Take-It-Back Movement Demands Removal Of Lagos Police Commissioner Over Tear-Gassing Of Pensioners

By Sherif Salau

The Take-It-Back Movement has called for the immediate removal of the Lagos State Commissioner of Police after officers reportedly used tear gas to disperse elderly pensioners protesting unpaid entitlements at the Lagos State Government premises in Ikeja.

The pensioners had gathered peacefully to demand the payment of long-overdue pension adjustments, wage awards and arrears. Many among them are men and women who devoted decades of their working lives to public service. According to the movement, their lawful demonstration was met with tear gas, forcing the elderly protesters to scatter while struggling to breathe.

In its statement, the Take-It-Back Movement described the action as barbaric, cruel and disgraceful. It held the Commissioner of Police responsible and insisted that the treatment of senior citizens seeking only what is rightfully theirs constitutes an unacceptable abuse of authority.

The episode has deepened a growing loss of confidence in the police among ordinary people. For many Nigerians, the image of tear gas directed at grey-haired retirees confirms a painful perception: that the force too readily turns its power against the weak rather than protecting them. When elderly citizens who simply ask for their entitlements are treated as threats, public trust erodes further.

This erosion is not abstract. It settles in communities as quiet cynicism and a belief that the police serve power more readily than the people. The demand for the Commissioner’s removal is therefore more than a call for individual accountability. It reflects a wider insistence that the police must rediscover their duty to safeguard citizens, including those whose only remaining recourse is to stand outside government gates and ask for what they are owed.

Until that duty is demonstrated consistently, the distance between the force and the public will continue to widen.