Expert tasks Tinubu on urgent action on senior police retirement controversy By Titus Kwende

By Titus Kwende

A security expert, Prince Shadrack Adewole Ogunyemi has called on President Ahmed Tinubu to take urgent action regarding the directive by the Police Service Commission (PSC) to certain categories of police chiefs to proceed with compulsory retirement.

Recall that a statement from the Force Disciplinary Committee had last week summoned some AIG, DCP among other senior offices for questioning over their refusal to retired.

The directive last week, the PSC ordered police chiefs who have attained 60 years of age and those who have served the force for 35 years plus those it says falsified their age to proceed on compulsory retirement.

The expert in a statement on Monday tasked Mr. President and all stakeholders to review this unwholesome directive that has affected several lives negatively.

He urged Tinubu to look into the matter to put what is wrong and right in the retirement exercise, said that a critical review of the retirement revealed that some of the affected officers were persecuted because of the section they hailed from in the country.

Prince Ogunyemi argued the issue of “Force Entrants” with their appointment dates was settled by the Appeal Court in 2017 when the PSC appealed against some police chiefs who a lower court had ruled in their favour over appointment date.

He was surprised why the PSC did not approach the courts to enable it to come up with the decision it arrived at last week. This, he said has led to shock, mental torture and embarrassment to several officers and their families.

” If you look at the list of the retired officers, 90 per cent of it are officers from the Southern part of our country. This policy of force entrants, I can say categorically was initiated in the late 1980s by those who had used all means to ensure that northerners dominate the force”.

Ogunyemi while calling on Tinubu to intervene over the matter, urged the president to call on the case file regarding the retirement issue.

“The same PSC that issued a directive in 2017 to the then IGP on Regularization of the Date of Entry of Officers of Force Entrants in Courses 18,19 and 20 should not, 8 years after, be singing a different song for the same officers without recourse to the courts”

” I don’t think the PSC, in taking this decision, was properly informed. To rectify this anomaly, President Tinubu, all stakeholders must review this unwholesome directive that has affected several lives negatively”.

In a related development, the Nigeria Police Force (NPF) has agreed to obey the judgment of the National Industrial Court of Nigeria on the reinstatement of 92 officers, forcefully retired from service in 2021

The ex-officers, who were members of Courses 33, 34, and 35 of the Nigeria Police Academy, were said to have been forcefully retired from the police service in 2021, when they had not attained the mandatory age of 60 or 35 years in service.

The affected ex-police officers had challenged the action of the police at NICN, Abuja, and got a favourable judgment in April 2022, but the defendants, the IGP, the Police Service Commission (PSC), and the Secretary of the Police Force, allegedly refused to enforce the judgment.

The claimants went back to court seeking an order over the IGP’s disobedience to the court, which had ordered the police force to reinstate them into service since 2022.

Following the NICN verdict, it was gathered that the police force ordered the concerned officers to report to Abuja in August 2024 for documentation with the expectation that they would be immediately reabsorbed into the force thereafter, but after the documentation, nothing was heard from the force on the matter.

However, in the Certified True Copy of the latest court committal proceeding held last week, the claimants, represented by their lawyer, Adeleke Agbola, SAN, prayed the court to maintain the status quo (reinstatement of the officers) pending the hearing of the contempt case.

But the counsel for the NPF, Ade Adedeji, SAN, told the court efforts were being made by the police to obey the court order, giving assurance that the judgment would be obeyed for the concerned officers.

He also stated that he had sworn an affidavit in that regard. “We have taken steps to obey the court’s judgment. The judgment is not challenged as there is no appeal.

According to him the circular has nothing to do with the claimants. It is without prejudice to the parties in this matter.