed.

The rise in quarterly contributions is nevertheless a positive development.

If the increase is sustained and more registered participants begin making regular contributions, the scheme could gradually close the gap between registration and active pension participation.

For now, however, the data shows that the majority of Personal Pension Plan accounts remain inactive from a contribution standpoint.