IGP Kicks Against Bill to Exempt Police from CPS 

Ebere Nwoji

At last the much agitation for police exit from the Contributory Pension Scheme(CPS) may have  rested as the Inspector General of Police, Kayode Egbetokun has kicked against the bill seeking to exempt the agency from the CPS saying it would not favour the police force.

Egbetokun who stated this while addressing some police officers recently at a public function  noted that if the police exit the CPS, they would  go back to square one.

“Yes it is true that a bill has been passed by the National Assembly for the police to exit the CPS and that bill is awaiting presidential assent, but has anyone of you seen the details of the content of that bill? You need to go and look at the bill and see where you are exiting to. 

“Everybody is shouting ‘let us go, let us go’. You must know where you are going before you start shouting, ‘I want to go. When I became IG, I set up a committee to look into the pension issue and we discovered that the bill awaiting the assent of the President does not favour us. If we exit the present Contributory Pension Scheme, we are going back to square one, where we were before the introduction of the scheme.

“Our pension will be in the hands of politicians and they will be the one to address our pension. Our pension will be subject to budgetary allocation every year and when the government does not have money, you will not be paid. You remember those days when retirees will go and  line up and wait for months and they will not get anything, that is the place you want us to go back to,” he stated.

Also speaking during a public hearing conducted by the Senate Committee on Establishment and   Public   Service  on the  bill  sponsored by Senator Binos Dauda Yaroe, representing Adamawa South, Mr. Ivor Takor, Director, Centre for Pension Rights Advocacy (CPRA), stated that the CPS   remains   the   most   secured   and   sustainable   system   for ensuring   police   officers’   pensions   and   safeguarding   them   from   old   age poverty.

Rather than exiting police from the CPS,  Takor made the following recommendations: “Enhanced Gratuity Payments: He recommended that the  Federal Government should provide police retirees with a gratuity amounting to 300 percent  of their final annual gross pay upon retirement, while their Retirement Savings Accounts (RSAs) continue to fund their monthly pensions etc.”