Journalists Deserve Better: PenCom Leads Battle to Reclaim ₦1.3 Billion Owed by Newspaper Employers

From left: The Nigerian Press Council Executive Secretary, Dr. Dili Ezughah (second) and the Director General of the National Pension Commission, Ms. Omolola Oloworaran (third) flanked by staff of the Council and the Commission during a recent working visit to the Council

The National Pension Commission (PenCom) has launched a major enforcement campaign to recover over ₦1.3 billion in unpaid pension contributions owed by newspaper organisations to their journalists.

The Director General of PenCom, Ms. Omolola Oloworaran, made this disclosure during a strategic visit to the Nigerian Press Council headquarters in Abuja. Expressing deep concern, Oloworaran highlighted rampant non-compliance with the Pension Reform Act 2014 (PRA 2014) across the media sector, describing the situation as unacceptable for a profession tasked with holding society accountable.

In response, PenCom and the Nigerian Press Council have forged a strategic alliance to pressure defaulting media organisations into settling their outstanding pension liabilities. Under PRA 2014, employers are legally required to remit monthly pension contributions into their employees’ Retirement Savings Accounts (RSAs) within seven days of paying salaries. However, many newspaper houses have failed to meet this obligation, prompting PenCom to deploy Recovery Agents to audit their records and calculate outstanding debts and penalties.

The crackdown marks a significant shift in PenCom’s ongoing enforcement drive, with the media sector now under direct scrutiny for the first time. According to Oloworaran, journalists — as vital agents of democracy and accountability — deserve to retire with dignity, free from the fear of old-age poverty. She emphasised that media organisations must lead by example by upholding the rights of their employees to social security.

“We must protect the future of those who protect our democracy. Pension contributions are not optional — they are a lifeline,” Oloworaran asserted, while calling on the Nigerian Press Council to champion compliance within the media industry.

In a swift response, the Executive Secretary of the Nigerian Press Council, Dr. Dili Ezughah, pledged the Council’s full support. He described the non-remittance of journalists’ pensions as a major threat to the welfare and security of media practitioners. Ezughah further promised to escalate the issue to critical industry stakeholders, including the Nigeria Union of Journalists (NUJ) and the Nigerian Guild of Editors, in a bid to mobilise collective action.

To drive the initiative forward, a joint working group comprising officials from PenCom and the Nigerian Press Council has been established, tasked with ensuring the rapid recovery of all outstanding pension contributions and strengthening compliance across the sector.

The move signals a new era of accountability for media organisations, many of which have long neglected their pension obligations, to the detriment of journalists who have served the public faithfully.

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