A retired Deputy Inspector General of Police (DIG) Parry Osayende, on Tuesday, condemned the approval of hijab for female police officers by the Inspector General of Police, Usman Baba Alkali.
Approving the dress code last week, the IGP said will allow female officers to wear stud earrings under their berets or peak caps while in uniform.
But Osayende, at a press briefing in Benin City, described the uniform code for female police officers as illegal and unconstitutional.
“Though the 1999 constitution was superimposed on Nigerians, the same does not give the IGP the Constitutional rights to wake-up one morning and say that Baba has approved the use of hijab, which is a Muslim mode of dressing for the Nigerian Police, this is not Benin Police, Yoruba police or Muslim police, but the Nigerian Police. The Constitution of Nigeria is the highest law of the land, and the Constitution says that if any other law is at variance with the constitution, that law will be null and void. There is a part of the Constitution that established the Nigerian Police Council, which has the president of Nigeria as the chairman, it has the chairman of the Police Service Commission as a member and the thirty-six States governors are also members. They are the only ones that have the Constitutional right to approve dressing code for the Nigerian Police”, he added.
Osayande alleged that the plan of the government is to Islamize Nigeria and warned that such a move is dangerous and a breach of the Constitution.
“The use of hijab is a breach of the Constitution of the country and if you are a governor and breached the Constitution of the land, it is impeachment, if you are a president it is impeachment. If the Attorney General does not know his right, somebody has to teach him. The IGP has no power to utter a button in police uniform”.
The former number two cop pointed out that the police is underpaid, underfunded and needed attention from the government.
“Nigeria has about 774 local government areas and we don’t have up to eight hundred vehicles for the police to cover the local governments, how do you expect them to do well”, he queried.
