The National Insurance Commission (NAICOM) has reaffirmed its commitment to unlock the potential of Takaful for expanding insurance penetration.

The Commissioner for Insurance/Chief Executive of NAICOM, Olusegun Omosehin, made this known in a statement on Saturday in Abuja.

Omosehin said that the commitment was reaffirmed at a just concluded high-level delegation from the Islamic Financial Services Board (IFSB) of a Diagnostic Assessment Mission on the Takaful sector.

He said that the commission would promote financial inclusion, and support sustainable economic development across Nigeria.

He encouraged the delegation from IFSB to provide practical and data-driven recommendations that would support ongoing regulatory reforms and market development initiatives.

Omosehin said that Takaful was an alternative insurance model, rather than a subset of conventional insurance.

He said that it had the capacity to serve a broad spectrum of consumers while operating within established Shariah governance principles.

The commissioner emphasised the importance of strengthening risk-based capital and supervisory frameworks, enhancing data transparency.

According to him, it will adopt prudent surplus management practices that protect participants while ensuring the sustainable growth of the sector.

 “The preliminary findings of the mission identified several measures aimed at strengthening the legal, regulatory, and supervisory framework for Takaful in Nigeria.

 “NAICOM views its collaboration with the IFSB as a significant milestone in the development of a robust and resilient Takaful ecosystem.

 “The partnership is expected to contribute to greater financial stability, increased consumer confidence, stronger policyholder protection, and responsible innovation within the insurance industry,” he said.

He said that a comprehensive report on the Diagnostic Assessment Mission will be released upon the conclusion of the review process and incorporation of stakeholder feedback. (NAN)

By Tony Obiechina, Abuja

The National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) has launched the General Household Survey (GHS) Panel Wave 5 for 2023/2024, aimed at providing deeper insights into the economic well-being, resilience and living conditions of Nigerian households.

The launch, held at the Transcorp Hilton, Abuja, attracted government officials, development partners, researchers and other stakeholders committed to strengthening evidence-based policymaking in Nigeria.

The World Bank Country Director for Nigeria, Dr. Ndiame Diop, emphasised the importance of panel data in understanding how households respond to economic changes, including rising prices and government policy interventions.

Diop said findings from the GHS Panel would provide valuable evidence to support policies and programmes aimed at improving the livelihoods and welfare of Nigerians.

In his address, the Statistician-General of the Federation and Chief Executive Officer of the NBS, Prince Adeyemi Adeniran, described the GHS Panel as a unique longitudinal survey that has tracked about 5,000 households through five waves since 2010.

According to him, the survey has provided critical information on how Nigerian households and their living conditions have evolved over time.

The keynote address was delivered by Dr. Zainab Bisagai on behalf of the Minister of Budget and National Planning, Senator Abubakar Atiku Bagudu.

Bisagai officially declared the GHS Panel Wave 5 launched and highlighted the importance of reliable and timely statistics in shaping Nigeria’s national budget, development plans and policy decisions.

The event also featured a technical session during which a World Bank expert introduced the Living Standards Measurement Study (LSMS) and presented key findings from the latest GHS Panel wave.

Discussions focused on the use of household-level data for research, policymaking, social protection and the design of welfare programmes.

The NBS said the GHS Panel remains a critical resource for assessing poverty, household resilience and socio-economic conditions across Nigeria.

It added that data generated through the survey would support poverty reduction efforts, social welfare initiatives and sustainable economic development, while helping policymakers develop programmes that better respond to the needs of Nigerian households.

Vice-President Kashim Shettima says Nigeria’s ambition to build a one-trillion-dollar economy cannot be achieved without the full economic participation of women.

Shettima said this on Wednesday in Abuja during the Second National Gender Inclusion Conference, #SheIsIncluded 2026, held at the conference hall of the Presidential Villa.

The vice-president was represented by the Special Adviser to the President on Special Duties, Dr.

The conference, organised by the Presidential Committee on Economic Inclusion in the Office of the vice-president, was themed, “Designing for Delivery: From Financial Inclusion to Economic Transformation for the Nigerian Woman”.

