More than 30,000 retired police officers have given President Bola Tinubu a firm deadline of June 22 to sign the Police Exit Bill into law, warning that failure to act before that date would trigger a resumption of the nationwide peaceful protests the forum had previously staged to demand pension justice for officers who they said were being failed by a welfare system inadequate to the sacrifices the profession required.
The bill was passed by the National Assembly in December 2025 and transmitted to the presidency in March 2026 but had not yet received presidential assent, a delay that the Police Retired Officers Forum of Nigeria described as inexplicable and unjust given the legislation’s clear rationale and the broad parliamentary consensus that produced it.
The forum’s National Coordinator, retired Chief Superintendent of Police Raphael Irowainu, addressed a press conference in Akure where he described the bill not as a welfare concession to retirees but as a national security investment with practical implications for the quality and integrity of active policing across Nigeria. His argument was straightforward. Officers who entered service knowing that their retirement years would be financially insecure were officers who spent their active careers under a level of personal economic pressure that corroded both morale and professional conduct. Financial certainty after service, he said, encouraged integrity during service by removing the financial desperation that made corruption and extortion attractive to officers who might otherwise have served with honor.
The legislation sought specifically to remove the Nigeria Police Force from the Contributory Pension Scheme and restore a Defined Benefit arrangement, the same kind of pension structure already enjoyed by the Armed Forces, the Department of State Services, the National Intelligence Agency, and the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission. Irowainu said the anomaly of the police force standing alone in a less favorable pension arrangement while every other major security institution operated under different terms was a source of institutional grievance that had measurable effects on inter-agency morale and cooperation.
He recalled that Tinubu had as governor of Lagos State demonstrated a willingness to prioritise police welfare and said the forum believed he carried that same commitment to the national level. The bill’s passage through the National Assembly had demonstrated that the legislative case for the reform was settled, and the forum said it looked to the president to complete the process. If he did not act before June 22, Irowainu said, the forum would have no alternative but to return to public demonstration as the mechanism for pressing its demands.
