SIGN POLICE PENSION BILL OR LOOSE VOTE, POLICE RETIREES URGES TINUBU

Read Time:3 Minute, 5 Second

BY JENN NOMAMIUKOR

Some retired police officers and their families came together in Abuja on Monday to tell President Bola Tinubu that he might lose the support of police retirees who live in all 36 states if he doesn’t sign the Police Exit Bill. This bill would take the police force out of the Contributory Pension Scheme.

They made this statement during a protest where they blocked Gate 8 near the Presidential Villa in Abuja from around 10:00 am to 1:00 pm local time.

The protest was led by Raphael Irowainu, a retired police officer and the National Coordinator of the Police Retired Officers Forum of Nigeria.
He said that millions of retirees are spread out across the country and will use their votes carefully.

Irowainu told President Tinubu, “We are asking you to sign our bill as soon as possible. You need to know that in Nigeria, we are very important stakeholders. Retirees are all over the country.“

“We will use our votes judiciously and those of our families to determine our future in the coming elections. From Zamfara, Maiduguri to Cross River, we are in thousands among the populace.”

“When in service, they kill us. We who survived and managed to retire, they programme us to die again. Many of us retire with disabilities and sickness. Many of us here have bullets in our bodies in the course of our duty.

“Unless the President fixes the problems of the police, internal security problems will not stop. We are the force closest to the people.”

He said the protesters will continue in the coming days.

“We will remain in Abuja until that bill is signed. We will protest at the airport, US embassy, we will cry out until this bill is signed,” said Irowainu.

Protesters on Monday carried placards reading “End CPS” and “If military, DSS were removed from PENCOM, why not police?” while chanting “Police dey work, PenCom dey chop.”

According to a Villa security personnel who spoke to our correspondent at the scene of the protest, the retirees were asked to remain under a tree and air their grievances even as the gates were shut based on “orders from above”.

The protesters, operating under the aegis of Police Retired Officers Forum, described the CPS as “fraudulent, illegal, inhumane and obnoxious,” and called for immediate presidential assent to the Police Exit Bill.

The bill was passed by the National Assembly on December 4, 2025, and transmitted to the Presidency on March 16, 2026.

It has since awaited the President’s signature.

The bill, sponsored by House Leader Hon. Julius Ihonvbere, seeks to establish a Nigerian Police Force Pension Board and exempt the police from the Contributory Pension Scheme under the Pension Reform Act 2014.

Irowainu lamented that all other major security agencies had already been removed from the scheme.

He said, “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 has been exited.

“The police, who are the fathers of them all, are trapped in this obnoxious Contributory Pension Scheme.”

The National Coordinating Secretary for Retired Police Officers Under the CPS, CSP Mannir Zaria (retd.), told our correspondent that the women and families who turned out for the protest came to amplify a welfare crisis that had gone ignored for too long.

“We are here to appeal to the President to sign the bill to exit the police from the contributory pension scheme and to establish a Nigerian Police Force pension body. That is why we are here,” he said.

Wife of a retired officer, Aisha Yisa, who spoke to journalists, said the protest was deeply personal.