Scores of retired officers of the Nigeria Police Force, as well as their families, took to the streets again on Monday and blocked one of the gates leading to the Presidential Villa in Abuja to press home their demand, which centres on continued inclusion in the Contributory Pension Scheme (CPS). The protest happened less than one week after the Inspector General of Police, Tunji Disu, met with the retired officers at Force Headquarters, where he pledged direct advocacy to resolve their pension and gratuity concerns. Disu had promised to take their demand to President Bola Tinubu and assured them of renewed engagement with the Federal Government on long-standing welfare issues.

The retirees had, in July 2025, staged a similar demonstration at the National Assembly, demanding their removal from the CPS. Protesting under the aegis of the Police Retired Officers Forum of Nigeria (PROF), they said prolonging the matter would no longer be acceptable, hence the reason for taking their protest to the president, who is expected to assent to the Police Exit Bill. They reiterated their opposition to the scheme while describing it as “fraudulent, illegal, inhumane, and obnoxious.

According to them, the bill—passed by the National Assembly on December 4, 2025, and transmitted to the President on March 16, 2026—would remove police personnel from the CPS if signed into law. Leading the protest, the National Coordinator of PROF, CSP Raphael Irowainu (retd.), said the demonstration was aimed at urging the president to act on the legislation. “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 on 4th December 2025 and transmitted to him on 16th March, 2026, into law, nothing more than that,” he said.

Irowainu lamented that while other security agencies have been removed from the scheme, police personnel remain included. “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, the father of them all, are trapped in this obnoxious Contributory Pension Scheme,” he added.

The retirees argued that the CPS has adversely affected their welfare, describing it as a “slavery and untimely death-inducing pension scheme.” Some of the demonstrators, many of them elderly, also protested at the Force Headquarters in Abuja, decrying what they described as poor pension conditions under the CPS. The latest protest underscores growing dissatisfaction among retired police personnel over pension reforms and their exclusion from benefits extended to other security agencies. ‘Create special fund for police to tackle agitation’ Reacting to the development, a pension expert at the Contributory Pension and Happy Retirement Advocacy (COPEHRA), Mr Sani Mustapha, while proposing a solution to the lingering crisis, urged the federal government to create a special fund that will cater for the welfare of retired police officers.

“My advice to the government is to create a ‘Police Welfare Supplement Fund’ under the National Pension Commission to top up and bridge the balance between lower cadre and the higher cadre police officers. “The creation of a pension board may not be the way out as it will only be the beginning of another corruption cycle,” he said. He further called for salary enhancement for officers of the Force, noting that “One’s pension is outrightly the product of his/her salaries.”