A protest took place recently in Abuja. While protests are generally normal, a key issue among the list of complaints by the protesters is indeed very awkward. The wives of retired officers and men of the Nigerian Police, while joining their husbands in a protest at the National Assembly, carried placards lamenting the poor welfare conditions that had been the lot of their families. In addition, there was a disturbing allegation articulated by a protester who said: “Before they (members of the police pensions board) even call us to come and collect our husbands’ gratuities, they will demand to sleep with us or our children. You can imagine such wickedness. Why are the police authorities so indifferent? Enough is enough. They should please answer us.”

According to the protesters, during their husbands’ years of active service, they were not provided basic protective gear like bulletproof vests, a situation which made them vulnerable during combat operations. Marching through the gates of the National Assembly together with some retired officers and widows of officers who died in active service, the women lamented that many of the families of fallen policemen had long been abandoned by the government and the force which their husbands served. The distraught women further called on the government to remove the police from the ubiquitous Contributory Pension Scheme (CPS), which they labeled as a fraudulent scheme. According to them, the CPS had worsened the plight of retired officers and their families. One of the officers’ wives remarked: “We are ready, and we are telling the National Assembly now that they should remove retired policemen from the pension scheme with immediate effect. It is our right. Let them give retired police officers their rights because the suffering is too much. Our children are suffering. When our husbands were serving, they had no bulletproof vests or protective gear. They were the first to be shot in any operation. And the widows whose husbands died have not been paid their gratuities.”

The allegations made by these women and their husbands are indeed scary. Why would the Nigerian state treat policemen who served the nation with all the might of their youth this cavalierly? Is the labourer no longer worthy of his wage? Besides, the allegation of sexual harassment by unscrupulous persons in the police pension’s board sounds so inhumane and so frighteningly evil. What makes this even more heinous is that those being accused of sexual terrorism against the fallen officers’ widows and daughters are living police officers or members of a board that ordinarily should take charge of the welfare of living/fallen policemen with enthusiasm and with empathy. That such people now allegedly choose to take advantage of their female family members is beyond shocking. It is unthinkable. It had better not be true!

While we do not want to come to immediate judgment on this allegation, we submit that it deserves a very thorough and immediate investigation. To imagine that the wives of retired and fallen officers would be prey in the hands of sexual predators allegedly in the police pension office is the height of man’s inhumanity to man. It is wickedness in the extreme. What makes this more lamentable is that a widow/daughter of a retired or deceased officer is already in a disadvantaged position, having lost her husband or father. To now compound their woes by demanding sex from them before the payment of their breadwinners’ entitlements is wickedness that must have been curated in hell. Surely, the statute books did not envisage that the family members of deceased officers and men of the force would go through hell while pursuing their legitimate entitlements. What kind of depraved mind makes people in the throes of agony to go through much more? Does it mean that nothing can be done in this country without the ugly sub-text of corruption and rottenness?

We demand immediate investigation into this allegation and public presentation of the findings, if only to preserve the dignity of the force. In a world that is now a global village, this terrible news must have further damaged Nigeria’s image in the eyes of the world. In any case, it is distressing news for the officers and men who are currently in the service of the Nigeria Police Force (NPF). What it means is that if ever they suffer the fate of their departed colleagues, similar treatment awaits their female family members at the hands of certain rapacious individuals in the police pensions board. This can hamper their dedication to their fatherland, their commitment to the NPF, and the protection of Nigerians. Besides, if such a destructive development is corrosively eating up the Nigeria police, it speaks volumes about the collapse of the walls of morality among those who are entrusted with the task of helping to build a good society.

The police authorities should, as a matter of urgency, get to the root of this objectionable development. Asking wives and daughters of dead and retired officers for sex before they can collect the gratuities of their dead breadwinners as the next of kin is not only detestable, it is abhorrent and criminal. Such a vile conduct, which might have been going on for long in the service, must be isolated for destruction. The masterminds, whether retired or serving in the Nigeria Police Force, must be identified and prosecuted to the fullest extent allowed by law. (Nigerian Tribune Editorial)