Shettima insisted that the one-trillion-dollar economic ambition of President Bola Tinubu’s administration would not be achievable without women’s participation in the nation’s economy.

“We have set our sights on a one-trillion-dollar economy. But what kind of economy can we build if half of our people cannot participate fully in creating it?” he said.

The vice-president outlined measures to move women from financial exclusion to productive economic participation.

He said only 47 per cent of Nigerian women had formal financial accounts, compared with 58 per cent of men.

Shettima described the disparity as millions of women whose businesses lacked access to affordable capital and whose entrepreneurial potential remained largely untapped.

He said evidence showed that Nigeria’s economic output could be significantly higher if women participated equally in the economy.

He insisted that investing in women was a growth strategy, not an act of charity.

“The question is no longer whether we can afford to invest in women; it is whether we can afford not to. Our answer is no!” he declared.

He said the federal government was moving from policy declarations to an “architecture of delivery” through initiatives designed to connect women and young people to skills, capital and markets.

Shettima cited the National Income Activation Initiative and the Women in Energy Partnership with the World Bank, among the initiatives.

According to him, it is positioning women to participate as entrepreneurs, engineers, investors and leaders in the energy transition.

Shettima, however, cautioned against measuring progress through national averages alone, saying aggregate figures could conceal the continued exclusion of women in rural communities.

He challenged policymakers and programme implementers to identify who was being reached, who remained excluded, what interventions were working and who should be held accountable when programmes failed.

“That is the difference between announcing inclusion and governing for it,” Shettima said.

He urged financial institutions, fintech companies, investors and development partners to treat gender-intentional finance as a viable market rather than concessionary charity.

“Women’s enterprises are demand; their savings are capital; their ideas are innovation,” he added.

He challenged state governments to measure success not merely by the number of women enrolled in programmes but by businesses expanded, jobs created and households whose resilience improved.

“Inclusion must be measured by changed lives, not attendance registers,” he said.

The vice president also demanded stronger accountability, insisting that every commitment from the conference should have an owner, a measurable target and a deadline.

He said successful interventions should be tracked, reviewed and scaled through mechanisms including the proposed National Gender and Financial Inclusion Awards.

Earlier, the Minister of Women Affairs and Social Development, Imaan Sulaiman-Ibrahim, affirmed that one-trillion-dollar ambition would remain incomplete unless women were fully integrated into the economic transformation agenda.

Sulaiman-Ibrahim identified poor last-mile delivery, unsuitable lending models, inadequate gender-disaggregated data, insecurity and unpaid care work as major barriers to women’s economic participation.

The minister disclosed that the Nigeria for Women Programme Scale-Up had expanded its women’s affinity-group model to 4.5 million women organised into 300,000 groups nationwide.

She said under the first phase, more than 560,000 women were mobilised into over 26,000 groups, saving more than N4.9 billion of their own resources and accessing about N15.6 billion in livelihood grants.

For his part, Technical Adviser to the President on Economic and Financial Inclusion, Dr Nurudeen Zauro, provided a clear outline of the government’s new delivery strategy.

Zauro announced four platforms aimed at transforming financial inclusion into measurable economic participation.

He identified the platforms as digital trust infrastructure, data for accountability, blended finance and the National Income Activation Initiative.

Citing Economic and financial inclusion data, Zauro said Nigeria’s overall financial inclusion rate stood at 74 per cent of adults, but a nine-percentage-point gender gap persisted.

According to him, the disparity in formal access stood at 11 percentage points.

He said the challenge was no longer simply getting women to open bank accounts, but ensuring that access translated into affordable credit, productive finance, enterprise growth and increased income.

“A woman may hold an account and still lack affordable credit; receive a loan and lack a market; own a business and lack the records or collateral to scale it.

“Access is the beginning of inclusion; it is not its destination,” he said.

The high point of the open-day session was the unveiling of the National Income Activation Initiative, delivered in partnership with the Federal Ministry of Women Affairs.

It is an initiative aimed at converting inclusion into income through skills acquisition, markets, digital tools, finance and business support.

Also, Dr Zauro led the Vice President and other dignitaries to the exhibition centres showcasing the innovations of the ShesIncluded initiative. (NAN)