Court orders Army to reinstate General five years after retirement
EMERGENCY DIGEST- An industrial court sitting in Abuja has ordered the Nigerian Army to reinstate one of its officers, A.S.H. Sa’ad, a brigadier general, who was dismissed in 2016.
Mr Sa’ad was dismissed alongside 37 other officers.
Delivering his judgement on Tuesday, the judge, Benedict Kanyip, stated that the claimant had proved his case far above the lawful threshold that he was wrongfully dismissed.
PREMIUM TIMES had reported how Mr Saad and his colleagues were forced out of service without recourse to the rules of disengagement in the Nigerian military.
Most of the affected officers were neither queried nor indicted by any panel, but got flushed out for reasons that smack of high-level arbitrariness and witch-hunting by authorities of the army.
The officers subsequently petitioned President Muhammadu Buhari, in line with the military’s rules to seek redress.
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But even after petitioning the president, two years after, their fates still hang in the balance.
Mr Buhari has refused to respond to their petitions, raising suspicion that the president was complicit in the illegality that defined the dismissal of the officers.
Delivering the judgement, Mr Kanyip declared that In the eyes of the law, the claimant was never compulsorily retired because the Army did not prove that Mr Sa’ad did any wrong.
The judge also stated that the prayer for reinstatement cannot be granted beyond 2019 when he was supposed to have attained 35 years of service.
The court however refused to grant the request of the complaint that he should be promoted to the rank of major general just like his peers until they retired in 2019.
He also declared that his promotion cannot be done orally adding that by law is not a right but a privilege.
“The retirement of the claimant dated 9th June 2016 is in contravention of the armed forces act and condition of service is null and void.
“The defendant shall reinstate the claimant as a brigadier general of the Nigerian Army up to 2019.
“Be paid his salary from the date of his sack to the date he ought to have retired in 2019,” Mr Kanyip said.
