Daily Archives: November 29, 2024

Book Review: Understanding pension administration in contemporary world

Reviewer: Kabiru Isa Dandago Author: Saheed Adekunle Imran PhD, FCA Publisher:  Ahmadu Bello University (ABU) Press, Zaria, Kaduna State, Nigeria Date of Publication: October 2024 Venue for the Book Presentation: MERIT HOUSE Auditorium, Maitama, Abuja, Nigeria  INTRODUCTION Pension is one of the established systems of financial protection for old age in respect of people who have sacrificed their time, energy and goodwill to serve a cause in the interest of humanity. The people could be civil servants, workers in the private sector or employees of non-governmental organizations. Pension system is one of the protective systems to the well-being of humanity, like life Insurance and Social security. It is generally understood as a post-employment money transfer, which usually results in compensation for infirmity sustained at place of work, a deferred remuneration,  a post-service award, life insurance, social security or a deserved rest. It is a post-service benefit. Several countries have developed different models of fair pension schemes for their retiring workers both in the public and private sectors.  The models popularise terms like  Pension System, Pension Scheme, Pension Plan and Pension Fund, in view of the money being generated through the system and saved for the use of the prospective retirees to sustain their livelihood after retirement. Pension Scheme has to be well designed, implemented, amount fairly computed for saving, invested in profitable ventures and used for upkeep of the pensioners on retirement. This process results into the two main components addressed by this book: Pension Administration and Pension Fund Management.  While Pension Administration is about the wide range of the critical back-office activities that allow pension funds to be generated and flow smoothly each day, Pension Funds Management focuses on making investment decisions in respect of the funds generated through pension administration. This shows that pension must be effectively and professionally administered before the pension funds it generates are subjected to effective management. Pension funds management is purely about the investing function of Finance, which goes a long way in providing investment capacity for taking care of the needs of the deficit sectors of an economy. From the title of this very timely and investment promotion book, the concern of the author is about effective and honest Pension Administration and effective Management of pension funds. These are issues that are not enjoying the attention they deserve from scholars and practitioners in the relevant fields of study. While scholars and practitioners, as well as their institutions and institutes, pay some reasonable attention to pension administration in their write ups and other advocacy services, they pay very little attention to pension fund management in both the public and private sectors of the Nigerian economy and beyond. The few write ups by scholars and practitioners in the areas of pension and actuarial science, especially in developing economies, like Nigeria, are addressing dimensions of pension schemes, determination of retirement benefits and their computations and retirement savings treatments.  Also Read: In the Nigerian Universities and Polytechnics running relevant courses like Accounting, Finance, Business Administration, Economics, Insurance and Actuarial Science (at the ND, HND, B.Sc, MSc, and PhD levels), you would hardly see any specific Course Unit on Pension Administration and Pension Fund Management, coverable in at least a semester, throughout the programme. At the MSc. and PhD levels, very few of the candidates of those related programs care to conduct research on Pension Administration or Pension Funds Management.  At the professional level, both the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Nigeria (ICAN) and the Association of National Accountants of Nigeria (ANAN), the two recognized accountancy professional bodies in Nigeria, do not have any paper in their qualifying examinations to test the knowledge of their students on Pension Administration and Pension Funds Management. The two issues might only be built as sundry accounting issues under financial accounting paper, as if they are not significant for achieving sustainable economic development.  It is in response to all these shortcomings in the theory and practice of Pension Administration and Pension Funds Management that Saheed Adekunle Imran PhD, FCA, brings to bear his reservoir of theoretical and practical knowledge and deep understanding of Pension Administration and Management to come up with this book. Having worked for several years at the Pension Transitional Arrangement Department (PTAD) and having written many scholarly papers on the subject matter, he has generated a lot of theoretical and practical knowledge on Pension Administration and Management in Nigeria and beyond. Reading the mind of Dr. Imran, one can appreciate his determination to guide tertiary educational institutions offering accounting programmes at various levels and accountancy professional bodies towards reviewing their syllabi to give Pension Administration and Pension Funds Management the attention they deserves. Educational institutions and professional institutes could even introduce programs (at ND, HND, Bachelors, or Masters levels), specifically on Pension Administration and Pension Fund Management, as per the the issues covered in the book under