Reps Okay Police Exemption From Contributory Pension Scheme
By Trek Africa Newspaper
The House of Representatives Tuesday passed for second reading a bill for the exemption of personnel of the Nigeria Police from the Mandatory Contributory Pension Scheme.
The bill seeks to amend Section 5, sub-section 1 paragraph (a) Pension Reform Act of 2014, to include the police as part of the categories of persons exempted from the Scheme.
Those currently exempted by the Act include members of the Armed Forces, the intelligence and secret services of the Federation.
The Nigerian Police was brought under the current pension scheme by the then President Olusegun Obasanjo administration.
Leading debate on the bill for an act to amend the Pension Reform Act, PRA 2014 to provide for the exclusion of the police from the scheme, Hon. Francis Ejiroghene Waive (PDP, Edo) regretted that the police welfare scheme was nothing to write home about.
Waive noted that the Obasanjo administration modelled the country’s Contributory Pension Scheme after the Chilean model, which exempted both the armed forces and the police from the scheme.
He regretted that in adopting the same model, which brought the police under the Nigerian Pension scheme, the military and other intelligence agencies were exempted.
“Unfortunately operating under the current pension scheme has been both unpalatable and regrettable for the retirees of the Nigerian Police Force,” he said.
