By Israel Adebiyi

Fela Anikulapo Kuti didn’t just sing, he bled truths. His lyrics, raw and volcanic, unwrapped the Nigerian experience in ways that no policy paper or commission report ever could. And in his classic hit “Confusion Break Bone,” he sang of a dead body caught between the indignity of abandonment and the cruelty of its mourners—betrayed in life and dishonored in death.

This week, that metaphor leapt out of vinyl and echoed in real life: Retired police officers, drenched in the Abuja rain, stood like withered monuments at the gates of Nigeria’s National Assembly. Their uniforms are long gone, their batons traded for placards, and their obedience—once unquestioning—now curdled into a desperate defiance.

These are the same men who once obeyed the “last order,” whether it was to disperse protesting students, to break up industrial actions, or to quell dissent with shields and tear gas. They were Nigeria’s iron fist. They bore the insults, the bullets, the loneliness. They were denied the right to strike, to unionize, or to say no. Now they are in the same trenches as those they once confronted.

And what a sight it was.

Elderly men—some stooped, others on walking sticks—stood in the rain with sagging clothes and heavier hearts. Their chant was not angry; it was haunting. Remove us from the contributory pension scheme, they cried. We are tired of dying poor. The Contributory Pension Scheme, a policy built with the pretense of reform, has become a gaping wound that bleeds out whatever dignity retirement is supposed to offer.

Retired Chief Superintendent Manir Lawal, 67, spoke with a quiver in his voice:

“We served this country faithfully. We deserve to retire in dignity. This scheme has impoverished us. It is our right to demand better.”

MORE FROM THE AUTHOR: [OPINION] BUHARI: The Man Who Missed Redemption

But what is dignity in a country where old age is a curse? Where retirees slump and die in biometric verification queues? Where pensions are delayed like unwanted handouts, and where death is often the only exit from poverty?

This is not just the police story. This is the Nigerian worker’s tragedy. The nurse who gave 35 years to a state hospital only to beg for her gratuity. The teacher who moulded generations but now eats once a day. The civil servant who used to process others’ salaries and now doesn’t receive his.

Nigeria, it appears, is a nation that celebrates you while you bleed and forgets you once you collapse.

These retired officers are the faces of a broken promise. The very system they upheld has turned against them. The guns they once bore are silent now. And no sirens accompany them as they sleep on floors in the rain outside the so-called hallowed chambers of power.

Why does Nigeria treat its labour force like chewing sticks—use, discard, forget?

The Monday protest wasn’t just a cry for pensions. It was a funeral for faith in the system. It was a statement that even uniforms do not shield one from poverty. That after the medals are given and the rifles turned in, hunger becomes your new commanding officer.

We must ask the hard questions: Why are those who dedicated their productive years to protecting the country begging for bread? Why must every retiree become a lobbyist for their own entitlements? Why does justice retire the moment service ends?

MORE FROM THE AUTHOR: OPINION: Saro Wiwa, Eight Ogoni Posthumous Pardon, And The New Drill Dream

But even this heartbreak is not equal-opportunity.

While the average Nigerian retiree fades into the background of national neglect, the political elite write golden exits for themselves. In many states, governors—some of whom could barely pay salaries during their tenure—have enshrined laws that guarantee themselves lifetime pensions, fleet of cars, luxury homes in multiple cities, foreign medical trips, and even security details paid for by the state.

A retired civil servant gets a verification form.
A retired governor gets a diplomatic passport.
A retired police officer gets rain.
A former senator gets a seat at the next constitutional review committee.

The contrasts are obscene.

It gets worse. These looters of public legacy do not just walk away with the treasury keys—they pass the code to their children. Nigeria has become a democracy of dynasties. Fathers rig the system. Sons inherit it.

So, when the ruling class clinks glasses in Abuja over another fuel subsidy cut, or celebrates “pension reforms” that deepen inequality, who really weeps for the rain-soaked old men at the gate? Certainly not the elite who now fly private jets to Dubai, London, France and other choice locations, for annual medicals. Not the lawmakers who collect severance packages in millions after just four years of sitting pretty in power.

The average Nigerian worker retires into penury. The ruling class retires into paradise.

The old men in uniform have served their time. The question is: when will the country serve them back?

Even the police—agents of state repression in the eyes of many—are waking up to the betrayal. And if the state could do them this dirty, what hope is there for teachers, local government workers, secretariat cleaners, and the army of underpaid civil servants?

The retirees didn’t break the laws. They enforced them. They didn’t shirk duty. They endured it. Now, their tears join the long, sorrowful river of abandoned patriots.

One hopes the tearful protest of these police retirees does not go the way of other protests— powerful noise drowned by official deafness. Because beyond their drenched uniforms and trembling chants is a deeper truth: Nigeria is a graveyard of gratitude.

Let this protest mark a turning point, not just in police welfare, but in how Nigeria treats those who give their lives in its service. Because, truly, double wahala dey, not just for the dead body, but also for the country that lets its elders die in vain.