review. The book carries 14 chapters, each, with reasonably set learning objectives, good introduction, clear conceptual explanations, down-to-earth practical and critical submissions of ideas and lucid concluding remarks. Find below chapter by chapter analysis of the book. SYNTHESIS OF THE BOOK’S CHAPTERS Chapter One is an overview of Cross-country Pension Plan, dwelling mainly on historical development of Pension Plans/Systems globally, especially in Nigeria. It covers some conceptualisation of terms like Pension, Pension Scheme, Pension Plan, and Pension Funds. It also covers the history of Pension Plans in Africa, Sub-Saharan Africa, and some West-African countries. It also covers the Nigerian Pension Reform and the Chilean affiliation, highlighting records of efforts made in reforming the pension system in the country through various Committee from 2004 (when the Pension Reform Act established the Pension Transitional Arrangement Department) to 2014 (when another Pension Reform Act repealed the 2004 Act and re-established a new the Pension Transitional Arrangement Department (PTAD) to specifically resolve the myriads of Defined Benefit related pension challenges in Nigeria.  Chapter Two discusses approved pension increments under the old pension plan, that is the Defined Benefits Pension Scheme (DBPS). The chapter specifically dwells on the old and new scheme of the approved pension increments under the DBPS, guidelines on Professors’ entitlements determination under the DBPS, Pension and Gratuities Rates under the DBPS, the rules on Pension and Gratuity qualifying years under the DBPS, and various computational approaches for determination of various pension and gratuity entitlements to relevant pensioners. Chapter Three discusses the Nigerian Pension Reform Act (2014) and Contributory Pension Scheme (CPS). The chapter clearly differentiates between the PRA 2014 and the CPS, describing the funding structure of CPS, the various types of Pension Fund available (6 in number, with the 6th one describing Funds for Shari’a compliance investment), the payment circles of retirement benefits in the CPS and how retirement benefits are worked out (computed) under the CPS in Nigeria. The chapter also highlights reasons for differences in employees’ Retirement Savings Account (RSA) balances under the CPS in Nigeria. The chapter carries some hypothetical cases for illustrating how retirement benefits are being computed. Reviews on the other eleven chapters (4-14) are contained in the paper carrying the full review of the book. RECOMMENDATIONS Being the latest pension administration and pension fund management textbook in Nigeria, addressing more practical than theoretical aspects of pension in 14 chapters, and authored by a thoroughly established pension expert and chartered accountant, relevant students at the academic and professional levels should be very happy that solution to their problem has been found. The dearth of a combination of theoretical and practical textbooks in the field of Pension Administration and Pension Funds Management is the main problem for promoting pension studies at the academic and professional levels. This book is a “should read” to all students of Accounting, Finance, Business Administration, Insurance and Actuarial Science, and Economics offering some Course Units with the coverage of Pension Administration or Pension Funds Management in the Nigerian Universities, Polytechnics, ICAN, ANAN or any other relevant professional body. The contents of the book should serve as a guide towards the overhauling of the syllabi of the tertiary educational institutions offering programmes in relevant fields (at the level of ND, HND, B.Sc., MSc or professional programs) and those of the accountancy and other relevant professional bodies so that Pension Administration and Pension Funds Management could be a subject for training and examination for the award of relevant degrees or certificates.  The book is greatly recommended to policy makers and practitioners in the areas of Pension Administration and Pension Funds Management: Pension Funds regulators, Pension Funds Administrators (PFA), Pension Funds Custodians (PFC), Pension Desk Officers,  as well as researchers and other individuals and organizations that are interested in Pension administration  and management. The Civil Society Organizations (CSOs) and the organized labour (NLC and TUC), as well as academic and non-academic Staff Unions of Universities, Polytechnics, Colleges of Education (ASUU, ASUP, SANNU, NASU, etc) should accept the book as a good guide to their preparation for retirement and understanding how their entitlements should be correctly determined, computed and paid to them in good time.   CONCLUSION I would like to shower some accolades on the author; Dr Imran has been my proud mentee, co-author in academic journal publication and a friend for a long period of time. He is very hard-working, honest, creative, initiative, patriotic, reliable and loyal to constituted authorities. These are attributes that he brought to bear in writing this very authoritative and professionally-inclined book. I pray for the book to be well received by the target groups and for it to serve as the long awaited agent of positive and progressive change in the areas of Pension Administration and Pension Fund Management. . Dandago can be reached via [email protected], [email protected], and +2348023360386.
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How eastern Colorado is reading amid plunging national literacy rates, book-banning battles

