Nigeria’s Inspector General of Police, Mohammed Adamu

The Nigerian Bar Association, NBA, has dragged President Mohammadu Buhari to the Federal High Court in Lagos  over his elongation of the tenure of the Inspector General of Police, Mr Mohammed Adamu.

Named as respondents in the suit numbered FHC/L/CS/214/2021 and filed by NBA’s Public Interest Litigation Committee are President Mohammadu Buhari, Mohammed  Abubakar Adamu and the Police Service Commission.

NBA wants the court to determine the constitutionality of Buhari’s extension of Adamu’s tenure as IGP for three months after Adamu on February 1 attained the mandatory 35 years in service.

It said it is guided by an urgent need and sacred duty to reassert the supremacy of the rule of law in the face of growing impunity and the seeming reluctance of Law Officers in government to give proper counsel.

NBA’s position is that Adamu ceased to be a member of the Nigeria Police Force when he completed the mandatory 35 years of service, thus the tenure elongation is unconstitutional. The end of Adamu’s tenure, according to the lawyers, should have been on February 1 when he clocked 35 years in service.

The NBA stated: “In the grand scheme of things, the NBA is wary that the more government officials casually violate the law, the harder it would become to expect citizens to be compliant. Citizens take their cues from their leaders and public office holders who flout the laws of the country that they are meant to uphold will discover sooner or later that their examples will be followed by those that they purport to govern,” it said.

“The ubiquity of acts of impunity, especially by those in high public offices, portends an existential threat to the survival of this country and her hard-won democracy.”