Usman Baba, the Inspector-General of Police, was given a three-month jail term for defying a court order on Tuesday by Justice Mobolaji Olajuwon of the Federal High Court in Abuja.
The decision, according to Justice Olajuwon, who gave the ruling, was the result of a lawsuit brought by Patrick Okoli, a former police officer, who claimed he was forcibly and illegally retired from the Nigeria Police Force.
The IGP shall be put to prison and kept in custody for three months, or until he complies with a judgment issued on October 21, 2011, the judge said.
“The contemnor shall be confined for another term and until he purges his contempt,” the court said. “If at the conclusion of the three months, the contemnor continues refractory and still refuses to purge his contempt.”
Even while the court upheld the Police Service Commission’s (PSC) recommendation that Okoli be reinstated into the Force, Justice Olajuwon highlighted that the IGP disobeyed the directive.
The development comes only three weeks after Abdulrasheed Bawa, the chairman of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), was found guilty of contempt and ordered to be imprisoned in the Kuje Correctional Center in Abuja by Justice Chizoba Oji of a High Court in Abuja.
The judge determined that Bawa was in violation of the court’s decision from November 21, 2018, which required the commission to give back to the applicant his Range Rover and N40 million.
But in a later decision, Justice Oji overturned Bawa’s conviction after hearing an application from the head of the EFCC.
