The Nigeria Police Force has ordered personnel who have completed 35 years of service to vacate their duty posts, reopening a retirement dispute that has already travelled from the Police Service Commission to the National Industrial Court and the Court of Appeal. At the centre of the dispute is a deceptively simple question: when did these officers legally begin serving the police?
The Nigeria Police Force has directed commands and formations nationwide to relieve from duty personnel who have completed 35 years of service, following an interim court order stopping the planned reinstatement of retired Cadet Assistant Superintendent of Police Force Entrants.
The latest instruction was contained in a police wireless message dated September 25, 2026, with reference number DTO: 251451/09/2026, issued from the Force Headquarters Secretariat in Abuja. It was marked “M/IMMEDIATE” and circulated widely across departments, zonal and state commands, police colleges and specialist formations.
The directive tells Commissioners of Police and heads of formations to immediately remove affected Force Entrants who have completed 35 years from their duty posts and compile their details for submission to Force Headquarters.
It states in part:
“INGENPOL strongly directs you give immediate effect to the order by relieving concerned Force entrants that have served thirty-five (35) years…”
The Force also directed commanders to:
“collate [and] forward… list of affected Force entrants”.
That wording matters.
This is not simply another retirement circular. It is the latest move in a legal dispute in which the same service dates that previously became the basis for challenging the retirement of hundreds of senior officers could now determine who is legally entitled to remain in uniform.
The fight is really about the police service clock
The most important issue buried beneath the succession of court cases is the date from which an officer’s 35 years should be counted.
Members of the Force Entrant system had originally joined the police as lower-ranking personnel before being selected for Cadet Inspector or Cadet ASP training.
The dispute arose over whether their police service should be counted from the date they first enlisted as recruits or from the later date stated in their Cadet appointment letters.
The National Industrial Court had previously held that the Cadet appointments in question were fresh appointments. In one related case involving Course 31/1990 Force Entrants, the court examined appointment letters stating that the officers were appointed as Cadet Inspectors from the date they reported for training. The court found that the new appointment was detached from their earlier rank-and-file service.
That distinction became enormously consequential.
Counting from an earlier enlistment date could push an officer beyond 35 years much sooner. Counting from the Cadet appointment date could give some officers several additional years of service.
The Police Service Commission adopted the earlier calculation in January 2025. At its extraordinary meeting on January 31, it approved the immediate retirement of officers who had spent more than 35 years in service or reached 60 years, saying its previous treatment of Force Entrants had conflicted with the Public Service Rules.
The Commission’s decision triggered litigation.
The 2025 judgment changed the trajectory
In Suit No. NICN/ABJ/28/2025, members of Cadet ASP Courses 18, 19 and 20 challenged the attempt to revisit their appointment dates.
In its judgment delivered on September 30, 2025, the National Industrial Court held that the earlier judgments establishing their Cadet appointment dates remained binding.
Justice R. B. Haastrup found that the Commission’s January 2025 action effectively attempted to reverse the effect of earlier court decisions.
The judgment declared that the appointment dates of the affected officers could not simply be reviewed administratively. It also held that members of Courses 18, 19 and 20 who had not completed 35 years of pensionable service and had notreached 60 were excluded from the January 2025 retirement decision.
The court went further.
It set aside the January 31, 2025 directive as it applied to Courses 18, 19 and 20 and issued a perpetual injunction against unlawfully reviewing their established appointment dates.
It also restrained the authorities from retiring members of those courses who had not reached the mandatory retirement threshold.
In unusually direct language, the judge said the Commission had effectively sought to alter earlier judicial decisions through administrative action, rather than through the proper appellate process.
That decision provided the legal foundation for the subsequent attempt to return affected officers to service.
The Court of Appeal kept the reinstatement route open
The Police Service Commission appealed.
The Abuja Division of the Court of Appeal dismissed the Commission’s appeal on April 14, 2026. A subsequent National Industrial Court judgment records the appellate decision as having upheld the lower court’s ruling in the same litigation.
The result was that the dispute over the appointment dates could no longer be treated as an administrative matter for the Force or the Commission alone.
The Nigeria Police Force subsequently began preparations to return the affected officers to service.
A confidential Force Secretary’s letter dated July 31, 2026 directed affected officers to report for a compulsory six-month induction programme at the Police Staff College, Jos. The programme was scheduled to run from August 17, 2026 to February 16, 2027.
Among the officers listed in reports on the directive were senior personnel such as AIG Idowu Owohunwa, AIG Benneth Chinedu Igwe, AIG Uche Ifeanyi Henry and DCP Simon Asamber Lough.
