…PSC promotes 2 AIGs, 6 CPs, 17 DCPs, 24 ACPs, others
By Hassan Zaggi
A serving Commissioner of Police (CP) in the Nigeria Police Force who got illegal extension of service in January 2020 after serving for 35 years has been directed to retire January 2022. He has also been directed to refund the salaries for the months he collected during the illegal extension.
This is one of the key decisions reached by the Board of the Police Service Commission (PSC) during its 13th plenary meeting in Abuja, Tuesday.
Briefing journalists on the outcome of the meeting, the Commissioner in charge of media at the Commission, Hon. Austin Braimo, disclosed that the affected CP who was supposed to retire in January 2020 got his tenure extended with the false claim that it was approved by the President.
“No any letter of extension was sighted to have been signed by the president,” he said.
The affected officer who was once the Chief Security Officer to President Goodluck Jonathan had since 2020 held some key positions and was appealing for another promotion.
Hon. Braimo explained that: “There were 24 appeals. Some of them are interesting.
“A very important one is the one from a Commissioner of Police who got his tenure extended by the former IGP and he equally appeal for promotion. Going through the record, this board discovered that the extension of service of the Commissioner of Police did not follow due process and so his extension rejected and he is to retire January 2022.
“He was due to be retired January 2020, rather than retiring, his tenure was extended with a report that his extension was authorized by the President but we have no record that the president approved his promotion.
“But a signal was raised that his tenure was extended to 2021, but the officer had since left that position to another one and he is requesting for another promotion now before we opened the file and found out that a lot of things were wrong with his record.
“We are therefore, advising him to retire from that 2020 when he was supposed to go for retirement after 35 years of service. The board also said he should refund the salaries he collected from that period when he was asked to continue without due process.”
Responding to a question on who is to be held accountable for not discovering the infraction before now, Hon. Braimo said: “Our job is to try as much as possible to conform with what the constitutional requirement is. If one or two persons are failing in their constitutional responsibilities, ours is to do the needful, ensure that the law is obeyed and ensure that we apply the law in a justiciable manner.
“It is not necessary to say that we begin to apportion blames, we are here to apply the law so that it will equally be a deterrent to others and if you are not satisfied, you can go to court. We want to ensure that there is justice. That is precisely what the board has done.”
The Hon. Commissioner who represents the South South at the PSC further explained that: “From available records, the offence may have been deeper than that but we are not going into this details.
“We are looking at when the officer was supposed to be retired, he was given an extension. It does not matter who gave him, he stayed on. How did that extension came is what the Commission is interested in so as to ensure that processes are not abused by people who are not given responsibilities of authority.
“There are public services rules for the extension of the tenure of an officer, when you violate them, you prepare for the consequence.
“Nobody called him, he is the one that is appealing that he should be promoted. This is despite that he is on illegal extension. We had to go through his record and found out that a lot of things were illegal and we chose to temper justice with mercy and not pronouncing the weight of the law on a number of infractions.
“We are just asking that he should retire with immediate effect and we want government money to be refunded because they were not properly used.”
In another twist, Hon. Braimo disclosed that a serving commissioner of police who was supposed to be the most senior CP whose date of promotion was wrongly recorded was adjusted and was promoted to Assistant Inspector General of police (AIG).
According to him: “Initially, we received recommendations for 5 CPs to be promoted. Also, there was an appeal from a CP who said his date of promotion was wrongly recorded. “By the time we adjusted it, we find out that that CP was already a senior to the 5 CPs to be moved, we had to give him automatic promotion to AIG realizing that one of the CPs will be retiring early January. Even if we have vacancy for 5, we have to do justice to the 6th person who is the most senior so that he could move in to become an AIG in January 2022 when one of the CPs will be retiring.”
Speaking on other officers who were promoted, he said that
two Assistant Inspectors-General of Police (AIGs) were promoted to the next rank of Deputy Inspectors-General (DIGs).
The Commission, according to him, also approved the promotion of six Commissioners of Police (CPs) to AIGs, the elevation of 17 Deputy Commissioners of Police (DCPs) to Commissioners of Police (CPs).
He further said that the Commission also approved the promotion of 24 Assistant Commissioners of Police (ACPs) to the next rank of Deputy Commissioners of Police (DCPs); 49 Chief Superintendents of Police (CSPs) to the rank of Assistant Commissioners (ACs). It also endorsed the elevation of 74 Superintendents (SPs) of Police to Chief Superintendents (CSPs) and 866 Deputy Superintendents of Police (DSPs) to Superintendents (SPs).
Hon. Braimo, therefore, appealed to the officers who have not gotten their promotion to be patient, stressing that a lot of factors affect the exercise-vacancy most importantly.
“We are aware there are officers that are qualified that have spent over six to seven years on one rank. We are worried about this. We are going to make sure that a lot of actions will go on concerning their due promotion,” he said.
