The perception of people as it affects their pension contributions in Nigeria-Odunze Reginald C

People always have the erroneous believe that the Nigeria pension system is not right and to a largest you discover that they are the architect of their own woes or misfortunes.

What is perception, to a lay man perception is the way people see, feel or think about issues, things, projects, schemes, endeavors and generally life activities. They tend to think that everything is all about government and every aspects of government life are nose diving towards the negative, they feel that all is not well and all will be not well. They have been defeated in their mind and that defeat is contagious as it also affects other aspects of their life. They have been blinded not by what they see but by what they hear.

And according to Wikipedia, Perception (from the Latin perceptio, percipio) is the organization, identification, and interpretation of in order to represent and understand the environment. Wikipedia went on to assert the following highlighting on the theory of Alan Saks and Gary Johns they stated that there are three components to perception

The Perceiver, the person who becomes aware about something and comes to a final understanding. There are 3 factors that can influence his or her perceptions: experience, motivational state and finally emotional state. In different motivational or emotional states, the perceiver will react to or perceive something in different ways. Also in different situations he or she might employ a "perceptual defence" where they tend to "see what they want to see". Continuing in Wikipedia, Alan Saks and Gary Johns elaborated on the following:

1. The Target. This is the person who is being perceived or judged. "Ambiguity or lack of information about a target leads to a greater need for interpretation and addition."
2. The Situation also greatly influences perceptions because different situations may call for additional information about the target.
3. The Situation also greatly influences perceptions because different situations may call for additional information about the target.

But the people feel and think about issues, programs, project as it relates to pensions have tend to arise based on the previous encounters they heard people recount , they fail to see the positive aspect of all things, they see failure all around and that failure definitely finds them, and according to Le Bouef (1987:21) noted that “your world is a mirror and your mind is a magnet what you perceived in this world is largely a reflection of your own attitudes and beliefs. And life will give you what you attract with your thoughts. Think, act and talk negatively and your world will likely be negative. Think, act and talk with enthusiasm and you will attract positive results”.

From the postulations of Alan Saks et al noted that in “different situations he or she might employ a "perceptual defence" where they tend to "see what they want to see". They have this erroneous belief that the pension scheme is not effective , the result is that most employees exclude themselves from the pension schemes, and bearing in mind that the employer is the one that spends, because for every employee’s contribution, there is a corresponding employer’s contribution, when the employer decides therefore to back out, the employer becomes more happier than that , especially our foreign employers as those employees have succeeded in reducing their wage bills.

The impact of not being a contributor its more devastating especially in Africa, where we have the extended family systems and where we are supposed to be our brothers keeper, what about the immediate families, what happens in the case of the unexpected to an employee who feels indifference in contributing, when the employer have to add his own will definitely not contribute personally for pension elsewhere.

The need for pension cannot be overemphasized and as such one need not be informed to  contribute as old age has with it its challenges, health issues and coupled with the expectations of African, it behooves on the employees to ensure compliance to the scheme, when the employer has already complied,  more so when there are families that need to be catered for should the bread winner join his ancestors and Robert Stevenson  amply stated that “life being one the interest should be that of the whole but man in his characteristic ignorance think he can successfully strive for his own interest and his wrongly directed energy of selfishness only produces suffering”

Odunze Reginald C