Why we went to court over police recruitment- Smith

From Ndubuisi Orji, Abuja

Chairman, Police Service Commission ( PSC), Musliu Smith has said the commission went to court over the recruitment of constables last year by the police to protect the 1999 Constitution (as amended).

Smith, a former Inspector General of Police (IGP), stated this, yesterday, in Abuja, at a public hearing by the House of Representatives Committee on Police Affairs on a bill

to repeal the Police Service Commission (Establishment) Act 2001 and enact the Police Service Commission Act, 2020.

The PSC chairman said the commissioners taxed themselves to raise funds for the litigation because they believed that the mandate of the commission, as stipulated by extant laws, must be protected.

PSC had in 2019 dragged the Inspector General of Police(IGP) before a Federal High Court in Abuja,  over the recruitment of 10,000 police constables.

The court ruled in favour of the IGP prompting the PSC to take its case to the Court of Appeal. The Court of Appeal, last September, nullified the judgment of the Federal High Court and affirmed the powers of the PSC to conduct recruitments of constables into the police. The matter is currently before the Supreme Court.

Minister of Police Affairs, Mohammed Digyaddi,  in his presentation, urged the House to put on hold the legislation, relating to who  is saddled with the responsibility of recruiting constables, as it is currently a subject of litigation.

“It may not be wise to make a law at this stage. It will appear to be preempting the decision of the Supreme Court on the matter. I am therefore suggesting that we should leave the matter for now as it is, while we await the decision of the Supreme Court.”  Inspector General of Police, Mohammed Adamu, had kicked against a provision in the proposed legislation, which sought to exclude retired police officers from being chairmanship of the PSC.

“Putting a clause to say that a retired police officer or retired Inspector General of Police should not head the place, it would be discriminatory and would set a bad precedent. Other organisations would take to that. But maybe a phrase they could put there so a technocrat, someone that has experience and the rest of it. I know for sure that PSC is not an ordinary place. It is a technical place that one needs to understand the workings of the police for you to be able to have oversight functions for the police,” Adamu said.