Nigeria’s Police Pension Crisis: A Call for Urgent Transformation, Modernization, and the Inevitable Shift to State Policing -By John Egbeazien Oshodi

Nigeria’s police pension crisis is no longer hidden—it is a national failure, now openly acknowledged by those at the heart of its institutions. Former Inspector-General of Police (IGP) Usman Alkali Baba recently sounded the alarm, condemning the “humiliating conditions” endured by retired officers. In a video interview reportedly shared by ESET TV and cited by SaharaReporters, Baba went further—stating that under the current pension arrangement, retirees are “considered dead” after ten years, regardless of whether they are still alive. The system, he said, quietly discards those who once served the nation.

His successor, IGP Kayode Egbetokun, has echoed this concern, describing the status quo as “morally unacceptable.” Together, their voices represent a rare and urgent consensus from within the leadership of the Nigeria Police Force: the Contributory Pension Scheme (CPS) has become a machinery of hardship rather than protection.

Yet these acknowledgments, though courageous, are only one side of the ledger. The other rests with President Bola Tinubu. As commander-in-chief, he now carries the weight of both responsibility and opportunity. The moment demands more than sympathy—it calls for bold, immediate reform to dismantle a broken pension system and to reimagine the country’s entire policing structure through the long-overdue establishment of state police. This is not merely a policy dilemma; it is a moral reckoning and a defining test of national leadership.

The Broken Promise of Pension Security

Former IGP Baba’s blunt critique—that many of his colleagues are owed months of pension and that lower-ranked officers are left to languish while senior ones are shielded—lays bare the systemic injustice enshrined in the current CPS. His words paint a picture of a two-tier police force, where dignity is reserved for the privileged few, and despondency is the inheritance of the majority. His successor, IGP Egbetokun, has not shied away from this truth either, calling the living conditions of police retirees “morally unacceptable” and acknowledging the psychological trauma inflicted by meager pensions of N14,000–N40,000 monthly—sums that barely cover survival, let alone a dignified old age.

Retirement should not feel like abandonment. Yet, the current pension system reduces seasoned officers to beggars, dependent on handouts or the mercy of relatives. The result is not only physical decline but emotional collapse—a deep, chronic erosion of morale within the ranks. Officers know that retirement does not mark the end of duty but the beginning of neglect. In this climate, how can we expect active personnel to give their best when their future has been rendered invisible?

Executive Action, Not Administrative Delay

The time for polite acknowledgments is over. Nigeria must now confront this failure not with policy memos, but with bold, unapologetic reform. The current Contributory Pension Scheme (CPS) is not just flawed—it is functionally broken and morally indefensible. No amount of bureaucratic patchwork can fix what has become a machinery of neglect. The system must be reimagined from the ground up, and that task must begin with executive clarity, not administrative hesitation.

President Bola Tinubu must move decisively—today, not tomorrow. He must immediately issue an executive directive establishing a high-level reform panel comprised of neutral, highly credible Nigerian financial experts and actuaries with no institutional loyalties. These professionals must be empowered to conduct a full forensic audit and actuarial review of the police pension system, exposing not only its mathematical shortcomings but also the structural inequities and systemic sabotage that have condemned countless officers to lives of post-service suffering. This review must be brutally honest, shielded from political interference, and publicly accountable.

The reform panel’s mandate must include benchmarking against international best practices, particularly countries where security agencies enjoy retirement with dignity, not destitution. What models have successfully balanced defined benefit security with the flexibility of defined contributions? What oversight mechanisms have eliminated corruption and ensured timely payouts? What safeguards exist to protect against bureaucratic manipulation? These are the questions that must drive Nigeria’s new pension architecture.

Build a Transparent Pension Future, Empower Officers Now

Informed by global best practices, Nigeria must establish a dedicated and autonomous Police Pension Board, one that operates independently of the current opaque civil pension structure and is anchored in transparency, digital efficiency, and ironclad oversight. This board should have the statutory authority to administer pensions, monitor fund disbursement, and punish delay or mismanagement with enforceable consequences.

Equally vital is the introduction of mandatory financial literacy programs and retirement transition planning for all serving officers—not as an afterthought, but as a core pillar of service. No officer should exit the force unsure of what awaits them. A professional force deserves a professional retirement plan, with support systems that guide personnel before, during, and after their final day of duty.

Implementation must be strategic and staged—but never vague. Reforms must be communicated in plain language and across multiple platforms to reach every rank and region. Police personnel—active and retired—must be treated as stakeholders, not passive recipients. Restoring trust means ending the historical pattern of top-down pronouncements followed by bottomless delays.

