By IKECHUKWU AMAECHI

Aiming always to make life in retirement most comfortable for police officers, the Nigeria Police Force Pensions Limited (NPFPL) has once again enhanced its highly innovative Retirement Resettlement Support Scheme (RRSS) by 100 per cent.

This is the second time that the scheme, which is the payment of certain amount of money to retiring police officers as welfare support, one of the creative ways the NPF Pensions devised to make life more meaningful for policemen in retirement, will be enhanced since it was introduced in 2017.

With the new enhancement, retired police officers from the rank of Chief Superintendent of Police (CSP) and below will get 100 per cent of whatever they are paid now.

So, a CSP that was hitherto paid N350,000 will now receive N700,000; a Superintendent of Police (SP) will take home on retirement N600,000, a 100 per cent increase of the previous N300,000; a Deputy Superintendent of Police (DSP) will now receive N400,000 up from N200,000 and an Assistant Superintendent of Police (ASP) will smile home with N300,000, a 100 per cent hike of the previous N150,000. Inspectors that were hitherto paid N120,000 will now receive N250,000, which is even more than 100 per cent, while officers from the rank of Sergeant and below who were paid N100,000 under the Retirement Resettlement Support Scheme will now smile home will N200,000.

The RRSS is not part of the mandate of the NPF Pensions Limited. It is a freebie, an innovation created by the management of the Pension Fund Administrator (PFA) to help retired police officers resettle while waiting for the commencement of the payment of their retirement benefits. Till date, it remains the only PFA that is giving back to its clients in such manner.

Since its introduction in 2017, the scheme has gone a long way in enhancing the welfare of policemen in retirement and so far, over N2 billion has been paid out to more than 10,400 retirees.

For any other organization, the idea of a freebie to its clients would be a big deal. But for a company that is always striving for excellence, nothing short of the best is good enough.

And living up to its reputation of an organization that is always upping the ante in order to deliver maximum benefits to its clients, the NPFPL yet improved on what was already a benchmark in the industry by further raising the bar.

In 2018, the RRSS was enhanced for the senior officer cadre from the rank of Commissioner of Police and above. And since the NPF Pensions leadership believes in the 'what is sauce for the goose should also be sauce for the gander’ axiom, it also considered and approved that starting from October 1, 2020, the payment of RRSS for officers from the cadre of CSP and below be reviewed upwards by 100 per cent.

So, the new upward review is the second time since the commencement of the scheme that it is being enhanced, in line with the philosophy of the management of the NPF Pensions that not even the axiomatic sky is their limits when it comes to the welfare of police retirees.

Conceived as a one-customer Pension Fund Administrator, the NPFPL was exclusively dedicated to serve the police with a vision “to be the benchmark in Pension Fund Administration in Nigeria.”

When it was established eight years ago, the idea was to have a PFA exclusively responsible for pension management of all police personnel, according to the Pension Reform Act (PRA 2014). Before then, policemen were scattered in all the other 20 PFAs.

The PFA since inception has worked hard to justify its license not just by meeting the benchmark expectation but actually exceeding it through creative innovations that make the welfare of police officers the centre of its gravity and many retired police officers affirm that the PFA has not only deliberately made their clients – policemen – their numero uno in terms of priority but indeed, their only priority.

Sources within the organization aver that the prioritization policy is deliberate in furtherance of the PFA’s stated mission, which is “to provide quality customer and financial advisory services to stakeholders and adopt investment strategies that would yield the best possible returns on their pension assets.”

Appreciative retired police officers are over the moon with the development.

Mr. Charles Effiong who retired in 2019 as a Superintendent of Police (SP) said the largesse came in handy.

“When we retired, we were not paid our retirement benefits immediately. We were told that the Federal Government was yet to release the accrued rights but the PFA came to our rescue with the RRSS funds that enabled me to relocate from Lagos where I was serving before retirement to Afaha Atai, my hometown in Akwa Ibom State. Without that money, that relocation would have been extremely difficult, if not impossible at the time”

Effiong believes that things will even get better now that there is a 100 per cent upward review of the scheme.

For a retiring officer to be eligible for the RRSS, the Retirement Savings Account (RSA) must have been domiciled with the NPF Pensions for a minimum period of two years. Many police officers say that is a fair deal.

•Amaechi, a journalist, is a pensions expert, writes from Lagos.

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