Despite pleas from the Police Service Commission (PSC) under the headship of DIG Hashimu Argungu (rtd.) for the retired police officers to shelve their plan to stage a peaceful protest over poor pension benefits and government’s failure to take them away from the present police pension scheme, the aggrieved senior citizens still went ahead to accomplish the task they have set for themselves on Monday, 21 July, 2025 across the country.
The insistence of the group on the action underscores the general plight of the elderly in Nigeria. Many of them who disengaged from public service can hardly meet their health and feeding needs due to the galloping inflation that has engulfed the nation. Apart from the gross reduction in the value of the Nigerian currency, the pension administrators have done little or nothing concerning complains of retirees over the years, particularly after the introduction of the contributory pension fund scheme in public service.
With the system, workers are made to contribute 8% of their monthly basic salaries to the fund while the governments complement same with 10% payments. Even though there are two major ways of disbursing the fund to beneficiaries – Defined Benefits Plan and Defined Contributory Plan, the Nigerian public service employers have continued to apply only the defined contributory system that allows for a small percentage of a worker’s total entitlement to be given to him on retirement. This leaves the remaining savings for monthly payments to pensioners based on governments’ discretion.
In better arrangements, workers are given the option of either taking all their total contributions (from employers and employees’) as a lump sum based on the defined benefit plan or defined contributory plan which allows for percentages of total contributions to be paid to retirees while a portion is withheld for monthly payments for life. The latter option appears good, as it ensures that a retiree continues to earn money even without working at old age.
However, given the fact that the life expectancy in Nigeria hovers around 55 years, many pensioners often die few years into their retirement periods. And when they do, a high percentage of their life savings in form of pension contributions are left for managers to enjoy. In addition to this, those administrators hardly allow the interests accruing to pensioners’ savings reflect in their monthly stipends.
In general terms, the country’s authorities must begin to use the recent action by the police retirees as a basis for creating an all-inclusive social investment scheme that guarantees the welfare of the elderly in the society. As practiced in organized climes, certain exemptions and rebates can be given to deserving senior citizens. For example, they can be made to enjoy complete free medical services in designated hospitals and subsidized spending for transport, tourism, sports entertainments and so on.
Beyond working on all the lapses militating against a robust pension and social investment system, the governments at all levels owe their workers a high responsibility to deploy tested and reliable software designed for this area of financial management and manned by knowledgeable personnel. This will reduce the stress normally associated with the processing of pension benefits by retirees.
A holistic approach should also be applied in managing social investment programs in order to capture every deserving members of the public. And, in doing this attempts must be made to guarantee that the monumental frauds that have been the lot of all previous efforts are curbed with integrity-conscious leaders.
A more transparent style must be given a place in the disbursement of funds through cash transfers to deserving vulnerable members of the country’s populace. The process should be such that will not permit its hijack by the well-to-do people in privileged positions.
There are professionals who are specialists in actuaries, superannuation and annuities. They should be engaged in offices responsible for pension administrations. In cases where they are not readily available, the services of consultants in those areas should be engaged to simplify the processes for non-experts to handle.
Another area of serious concern is the processing of death benefits of staff members who pass away in active service. It is both morally and professionally wrong for families of such individuals to pursue the entitlements therefrom for periods that sometimes stretch beyond five years.
Above all, perpetrators of fraud in pension offices must not be allowed to go unpunished. Jail term of six years as was confirmed by the Supreme Court for John Yakubu Yusuf over twenty-two billion, nine hundred million naira (N22.9bn) fraud in police pension office in 2022 cannot be considered enough for an offence of such magnitude.