Above all, President Tinubu must not delegate this matter to compromised middlemen, career consultants, or underfunded ministries mired in inertia. This reform must bear the signature of executive will. A President who campaigned on renewed hope must now extend that hope to those who once risked everything in the line of duty.

Because in the end, how a nation treats its retired officers is not merely an economic matter. It is a moral mirror, reflecting the soul of the state and the seriousness of its leadership.

Global Lessons: Models of Dignity, Not Despair

For Nigeria to truly transform its broken police pension structure, it must move beyond internal patchwork solutions and learn from countries that have built trustworthy, dignified, and sustainable retirement systems for their law enforcement personnel. These global models offer tested frameworks that prioritize fairness, fiscal responsibility, and long-term human dignity.

In Canada, for instance, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) operate under a Defined Benefit Plan managed by a centralized public service pension board. This plan guarantees predictable monthly payments based on years of service and salary history. Crucially, the system is governed by a transparent actuarial process, a diversified investment strategy, and annual audits accessible to the public—ensuring no room for silent mismanagement.

In the United States, many state police departments operate under hybrid pension systems that combine defined benefit and defined contribution elements. Officers contribute a portion of their salary into an individual retirement account, while the government guarantees a minimum benefit based on service tenure. This hybrid approach gives officers both long-term security and personal control. States like California and Texas have embedded financial counseling into the last five years of service, helping officers plan for housing, healthcare, and lifestyle changes post-retirement.

South Africa, facing similar developmental challenges as Nigeria, has established a Government Employees Pension Fund (GEPF) that caters specifically to public sector workers, including law enforcement. The fund uses actuarial valuations every two years and is independently governed by a Board of Trustees, not just civil service bureaucrats. There are strict legal penalties for misappropriation or delay, and the fund’s performance is published for transparency.

Even in Ghana, the Police Pension Scheme has moved toward a three-tier system—with basic social security, an occupational pension, and voluntary savings options. Officers are now equipped with pension statements, personalized financial updates, and mobile-access systems that allow them to track their retirement growth in real-time—practical, morale-boosting innovations Nigeria has yet to adopt.

What these systems share is clarity, structure, and accountability—three principles absent in Nigeria’s current CPS. Nigeria does not lack intelligence or talent; it lacks the institutional courage to implement what already works elsewhere. The country must adopt a model rooted in equity, informed by international precedent, and adapted to Nigerian realities.

This is not a matter of copying foreign systems wholesale—but of drawing inspiration from dignity-driven systems and tailoring them to suit the social, economic, and administrative context of Nigeria. There is no excuse for inertia when tested solutions already exist.

The Imperative for State Police: Local Solutions for Local Heroes

Beneath the pension disaster lies a more insidious failure—Nigeria’s centralized policing structure, which continues to suppress innovation, ignore regional realities, and treat officers like disposable cogs in a federal machinery too slow to care. The current system is not just inefficient; it is indifferent. Managed by a distant authority disconnected from local suffering, this one-size-fits-all approach has proven incapable of delivering justice, security, or basic dignity—especially in retirement.

The pension crisis is not a standalone injustice—it is a visible scar of deeper structural rot. And unless we address the foundation, no reform can hold. Nigeria must now embrace what its most honest voices have long whispered and what its most wounded retirees now scream from the streets: the time for state policing has come.

State policing is not a political gamble—it is a moral and administrative necessity. It empowers each state to design pension and welfare systems tailored to its economic strength, cost of living, and cultural context. No longer would officers in high-cost regions receive the same inadequate pensions as those in less expensive zones. Instead, welfare would become a locally grounded reality, shaped by those who understand the terrain and are accountable to their people.

With decentralization:

Welfare becomes responsive—calculated with precision, not federal approximation.

Accountability becomes direct—placing the burden and moral responsibility for officer welfare squarely on elected state leaders.

Policing becomes personal—as officers, born or stationed within a region, gain deeper cultural intelligence and community trust.

Resources are allocated rationally—based on local needs, not dictated by Abuja’s blind arithmetic.

Decentralization would also restore morale, showing officers that their sacrifices are not invisible, and that those who protect communities are, in turn, protected by them. It would eliminate the tired excuses of “logistical delays” and “federal bottlenecks,” transferring responsibility where it belongs—to the governments closest to the ground and to the grief.

