There is an ongoing, and we dare say, needless debate and calls on relevant authorities, especially the Police Service Commission (PSC), to extend the tenure of police officers due for retirement between now and March 2023 because of the forthcoming general elections.
It is gathered that in the police, there are many high-ranking officers comprising Deputy Inspectors-General (DIGs), Assistant Inspectors-General (AIGs), Commissioners and other senior officers, who are due for retirement within the said period.
Advocates of the call for extension of their tenure anchored it on the need to have seamless poll since the police play instrumental roles during the elections and a vacuum created by the mass retirement of such senior officers could impede significantly on the police.
Plausible as this reason may sound at the face value, we consider it baseless and believe that some elements within and outside the police who are angling to benefit from the planned extension may be the ones championing it.
The critical question that demands an urgent answer is whether the police have officers that will fill the vacancies to be created by the exit of those due for retirement.
For a police force that has a succession plan with capable men and women that can fill whatever vacuum likely to be created by the retiring officers, there is no basis for acceding to such calls.
More so, the relevant laws – Police Act, PSC Act and the constitution – are explicit about the tenure of a police officer. The law stipulates that a serving public officer, whether in the police or in any other government agency, must exit the service at the age of 60 or having served for a period of 35 years.
To that extent, any attempt to seek an extension of tenure for retiring police officers must be condemned with a tone of finality because it will amount to observing all the existing laws in a breach.
Perhaps, it is in recognition of the fact that the call is an affront on all existing laws that the Police Service Commission not only condemned it but also assured Nigerians that it would not heed to it even if on request.
To admit that the exit of the retiring senior police officers will affect the success of the 2023 general elections is to allude to a notion of their indispensability. Nobody, not even the IGP, is indispensable.
However, it must be noted that congruent with this call is the debate on whether the current Inspector General of Police, Usman Alkali Baba, whose four year tenure comes to an end in 2025 but will attain the mandatory retirement age of 60 on March 1, 2023, would vacate or remain in office.
IGP Bala was appointed as the number one police officer in February 2021 in line with Section 215(1)(a) of the Constitution and the Police Act 2020. For the sake of emphasis, Section 215 (a) empowers the president to appoint the IGP from serving members of the Nigeria Police Force on the advice of the Nigeria Police Council (NPC).
Interestingly, section 7(6) of the Police Act, 2020, provides that a person appointed as Inspector-General of Police shall hold office for four years. However, Section 18(8) of the same law provides that every police officer shall serve in the Police Force for a period of 35 years or until he attains the age of 60 years, whichever comes first.
Why appoint someone whose term of service would mandatorily end before the term of office ends? Had the president taken cognizance of this fact, perhaps this debate would not have arisen in the first place as we believe that in the force, there are competent officers who still have more than four years to retire and so could have been considered for appointment as IG.
Even at that, the fact that the Police Act provides that an IGP shall hold office for four years and also stipulates that a police officer (the IGP is first and foremost, a police officer) leaves the service upon serving for 35 years or attaining 60 years, put paid to the argument on when IGP Baba should vacate office.
