Police Authority Collecting Our Salaries 10 Years after Dismissed from Service – Ex-Police Officers

By Abdulrofiu Agboola

Some 127 dismissed police officers from Zone 11 have raised alarm over deduction of Contributory Pension Fund from their salary accounts, 10 years after they were disengaged from service.

The ex-police officers said they suspected that their salaries were still being paid by the Nigeria Police Force but diverted into another account after their dismissal.

Some of the dismissed police officers.

According to the officers, their various bank accounts and pension companies do send them debit alerts of pension deduction every three-three months up till the present time.

Addressing pressmen at the Correspondents’ Chapel in Osogbo on Monday, the ex-police officers said that they were part of the police officers that were retrenched in January 2007 for alleged overage.

According to them, 16 of the 143 of them were re-absolved.

The spokesperson of the group, Mr Ibrahim Saibu stated that when they made move to the PSC, they were told that record showed some of them have died, so they could not be reinstated into the service.

Suaibu argued that alert of deductions from their pension administrators was an indication that salaries of the “disengaged officers” were still being paid to the accounts of some individuals in the police authority, calling for probe of the alleged fraud.

Some of the retrenched officers and their force numbers according to Saibu are Fafowora Olalekan (351577), Ogundeyi Gbenga( 353941), Akintunde Aderemi (358325), Ohamate Tunde (213056), Ademolaja Tosin (213413), Amodu Umoshe (359552) and Salami Aderemi (214084) among others.

He said: “Our case is clear and unambiguous. We suspected that we are being defrauded by some people at the police headquarters in the past 10 years.

“While hundreds of us were disengaged from the service on the ground of old age at the point when the oldest amongst us was 35, we continued to get alerts of deductions of pension contribution from our pension administrators.

“We are surprised of where the deductions were coming from since over 10 years, as none of us is getting salaries in the last 10 years.

“One of us, Mr Ralph Osawaru, with force number 359942 recently committed suicide out of frustration, and one other member, Mr Sunday Adeyemo died of untreated ailment, as a result of paucity of funds.

“We were asked to write an appeal letter which we did but up till now nothing has been done on our issue only to be reading it on newspapers and watching it on TV when the IG was reported to have been said that all the affected officers are dead.”

“We are not dead, we are still alive and we want the new IG and other authority to look into the issue and let the justice prevails. “We are traumatised, justice must be done without delay.

The group called on the Inspector General of Police (IGP), Ibrahim Idris Ibrahim to speedily investigate the matter, and reinstate them back to service or pay their salary arrears and gratuities.