Retired police personnel and their families under the umbrella of the Police Retired Officers Forum of Nigeria has blocked one of the gates of the Presidential Villa in Abuja, protesting against the Contributory Pension Scheme (CPS) and demanding the removal of the Nigeria Police Force from the system.
The demonstrators described the scheme as “fraudulent, illegal, inhumane and obnoxious,” insisting that it has left many retired officers impoverished and struggling to survive.
Carrying placards with inscriptions such as “End CPS”, “If military, DSS were removed from PENCOM, why not police?” and chanting “Police dey work, PenCom dey chop,” the retirees called on President Bola Ahmed Tinubu to assent to the Police Exit Bill passed by the National Assembly and recently transmitted to the Presidency.
The bill, according to the protesters, would remove police personnel from what they termed a “slavery and untimely death-inducing pension scheme.”
“We are suffering,” says retired officer
Speaking during the protest, a retired Assistant Superintendent of Police (ASP), Nurudeen Dahiru, said the agitation was driven by years of hardship faced after retirement.
“We are not begging anybody. We have come to fight for our rights. We have suffered,” he said.
“We are not here to fight anybody. We are just here to demand for our rights. We have served for 35 years.”
He lamented that many retirees were unable to meet basic needs after years of service.
“According to the Constitution of the country, when you serve your country for 35 years, you should go home and rest. But see us suffering now. We are not able to take care of our children,” he said.
“We have no food to eat. We are dying. Silent killing. So this contributory pension scheme is a killer disease. 35 years is not easy. We are not here to fight anybody.”
Another retired officer decried the poor pension payments, describing them as inadequate and dehumanising.
“We don’t have anything to train them. As I retired 20 years ago, how much are they paying me?” he said.
“It is 24,000 that I am paying you because I retired with the inspector. So they have to sign our bill and give us all our money.”
He added:
“How can an ASP, a DSP, a CP retire and they are paying him how much? No, no, no. Enough is enough. It is a do or die. Even if some people are killed today, others are coming.”
Forum demands presidential assent to exit bill
The National Coordinator of the Police Retired Officers Forum of Nigeria, CSP Raphael Irowainu (retd), who led the protest, said the group was demanding immediate presidential action on the bill exiting the police from the CPS.
“Our major aim here is to prevail on President Bola Ahmed Tinubu to sign our bill—the bill exiting the police from the Contributory Pension Scheme—passed by the National Assembly last year and transmitted to him next month, into law, nothing more than that,” he said.
He argued that other security agencies had already exited the scheme.
“The soldiers have been exited, the SSS has been exited, the Air Force has been exited, the Navy has been exited, the National Intelligence Agency (NIA) has been exited. The police, who are the father of them all, are trapped in this obnoxious Contributory Pension Scheme,” he added.
