Five police officers from Akwa Ibom State, wrongfully dismissed from service since 2007, have made a passionate appeal to the Senate President, Senator Godswill Akpabio, Senator Aniekan Bassey and other National Assembly members from the State.
They are seeking their reinstatement and payment of arrears of salaries, as well as other sundry allowances from 2007 to date.
The court had ordered their reinstatement since 2019.
The officers, including Sunday Okon, Anthony Ebong, Joseph Ede, Victor Ebe and Uduak Sampson, who were duly employed in 2003 into the Nigeria Police Force, were sacked in 2007 on grounds of being illiterates.
According to the petition made available to our correspondent in Uyo, the quintet were recruited into the force as specialists after undergoing police training and found worthy in character, physical fitness and education.
Following the termination of their appointments, they were forced to drag the NPF and Police Service Commission, PSC, to National Industrial Court in suit No. NICN/UY/08/2018, having exhausted all the channels to plead for their reinstatement.
The court, in 2019, ruled in their favour, declaring the purported disengagement null and void and ordered that they be reinstated into the ranks they would have been but for their dismissal.
The court also ordered that all arrears of their salaries and allowances be paid to them.
From the Certified True Copy, CTC, of the judgment obtained by our correspondent in Uyo, the judge, Hon. Justice M. A. Namtari, ruled, “accordingly, the Claimants’ case succeeds in the following terms: it is hereby declared that the dismissal of the Claimants by the Defendants from the Nigeria Police Force without compliance with service rules and without due process is unlawful and unwarranted.
“The Defendants are hereby ordered to immediately reinstate the Claimants into the Nigeria Police Force on the ranks they would have been but for their unlawful dismissal from service.
“The Defendants are hereby ordered and directed to pay each of the Claimants their salaries, allowances and other entitlements from January 2007 till the date of their reinstatement into the Nigeria Police Force.
“This judgment should be complied with within 90 days from today. Judgment entered accordingly. I make no order as to cost.’’
However, seven years after the judgment, nothing has been done to honour the ruling of the court despite repeated correspondences by the claimants to successive Inspectors General of Police and the PSC.
The Claimants why speaking to our correspondent expressed frustrations in the pursuit of justice, saying that all their efforts for the PSC to obey the court order have met a brick wall.
They recalled that former Senator Bassey Albert had brought their matter to the floor of the Senate but nothing was done eventually, even as they noted that most of their colleagues who knew people have been reinstated.
While narrating the hardship and inability to get another job since their dismissal two decades ago, they appealed to the Senate President, to use his good office and benevolence to come to their rescue.
“We are dying here, life has not been easy with us at all. It’s by the grace of God that we are still alive, most of our colleagues have died in the process of litigation.
“We are not illiterate, we can read and write, besides we were employed based on trade test because we came in as specialists.
“We are begging our dear brother, the Senate President, Senator Godswill Akpabio, Senator Aniekan Bassey, Hon Clement Jimbo, Hon Mark Esset and all our lawmakers at the National Assembly to come to our rescue.
“All we want is for the PSC to obey the court order since the case was not appealed,” they pleaded.
Five wrongfully sacked police officers seek Akpabio’s intervention after 20 years
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