The Federal Government has completed payment of N18.96 billion in outstanding pension arrears owed to former workers of the defunct Power Holding Company of Nigeria, closing a liability that had lingered for years under the Defined Benefit Scheme.
The Minister of Finance and Coordinating Minister of the Economy, Taiwo Oyedele, said the final tranche of N9,476,313,375.74 had been paid by the Pension Transitional Arrangement Directorate, PTAD, to 3,958 eligible PHCN pensioners. According to him, the payment settled the outstanding 50 per cent balance of arrears arising from the Back-End Computation.
In a statement from PTAD’s Head of Corporate Communications, Olugbenga Ajayi, dated 17 September 2026, the directorate said the first tranche of N9,481,886,576.53 was paid in June 2026 to 3,959 pensioners, representing the initial half of the sum. The two payments bring the total disbursed to N18,958,199,952.27.
PTAD explained that the N5,573,200.79 difference between the tranches followed the death of one pensioner after the first payment and before the second was processed. That accounts for the drop from 3,959 recipients in June to 3,958 in the final round.
The arrears stem from the Back-End Computation, an exercise that recalculated additional entitlements due to the pensioners under the old pension order. PTAD said the full settlement brought the liability covered by that exercise to an end.
Oyedele said the completion showed the government’s determination to address inherited pension obligations and to ensure that verified entitlements were paid. He added that such obligations remained a responsibility to citizens who served the country, and that verified liabilities would continue to receive attention within available resources and approved processes.
The payment closes one of the longer running grievances left over from the 2013 privatisation of the power sector. When the state owned PHCN was unbundled and its successor companies handed to private investors, thousands of workers were disengaged, and disputes over severance and pension entitlements followed the sector for more than a decade. Successive administrations have paid down the liabilities in phases rather than in a single settlement.
For the retirees affected, the timing carries weight. The naira has lost much of its value since the entitlements first fell due, so the real worth of arrears paid in 2026 is well below what the same figures would have bought when they were first owed. That erosion has been a recurring complaint among pensioners on fixed incomes, whose benefits are not indexed to inflation.
The scale of the PHCN payment is modest against PTAD’s wider workload. Figures published by the National Pension Commission put the directorate’s disbursements to Defined Benefit Scheme retirees at about N29.99 billion in the third quarter of 2025 alone, reaching 168,511 retirees in that period. PHCN pensioners are one group among several legacy categories the directorate manages, including retirees of NITEL, MTEL and defunct government banks.
PTAD has also been clearing other arrears through the year. In April 2026 the directorate said it had paid N1.73 billion to 54,206 pensioners to settle arrears from an approved N32,000 pension increment covering a 13 month period. PHCN pensioners, having earlier received separate percentage increases, were listed among the groups exempted from that particular increment.
The directorate credited its Executive Secretary for coordinating the exercise, though official statements and some reports have carried different renderings of the office holder’s name, a detail that has not been formally clarified. The Federal Ministry of Finance commended PTAD for the coordination that led to the settlement.
For now, the confirmed position is that the specific BEC arrears owed to the 3,958 pensioners have been fully paid in two tranches totalling about N18.96 billion. What the government’s statements do not settle is whether other categories of PHCN entitlements outside this computation remain outstanding, and the broader question of how quickly the directorate can work through the full stock of legacy pension liabilities still on its books.