It may sound like an odd benchmark, but to Maureen Hearty it was telling. 

On the day the Wray High School football team played their state quarterfinal game against the Highland Huskies, 18 people showed up at the Wray Public Library to discuss the Willa Cather novel “My Ántonia.” 

That’s a big deal in a town of 2,300 where “local sports are kind of a key element,” Hearty said. But there were other indications that the co-director of the High Plains arts initiative Prairie Sea Projects had started something important. 

Between the beginning of August and Nov. 16, 50 people checked out “My Ántonia” from the Wray library and another 30 plucked it from the Yuma Public Library. 

The colcha embroidery session tied to the book sold out, and the associated poetry comic book class was also a hit. 

Several residents went to Yuma’s Orphanage auto museum for a librarian-facilitated discussion and to hear a trio play book-related music. Several attended a separate Wray librarian-led discussion about the history of homesteading and Bohemian culture, with first-hand input from their neighbors. And several participated in a creative writing workshop led by Loveland author Claire Boyles. 

From it all, conversations and creative expression sprouted up — about community, the land, the past and the future.

But it’s not like Cather’s 1918 novel about immigrants who moved to Nebraska from Old World Bohemia for better opportunities had infiltrated the collective consciousness out of nowhere, or that libraries were giving away free copies. 

Artist Trent Segura demonstrates the colcha stitch at the Wray Museum’s Grassland Colcha Embroidery workshop during Yuma County’s Big Read program in which community members read and discussed Willa Cather’s novel “My Ántonia,” about immigrants moving to Nebraska from Old Bohemia. (Photo courtesy of Maureen Hearty)

It surfaced because Hearty had been selected by the Big Read program from the National Endowment for the Arts and Arts Midwest to bring a book tied to the theme “Where We Live” to the region. 

Started in 2006 in the U.S., the Big Read seeks to inspire meaningful conversations and cross-cultural understanding “as a means toward improving health and well-being and reducing isolation and loneliness” in communities. It counterbalances plunging national literacy rates, partisan book-banning battles and a crisis of reading deficiencies in Colorado kids due in part to declining student enrollments, state funding reductions and the closing of some schools.   

“My Ántonia” and a second book Hearty chose — the 2014 literary sci-fi novel “Station Eleven,” which follows a theater troupe struggling to survive after a swine-flu epidemic wipes out most of the population — aren’t intended for grade school-age audiences. But her choices address adult topics young adult readers can also process. 

She calls “My Ántonia” a “fairly comfortable and familiar book about homesteading and the High Plains that’s pretty easy to engage the community on,” with “timeless themes like community, immigration and feminism.” And she said she chose “Station Eleven” because “even though it’s not so connected to the idea of High Plains rural living,” it’s about how to “redefine community when what you know collapses.” 

Each community chosen to participate in the Big Read gets a grant ranging from $5,000 to $20,000 as well as outreach materials and tools to help them develop public relations strategies, collaborate with local partners and lead meaningful book discussions.

Participants in Wray Museum’s Grassland Colcha Embroidery workshop turn memories of High Plains living into art. (Photo courtesy of Maureen Hearty)

Programs can be as short as a week or as long as a month, and grantees are expected to deliver add-ons. Hearty chose the colcha, poetry comic book and creative writing classes, which she said helped the community engage on different levels. 

Trent Segura, an artist and collaborator with the San Luis Valley Colcha Embroidery Project, taught the colcha class at the Wray Museum. And even though colcha is associated more with southern Colorado than the High Plains, Hearty said she felt it was appropriate to bring colcha into Big Read programming, “because Trent talked about the history of colcha and how it has evolved and adapted based on place.” 

“Then our conversation was, ‘When we think about grasslands, and prairies and the rural agricultural landscape in northeast Colorado what does colcha look like in that landscape?’” she added. 

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Kate Marie Rose, 68, who has lived in the town of Eckley, population 230, just east of Yuma and north of Joe’s, her entire life, missed the colcha class but attended the poetry and creative writing workshops as well as the “My Ántonia” discussion the night the Wray Eagles walloped the Huskies on the gridiron. 

She’d read “My Ántonia” before, but said in the large group gathering consisting mostly of descendents of Bohemians who had immigrated to Colorado, “what people brought to the table was so much more.” 

Rose’s family is among them, but what captured her about the book, she said, “wasn’t ‘these are immigrants and these are people who are trying to make a go,’ I think because that was just a fact of life in my family when I was growing up. My sense from the book was completely around the environment. The change of the landscape that I had seen over the years as a girl and then into maturity and today. What was on the land, and where the heck did you get water.”