Retired Officers Are Not Expendable: The Moral Reckoning

The peaceful protest recently led by retired officers—described by many as the “mother of all peaceful protests”—was more than a march. It was a public indictment, a collective breaking of silence by men and women who once faced bullets in uniform but now face hunger in plain clothes. These are not just retirees; they are national witnesses to betrayal, living proof of a country that celebrates loyalty in theory but neglects it in practice.

That they must now gather in protest, in illness, or even in wheelchairs, is a national humiliation. That many are now dead, invisible in unmarked graves or silent in dark hospital rooms, is a moral indictment of the state. They were once protectors of law and order; now, they are victims of indifference and delay.

This moment cannot be another brief headline, lost in the churn of daily news. These officers are not statistics—they are fathers, mothers, mentors, and patriots, each with a badge once worn proudly, now traded for waiting lists, broken promises, and discarded files. To normalize their suffering is to endorse a national ethic where service is punished and sacrifice is ridiculed.

If we ignore them now, we teach every serving officer one lesson: you will be forgotten. That is a recipe not just for moral decay, but for systemic collapse.

Conclusion: Leadership or Legacy?

Nigeria is not simply at a crossroads—it is at a breaking point. One path leads back to the familiar terrain of hesitation, political appeasement, and delayed justice. The other demands bold choices, structural courage, and moral clarity. The crises of collapsed police pensions and centralized policing are not parallel issues; they are intertwined symptoms of the same institutional decay. To address one without the other is to dress a wound while ignoring the disease.

The current one-size-fits-all policing model is not just outdated—it is actively harmful. As long as it remains in place, Nigeria will continue to fail in building a realistic, humane, and manageable retirement system for its officers. It is structurally incapable of fairness. You cannot craft a dignified pension scheme for a nation this vast and economically diverse using a single, centralized formula. The failure is not technical—it is architectural.

Yet even now, the call for state policing is treated as a political inconvenience. We appear to be waiting until after the 2027 elections—as if retired officers can suspend their illnesses, hunger, or deaths until the political calendar clears. But they are dying now. Quietly. Daily. And painfully.

Meanwhile, the powerful continue to benefit from a national police structure—not necessarily for national security, but apparently for election control, political intimidation, and power consolidation. For them, centralization is a tool of dominance. But for the average police officer, it is a slow, state-sanctioned death sentence.

This is the moment of moral divergence. Will President Tinubu lead a government that protects the privileged by preserving centralized power—or one that liberates the forgotten through justice-based reform? Will he continue the familiar pattern of managing crises until they become fatal, or will he break the cycle and become the president who finally restored dignity to Nigeria’s uniformed heroes?

Fixing the pension system is not an act of generosity. Establishing state police is not an act of rebellion. Both are overdue corrections to a system long hijacked by political games and sustained by institutional silence.

Let this be the moment when Nigeria finally says: No more.

No more delay disguised as deliberation.

No more promises that expire in pain.

No more governance that waits for elections while those who served die in neglect.

Leadership must now decide—not only what it wants to preserve, but what it dares to confront and transform.

And the time to act is no longer tomorrow.

It is now.

Psychologist John Egbeazien Oshodi

Professor John Egbeazien Oshodi is an American psychologist, educator, and author specializing in forensic, legal, clinical, and cross-cultural psychology, with expertise in police and prison science, juvenile justice, and family dependency systems. Born in Uromi, Edo State, Nigeria, and the son of a 37-year veteran of the Nigeria Police Force, his early immersion in law enforcement laid the foundation for a lifelong commitment to justice, institutional transformation, and psychological empowerment.

In 2011, he introduced state-of-the-art forensic psychology to Nigeria through the National Universities Commission and Nasarawa State University, where he served as Associate Professor of Psychology. Over the decades, he has taught at Florida Memorial University, Florida International University, Broward College (as Assistant Professor and Interim Associate Dean), Nova Southeastern University, and Lynn University. He currently teaches at Walden University and holds virtual academic roles with Weldios University and ISCOM University.

In the U.S., Prof. Oshodi serves as a government consultant in forensic-clinical psychology and leads professional and research initiatives through the Oshodi Foundation, the Center for Psychological and Forensic Services. He is the originator of Psychoafricalysis, a culturally anchored psychological model that integrates African sociocultural realities, historical memory, and symbolic-spiritual consciousness—offering a transformative alternative to dominant Western psychological paradigms.

A proud Black Republican, Professor Oshodi is a strong advocate for ethical leadership, institutional accountability, and renewed bonds between Africa and its global diaspora—working across borders to inspire psychological resilience, systemic reform, and forward-looking public dialogue.