Osayende: Approval of Hijab for Female Police Officers Unconstitutional

Adibe Emenyonu in Benin City

A retired Deputy Inspector General of Police (DIG), Parry Osayende, has condemned the approval of hijab for female police officers by the Inspector General (IG)of Police, Usman Alkali Baba.

The  IG last week approved a new dress code allowing hijab for female officers in the Nigeria Police Force (NPF).

The new dress code also allows female officers to wear stud earrings under their berets or peak caps while in uniform.

However, Osayende, in a press briefing in Benin City, capital of Edo State yesterday described the newly approved uniform  code for female police officers in the country as illegal and unconstitutional.

He said: “Though the 1999 constitution was super imposed on Nigerians, the same does not give the IG 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 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 36 states governors are also members. They are the only ones that has the constitutional mandate to approve dressing code for the Nigerian Police.”

He said 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 IG has no power to alter a button in police uniform”, Osayende stated, adding that the police is underpaid, underfunded and needed attention from the government and not hijab.

“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