The July directive effectively moved the dispute from the courtroom back into the operational structure of the Force.
Then the litigation shifted again.
A new court order freezes the return
On September 22, 2026, Justice Buhari Sani of the National Industrial Court in Abuja issued an interim injunction in Suit No. NICN/KN/51/2026.
The case was brought by Advocacy for Human Rights and Cultural Values for Development Initiatives.
The applicant challenged the planned reinstatement of members of Cadet ASP Courses 18, 19 and 20, arguing that some of the officers had already crossed the statutory retirement threshold.
The new proceedings do not simply erase the earlier judgments. Instead, they raise questions about their legal consequences and whether officers who have subsequently reached 35 years can lawfully be returned to active service.
Justice Sani ordered the parties to maintain the status quo pending determination of the application for an interlocutory injunction.
The judge said:
“the balance of convenience tilts in favour of granting this application.”
He also warned that allowing reinstatement to continue could destroy the subject matter of the case, saying that if the officers were returned before the dispute was settled, the eventual judgment could become ineffective.
The case was adjourned to September 30, 2026 for hearing of the interlocutory application.
Why the September 25 police signal is significant
The new wireless message comes only three days after that injunction.
Its timing suggests a direct administrative response to the court’s preservation of the status quo.
Rather than treating all the Force Entrants as one undifferentiated group, the latest signal focuses specifically on those who have reached the 35-year threshold.
That distinction is critical.
The earlier 2025 judgment protected members of Courses 18, 19 and 20 who had not reached 35 years or 60 years. It did not declare that an officer who subsequently crossed the applicable retirement threshold could remain in service indefinitely.
The latest police instruction therefore puts the service clock back at the centre of the dispute.
An officer’s fate could turn on a single date in a personnel file.
And that date is precisely what the courts have been fighting over.
What the police are being asked to establish
The September 25 signal orders commanders to compile the affected personnel.
That creates an important administrative exercise.
For each officer, the Force must establish the relevant appointment date, calculate length of pensionable service and determine whether the officer has reached the applicable retirement threshold.
That means personnel records are no longer merely bureaucratic files.
They are potentially decisive legal evidence.
An error in a date could mean the difference between lawful retirement and continued service.
The litigation history makes the problem more complicated because the courts have already placed limits on the ability of the police authorities to alter established appointment dates through internal decisions.
The National Industrial Court’s 2025 judgment specifically held that the earlier Force Entrant appointment dates were settled by previous judgments and could not simply be rewritten through administrative action.
The deeper institutional question
The dispute also exposes a larger problem inside the police establishment: what happens when administrative personnel records, institutional policy and judicial decisions do not move at the same pace?
The PSC’s January 2025 retirement decision was based on its interpretation of the service rules and the treatment of Force Entrants.
The affected officers challenged that interpretation.
The National Industrial Court rejected the attempt to alter the appointment dates.
The Court of Appeal later dismissed the PSC’s appeal.
The Police Force then began the process of bringing officers back.
A fresh suit followed, arguing that some of those same officers had already crossed the retirement threshold.
Now the Force is compiling a new list of officers who have reached 35 years and ordering them out of their posts.
The extraordinary feature of the dispute is that both sides can point to the same personnel history while drawing different legal consequences from it.
A rule that has remained remarkably consistent
The retirement principle itself is not new.
The Police Service Commission relied on the 35-year rule in its January 2025 decision. The National Industrial Court has repeatedly recognised a retirement framework based on 60 years of age or 35 years of pensionable service, whichever comes earlier, in cases involving federal public servants and police personnel.
The controversy has instead centred on when the clock starts.
That is why the latest order is unlikely to be the final chapter.
The September 30 hearing could determine whether the interim protection becomes a more substantive restriction on reinstatement, while the larger questions surrounding the officers’ service status continue through the legal process.
Until then, the September 25 signal gives police commands a very specific instruction: identify those who have completed 35 years and remove them from duty posts.
The list being compiled may therefore become one of the most important personnel documents in the Nigeria Police Force.
Not because it identifies who has served the longest.
But because it may determine which interpretation of the police service clock ultimately survives.
Fact-check note
The operative retirement framework cited in the Police Service Commission’s January 2025 decision and the relevant National Industrial Court rulings is 35 years of pensionable service or age 60, whichever comes first. A separate legislative proposal has sought to change the police retirement framework to 40 years or age 65, but public legislative tracking shows that proposal has not displaced the framework relied upon in the present litigation.
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