An Idalia student’s poetry comic based on the theme “Where We Live.” (Photo courtesy of Maureen Hearty)

The group was a mix of ethnicity, ages and cultures, “so it gave us all something to relate to,” she added. “Some had photographs and things that they brought up later.” But what impressed her the most was the partnership between Prairie Sea Futures and the Wray museum and the libraries, because it “gave them a great opportunity to be visible. You know, libraries don’t sell anything. So they just kind of get lost if you don’t remember them. So I was really pleased how visible they were,” especially during a time when some libraries seem to be in a bit of trouble. 

Ashley Espinoza attended the book discussion and a two-hour writing class led by Boyles, a former farmer whose debut short story collection “Site Fidelity” won the 2022 Whiting Award in fiction and was longlisted for the 2022 PEN America/Robert W. Bingham Prize. 

Espinoza said she loved how the discussion focused on “the cultural conversation of immigration” that’s been unfolding “since the beginning of America,” and the “intentionality” of having a band that played Bohemian songs during dinner. 

“We didn’t realize those songs came from Bohemian people,” she added. “So the conversation was around ‘some of the things that we think are American are not.’ They have an origin different from America, and maybe have been adapted by Americans so long ago that it just feels very American, but sometimes the origin goes further back than that.” 

Hearty expects “Station Eleven,” which participants will begin reading and discussing in January, will be a bigger challenge than “My Ántonia,” because “it’s sci-fi, it’s postapocalyptic, and it doesn’t immediately connect to our homesteading roots,” she said. 

Trent Segura teaches the history and evolution of colcha embroidery at the Wray Museum in Yuma County. (Photo courtesy of Maureen Hearty)

But her reasons for choosing it from the list of books the NEA offered for the 2024-25 Big Read extend beyond ease of accessibility. 

“The reason I’m pushing outside of the usual book styles is because I don’t feel hugely optimistic about the future of running water and its impact on agriculture and rural life in northeastern Colorado. It’s like the elephant in the room that’s not being discussed,” she added.   

And in “Station Eleven,” while some of the characters “aren’t working cooperatively and are more extractive and violent, some are redefining ‘how do we support each other,’” she said. 
Type of Story: NewsBased on facts, either observed and verified directly by the reporter, or reported and verified from knowledgeable sources.

How eastern Colorado is reading amid plunging national literacy rates, book-banning battles

It may sound like an odd benchmark, but to Maureen Hearty it was telling. 

On the day the Wray High School football team played their state quarterfinal game against the Highland Huskies, 18 people showed up at the Wray Public Library to discuss the Willa Cather novel “My Ántonia.” 

That’s a big deal in a town of 2,300 where “local sports are kind of a key element,” Hearty said. But there were other indications that the co-director of the High Plains arts initiative Prairie Sea Projects had started something important. 

Between the beginning of August and Nov. 16, 50 people checked out “My Ántonia” from the Wray library and another 30 plucked it from the Yuma Public Library. 

The colcha embroidery session tied to the book sold out, and the associated poetry comic book class was also a hit. 

Several residents went to Yuma’s Orphanage auto museum for a librarian-facilitated discussion and to hear a trio play book-related music. Several attended a separate Wray librarian-led discussion about the history of homesteading and Bohemian culture, with first-hand input from their neighbors. And several participated in a creative writing workshop led by Loveland author Claire Boyles. 

From it all, conversations and creative expression sprouted up — about community, the land, the past and the future.

But it’s not like Cather’s 1918 novel about immigrants who moved to Nebraska from Old World Bohemia for better opportunities had infiltrated the collective consciousness out of nowhere, or that libraries were giving away free copies. 

Artist Trent Segura demonstrates the colcha stitch at the Wray Museum’s Grassland Colcha Embroidery workshop during Yuma County’s Big Read program in which community members read and discussed Willa Cather’s novel “My Ántonia,” about immigrants moving to Nebraska from Old Bohemia. (Photo courtesy of Maureen Hearty)

It surfaced because Hearty had been selected by the Big Read program from the National Endowment for the Arts and Arts Midwest to bring a book tied to the theme “Where We Live” to the region. 

Started in 2006 in the U.S., the Big Read seeks to inspire meaningful conversations and cross-cultural understanding “as a means toward improving health and well-being and reducing isolation and loneliness” in communities. It counterbalances plunging national literacy rates, partisan book-banning battles and a crisis of reading deficiencies in Colorado kids due in part to declining student enrollments, state funding reductions and the closing of some schools.   

“My Ántonia” and a second book Hearty chose — the 2014 literary sci-fi novel “Station Eleven,” which follows a theater troupe struggling to survive after a swine-flu epidemic wipes out most of the population — aren’t intended for grade school-age audiences. But her choices address adult topics young adult readers can also process. 

