Retired Chief Superintendent of Police, Raphael Irowainu, is the National Coordinator, Police Retired Officers Forum, (PROF), in this interview, laments the plight of retired police officers.
Why are you leading protests on behalf of police retirees?
Our major complaint has been against the deliberate act of government to put the Police permanently on the contributory pension scheme under PENCOM introduced by the then President Olusegun Obasanjo in 2004. Recall that in 2017, the military, Department of State Services, DSS, Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC, and even the National Assembly itself, all left the scheme.
At that time, we had the opportunity to leave, but the then Inspector-General of Police, Idris Katung, for selfish reasons, sent the then CP Legal Department to represent him at the hearing, and told them that the Police were satisfied with where they are.
The reason was that these IGPs came together to form the Nigeria Police Pension Scheme. It is a private company labelled as if it is meant for the Police. They have perpetually kept us under the scheme.
It will be interesting to note that retired police officers are paid peanuts. For instance, ASP retired is given N1.5 million as his total take home, with a monthly pension of about N24,000. DSP takes about N2 million with a monthly pension of about N25, 000, SP about N2.5 million with about N30,000 monthly.
CSP, N3 million with about N50,000 monthly pension. ACP, around N6 Million to N7 million with about N60,000 monthly pension; DCP about N8 million with monthly pension of about N65 to N70, 000. Even CP retired, before we started this our agitation was receiving N75,000 monthly.
It will interest you to know that a retired WO2 (Warrant Officer 2), equivalent of an Inspector in the Nigeria Police, receives about N30 million as his take home pay.
How has this affected you and your colleagues after service?
This pension has reduced retired police officers to subhuman beings. They are suffering and dying because this money cannot take care of anything. To worsen matters, most of us that retired since 2024 have not been paid our gratuity. Even if they pay this money, it has no value. What are we going to do with it?
Many of our colleagues have died. Many are living in abject poverty. They are suffering and have become beggars. They live in uncertainty now. We have seen instances where retired police officers go to the road to beg for money to live. Some of them who did not give birth early enough can no longer fund their children’s education. Some of their children have taken to crime because of the inability of the parents to take care of them.
Are you referring to possible dangers of exposing retirees who have been trained in weapon handling and crime prevention to want upon retirement?
The dangers are a legion. One, both serving and retired officers are part of the Nigerian system. We have been trained in the area of intelligence gathering, weapon handling and where these people are now denied of their basic needs, there is tendency that they might take to crime, form their own criminal gangs or cartels and it will be very difficult for anybody to suppress them. If a security man organizes a crime, he becomes a problem to the security agencies. This is because the retired police officers know what their colleagues in the service know.
Now, on intelligence gathering, these retirees are now part of the society, and because of the way the government is treating them, if they see any infraction of potential crime in the system, they will keep mute, or look the other way. They can even sabotage crime prevention efforts if they want to. It will affect the economy; it will affect social life and every other thing. So, it is not in the interest of the government to ignore the needs of the serving and retired police officers by improving their pension scheme. The government must, as a matter of urgency, do everything to ensure that the Police are removed from this fraudulent pension contributory pension scheme.
Following our agitation last month, the House of Representatives passed the amendment Bill, and forwarded it to the Senate for concurrency and harmonization. But since last week, the Senate has not done anything about it. We were even at the Senate on Thursday, but were alarmed that the Senate Leader, Senator Opeyemi Bamidele, has not presented or listed it for discussion.
But IGP and CPs often present cheques to relations of dead officers?
This is the meagre insurance indemnity paid to their relations. It is part of their entitlement.
Even in the case of policemen that die on the line of duty, it takes two to three years to pay that life insurance indemnity. The Police is totally neglected and that is why there is insecurity in the nation. If they fail to fix the Police, there will continue to be insecurity in the nation. This is because, as I said before, the Police are the lead agency in the case of internal security.
For instance, when discussing DSS, soldiers, or Civil Defence, at 6 pm, you can’t see any of them outside. The people you will see on patrol and maintaining security in the night are the policemen. Even investigation of cases is done by the police. Even when the soldiers themselves have problems, they come to report to the police.
They have totally neglected us. It is like a deliberate action by the government to ensure that the Police should not be adequately taken care of, so that they can continue to feed fat on the security budget. So, we want to use this opportunity to call on all well-meaning Nigerians, religious and traditional rulers as well as opinion leaders to prevail on the government if they want to promote internal security. If they don’t, the Police will continue to transfer aggression to Nigerians.
For instance, go to some parts of Lagos. You will see the Police arresting people who are returning from their workplace or social event at 11pm, in the name of wandering, which has no place in our law books. And at the end of the day, such people will part with N20,000 or more in the name of bail; they do this in order to survive. Even the State Headquarters is not releasing money to run the Police Divisional Headquarters.
VANGUARD.
