Millionaire constables

From slave labour to sudden wealth. That could well be the story of special constabulary policemen, courtesy of a recent judgment of the National Industrial Court of Nigeria. The court has ordered that more than 22,000 special constables that the police enlisted across the 36 states and the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) be regularised by the force, and four-year arrears of allowances paid out to each. By that judgment, millionaire constabularies strutting Nigerian community spaces may be loading. It will be interesting seeing what difference this makes to their psyche and engagement with the public.

The industrial court, in a verdict delivered penultimate week, ordered the Inspector-General of Police (IGP) and the Police Service Commission (PSC) to issue the special constables letters of formal employment and pay them the arrears of stipends due to them from way back in 2021.

It was late in 2020, under the former Muhammadu Buhari presidency, that the Nigeria Police recruited some 25,000 special constables to help fight insecurity at the grassroots and pilot the community policing initiative of government. Then Police Affairs Minister Mohammed Dingyadi said the constabulary workforce would complement regular police personnel who were being overwhelmed by rising wave of insecurity nationwide. The special constabulary scheme is a creation of the Nigeria Police Force (NPF) Act of 2020; and under that enabling law, special constables were recruited from local communities, trained by the police, and assigned within communities to help with intelligence gathering and community relations type of duties. Many, however, often find themselves filling in for manpower shortage among the regular police, accompany conventional police officers on security operations or perform routine tasks at police formations.

Special constables are not regular police personnel, though their uniforms look very much like that of conventional policemen and they aren’t too different in physical appearance. Only that they do not – are not authorised – to  bear arms like regular policemen. But the force has treated them like volunteers and withheld from paying them stipends, forcing many to rely on bribes and extortion to scrape a living.

Part of the challenge is the wooliness of the enabling law on remuneration for special constables. According to the NPF Act, recruitment into the constabulary scheme is for persons between ages 21 and 50. Other qualifying criteria include that they must be of good character and physically fit, and must have indicated willingness to serve as special constable. The law further stipulates that the IGP may provide them with batons, clothing and any other equipment considered necessary. Section 112 of the Act says that a person’s service as special constable shall render him eligible for a stipend as may be determined by the IGP and approved by the Police Council. It also mentions that reimbursement would be made to special constables in respect of expenses incurred by them in connection with their attendance at periods of instruction and as compensation for loss of (other) earnings during periods of full-time duty. But the law isn’t exact on how much that stipend should be and it is silent on the agency responsible for payment. Meanwhile, the same law specifies that the constables shall not benefit from the Police Reward Fund, shall not be entitled to living accommodation at government’s expense, and neither entitled to pension. Besides, some stipends the law provides for could be withdrawn by the police leadership if, in their opinion, there is good reason for doing so.

“The NPF Act did not think through the special constabulary scheme”

The standard experience of the special constables, however, has been that they are not remunerated by the police force, and neither by governments of the states in which communities they are deployed to serve. When in September 2022, a motley crowd of constabularies in police uniform thronged the streets of Osogbo, Osun State capital, protesting non-remuneration for their services and bearing placards with inscriptions such as “Pay us now!,” “We are hungry” and “We are dying,” Force Public Relations Officer Muyiwa Adejobi, an Assistant Commissioner of Police, dismissed the protest as unwarranted, explaining that members of the special constabulary scheme are volunteers and not regular police personnel who should be entitled to remuneration. His argument was echoed by the Osun State police command spokesperson, Yemisi Opalola, who said the protest was utterly baseless because the constabulary scheme is a voluntary service.

The industrial court has now weighed in, and it is on the side of the constabularies. It ordered immediate regularisation of the special constables’ engagement by the police and their proper remuneration. Justice Rakiya Haastrup also ordered payment of arrears owed the constables in the verdict she delivered in a case filed by them against the IGP and the PSC. The suit in which Sebastine Hon, a Senior Advocate of Nigeria (SAN), represented the constables aimed to address the long-standing issue of non-payment of allowances to them. The plaintiffs (constables) had through their lawyer sued the police for refusing to pay them monthly stipends despite making them serve the nation for the past four years.

Refuting the argument by the police that they were volunteers, the special constabularies tendered documents showing that, at the time they were engaged, the police had agreed to pay them monthly stipends commensurate with the basic allowance of a regular constable in the force. They argued that the police’s recourse to not paying them the stipends was not just unlawful, but had put their lives in jeopardy as they could not meet up with basic necessities of life. The constables urged the court that having been lawfully engaged by the police, they were entitled to monthly stipends to enable them to perform their duties effectively and diligently. They noted that due to the hazardous nature of their job, seven of them had died.

In her judgment, Justice Haastrup agreed with the plaintiffs that they established a contractual agreement of employment relationship between them and the police. She held that “based on the agreement, the plaintiffs were entitled to monthly stipends for their job.” While observing that the exact amount to be paid as stipends was not fixed by the police, the judge held that the plaintiffs were entitled to a basic allowance of N54,655 per month from January 2021 to May 2024, pending when the IGP fixes their monthly allowance. She ordered the police boss to fix the amount due to the plaintiffs within two months of delivery of her judgment.

Beyond payment of outstanding allowances, Justice Haastrup also ordered that the special constables be “issued with letters of appointment having trained them, equipped them, issued them with uniforms and identity cards and deployed them in states of the federation and the FCT.” 

The industrial court’s verdict touches at the heart of the special constables’ work condition that until now has not only hazarded them, but also made them a menace to society on which they prey to survive. Late last year, a video went viral showing two special constabularies in Oyo State extorting money from a Dutch female biker-tourist riding along Iseyin-Oyo road as part of her visit to African countries. Upon public outcry, the police tracked down and identified the constables as Kareem Fatai and Jimoh Lukman, and had them dismissed from service in December following an orderly room investigation. Not that the constables themselves have been silent. They’ve severally bemoaned the neglect by the police to pay them allowances or salaries since they were recruited, saying despite putting their personal safety on the line in  service to their respective community, they were not being compensated.

Meanwhile, the constables’ reputed misconduct by routinely extorting bribes from members of the public became such an embarrassment to the police establishment that former PSC Chairman Solomon Arase, a retired IGP, late in 2023 called for an overhaul, disbandment or, at the minimum, introduction of a different set of uniform for the constabulary personnel because, according to him, they are notorious for unethical practices that tarnish the reputation of the entire force.

The NPF Act did not think through the special constabulary scheme, that is why it created a corps of security operatives without making clear how they would be compensated. The idea of their services being voluntary, and as such and non-remuneratory,  sucks because their job schedules pitch them against the same hazards that regular policemen encounter. But whereas conventional operatives get remunerated – if inadequately so – special constables do not. Now that the industrial court has foisted more than 20,000 of them on the police, it should go a long way in redressing the notorious manpower shortage in the force. What is required is for the force to properly harness the hands and train them up to conventional standard. Luckily, the job is already half done. What isn’t clear is whether we would now begin to observe comfortable constabularies behaving like one in their dealings with the Nigerian public. We wait to see.