The Deputy minority leader, House of Representatives, Hon Toby Okechukwu, during the plenary on the 21st of September, 2021, made this remark while supporting the motion for the bill which exempts of the Nigeria Police Force (NPF) from the contributory pension scheme like their counterpart in the military.

This is coming days after some protesting retired officers from 27 states stormed the National Assembly displaying placards with various inscriptions such as ‘NPF pension defrauding police retirees, SOS,’ ‘Police officers are dying in penury under contributory pension scheme,’ and ‘CPS is a death sentence against police,’ among others.

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Okechukwu who addressed the Assembly on the need for the exemption stated that the parliament should review the legislation from time to time to figure out imperfections which should be cured and that it was necessary that they review the pension reform act.

“I will support that this bill goes for second reading, because people in allied military services enjoy that opportunity of being exempted from the act. When people make a voluntary offer to sacrifice their life for their country, whatever is necessary to be done has to be done. The country should be able to sacrifice whatever is required for those service men, and we cannot be seen to put our police men in jeopardy”, Okechukwu said.

The lawmaker stated that the bill is for people who have been experiencing all manner of hazards just to protect the lived of their people and that seeing their contemporaries enjoy different scheme from those they enjoyed demoralizes them.

“ I would think that the pension reform act should be made to work and this is an opportunity for it to be reviewed. The legislative should be able to interrogate other things in the act to make it much more efficient and to work for people who work for the benefit of all of us”. He concluded.

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