She calls “My Ántonia” a “fairly comfortable and familiar book about homesteading and the High Plains that’s pretty easy to engage the community on,” with “timeless themes like community, immigration and feminism.” And she said she chose “Station Eleven” because “even though it’s not so connected to the idea of High Plains rural living,” it’s about how to “redefine community when what you know collapses.” 

Each community chosen to participate in the Big Read gets a grant ranging from $5,000 to $20,000 as well as outreach materials and tools to help them develop public relations strategies, collaborate with local partners and lead meaningful book discussions.

Participants in Wray Museum’s Grassland Colcha Embroidery workshop turn memories of High Plains living into art. (Photo courtesy of Maureen Hearty)

Programs can be as short as a week or as long as a month, and grantees are expected to deliver add-ons. Hearty chose the colcha, poetry comic book and creative writing classes, which she said helped the community engage on different levels. 

Trent Segura, an artist and collaborator with the San Luis Valley Colcha Embroidery Project, taught the colcha class at the Wray Museum. And even though colcha is associated more with southern Colorado than the High Plains, Hearty said she felt it was appropriate to bring colcha into Big Read programming, “because Trent talked about the history of colcha and how it has evolved and adapted based on place.” 

“Then our conversation was, ‘When we think about grasslands, and prairies and the rural agricultural landscape in northeast Colorado what does colcha look like in that landscape?’” she added. 

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Kate Marie Rose, 68, who has lived in the town of Eckley, population 230, just east of Yuma and north of Joe’s, her entire life, missed the colcha class but attended the poetry and creative writing workshops as well as the “My Ántonia” discussion the night the Wray Eagles walloped the Huskies on the gridiron. 

She’d read “My Ántonia” before, but said in the large group gathering consisting mostly of descendents of Bohemians who had immigrated to Colorado, “what people brought to the table was so much more.” 

Rose’s family is among them, but what captured her about the book, she said, “wasn’t ‘these are immigrants and these are people who are trying to make a go,’ I think because that was just a fact of life in my family when I was growing up. My sense from the book was completely around the environment. The change of the landscape that I had seen over the years as a girl and then into maturity and today. What was on the land, and where the heck did you get water.”

An Idalia student’s poetry comic based on the theme “Where We Live.” (Photo courtesy of Maureen Hearty)

The group was a mix of ethnicity, ages and cultures, “so it gave us all something to relate to,” she added. “Some had photographs and things that they brought up later.” But what impressed her the most was the partnership between Prairie Sea Futures and the Wray museum and the libraries, because it “gave them a great opportunity to be visible. You know, libraries don’t sell anything. So they just kind of get lost if you don’t remember them. So I was really pleased how visible they were,” especially during a time when some libraries seem to be in a bit of trouble. 

Ashley Espinoza attended the book discussion and a two-hour writing class led by Boyles, a former farmer whose debut short story collection “Site Fidelity” won the 2022 Whiting Award in fiction and was longlisted for the 2022 PEN America/Robert W. Bingham Prize. 

Espinoza said she loved how the discussion focused on “the cultural conversation of immigration” that’s been unfolding “since the beginning of America,” and the “intentionality” of having a band that played Bohemian songs during dinner. 

“We didn’t realize those songs came from Bohemian people,” she added. “So the conversation was around ‘some of the things that we think are American are not.’ They have an origin different from America, and maybe have been adapted by Americans so long ago that it just feels very American, but sometimes the origin goes further back than that.” 

Hearty expects “Station Eleven,” which participants will begin reading and discussing in January, will be a bigger challenge than “My Ántonia,” because “it’s sci-fi, it’s postapocalyptic, and it doesn’t immediately connect to our homesteading roots,” she said. 

Trent Segura teaches the history and evolution of colcha embroidery at the Wray Museum in Yuma County. (Photo courtesy of Maureen Hearty)

But her reasons for choosing it from the list of books the NEA offered for the 2024-25 Big Read extend beyond ease of accessibility. 

“The reason I’m pushing outside of the usual book styles is because I don’t feel hugely optimistic about the future of running water and its impact on agriculture and rural life in northeastern Colorado. It’s like the elephant in the room that’s not being discussed,” she added.   

And in “Station Eleven,” while some of the characters “aren’t working cooperatively and are more extractive and violent, some are redefining ‘how do we support each other,’” she said. 
Type of Story: NewsBased on facts, either observed and verified directly by the reporter, or reported and verified from knowledgeable sources.