‘Extending Tenure of Retired IG Contravenes Extant Laws’

Linus Aleke in Abuja

A human rights lawyer, Maxwell Okpara, has said that the trending letter, inferring that President Bola Tinubu’s appointment of Inspector General of Police Kayode Egbetokun, was for a four-year term of office, contravenes all the legal instruments governing appointment and tenure of office of the IG including the Constitution of Nigeria, 1999 as amended.

Okpara, who doubted the veracity or otherwise of the trending letter and statement on the subject matter credited to Force Public Relations (PPRO) Olumuyiwa Adejobi, said if the position espoused by Adejobi is true, then the president acted ultra vires.

He noted that Egbetokun had by the virtues of legal instruments governing the service of police officers retired from service and therefore no longer qualified to continue to parade himself as the IG, having attained the retirement age of 60.

In a telephone chat, Okpara explained: “In the first instance, for you to be appointed an IG of Police, you must be a serving police officer.  Section 215 of the Constitution says that the IG must be appointed among serving police officers, not a retired officer”.

While going down memory lane, the human rights lawyer noted that history is just repeating itself with Kayode Egbetokun and the Nigerian Police Force.

According to him, “When former President Muhammadu Buhari extended the tenure of former IG Mohammed Adamu, I challenged the matter in court and the then Attorney General of the Federation and Minister of Justice, Abubakar Malami, invited me and we argued it out.

“Malami saw reasons with me and he advised the president accordingly, even when they had already extended his tenure by three months. But while he was in Imo State on official duty, the President announced his removal from office, and IG Usman Alkali was appointed.

Alkali also faced similar fate, when his tenure was extended after attaining retirement age. I went to court again and challenged it. While the matter was pending in court, President Bola Tinubu was sworn in as the president.

“I wrote him and attached all relevant documents. They invited me and we discussed it and they promised to do something about it and finally they sacked Alkali and appointed IG Kayode Egbetokun.”

He, however, noted that in order to play a sharp one, the new administration moved to amend section 7 of the Police Act so that, “I will not have a ground again to go to court.”

Okpara averred that because they felt that what he was relying on was Police Act and they quickly amended it, arguing that “once you are appointed as a police IG you must be there for four years.”

He further explained: “Assuming an IG is appointed for a four-year term in office and along the line he became incapacitated, he will be shown the way out.

“He can be incapacitated as a result of heath condition; it could be as a result of death or retirement. If you attain the age of retirement before the expiration of your four-year term of office, you must exit.

“Another question about this amendment is if it can take retroactive effect? Again, is it only Police Act that regulates the tenure of IG of police? The answer is no, because we have Pension Act, we have Public Service Rule which states that a public servant will retire from service when he attains the age of 60 or 35 years in service whichever comes first.

“Now that he had retired after attaining the age of 60 and the president still gave him an appointment. Is he being appointed as a police officer or a retired police officer? Is he going to collect salary now as a pensioner or as an active police officer. Is he going to wear police uniform? They just want to destroy the police.”

On whether the amended Police Act did not invalidate the Pension Act and the Public Service Rule, Okpara said: “You cannot use an act to invalidate another act. The constitution is the grand norm and it said that the appointment must be made amongst serving police officers.

“Egbetokun is no longer a serving police officer, he has retired, and you cannot extend retirement age of only one person. If you want to extend the retirement age, it must follow the example of the judiciary where the retirement age was moved to 70 years instead of 60.

“NJC Act did not single out the CJN in its amendment, what the Police Act is attempting to do is to destroy the law”.

Noting that the President has no right under the law to extend IG’s tenure, he concluded that what the President also has done in the extension of the tenure of a retired police officer as IG is a gross abuse of power.

The Force PRO Olumuyiwa Adejobi had in a statement said that President Bola Tinubu’s letter, dated 3rd November 2023, which appointed IG, clearly stated that the President had approved a four-year tenure for the IG in accordance with the provisions of Section 215(a) and Section 28(c) of the Third Schedule of the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, 1999 (as amended).

Adejobi further argued that IG’s appointment letter explicitly grants him a four-year tenure from the date of his appointment. He also disclosed that the IG has since been issued with another letter in accordance with the provisions of the Police Act, 2020 (as amended), which supersedes the earlier correspondence.

Though the President was said not have signed the new act into law, Adejobi argued that the law is sacrosanct.