PSC Directed To Reinstate Officer – Police

… We’ll investigate, commission says, IGP files motion to nullify court order

The Evangelist
December 3, 2022

The Nigeria Police Force said it had taken steps toward complying with the reinstatement of a senior police officer, Patrick Okoli, as ordered by the court in 2011.

It said the then Inspector General of Police had in a letter addressed to the Police Service Commission in 2015 conveyed his approval for Okoli’s reinstatement into the Force.

This was contained in a motion filed on Thursday by the Inspector-General of Police, Usman Baba, at the Federal High Court in the Federal Capital Territory urged it to set aside the contempt proceeding and committal order issued against him, according to a statement by the Force spokesperson, Olumuyiwa Adejobi, obtained by Saturday PUNCH on Friday.

The Federal High Court sitting in Abuja had on Tuesday sentenced the IGP to three months in prison for flouting a 2011 court order. The IGP’s committal followed a suit that was filed by a police officer, Patrick Okoli, who was unlawfully and compulsorily retired from the Nigerian Police Force.

Justice M. O. Olajuwon, who delivered the ruling, had also ordered the payment of N10m to the applicant, being special and general damages for the unlawful, illegal and unconstitutional denial of his rights and privileges as a senior officer of the Nigeria Police Force from 1993 till date.

But Adejobi, in the statement, said the IGP in the extensively highlighted grounds why the orders should be set aside, including “noting that he (the IGP) had not been appointed into office as Inspector-General of Police when the case was instituted and the reinstatement order in question granted”.