By Onyeanya Ebere Immaculata<\/p>\n
The National Industrial Court in Abuja has invalidated a military regulation requiring officers of the Nigerian Armed Forces to serve a minimum of 15 years before resigning, declaring it unconstitutional and oppressive.<\/p>\n
Delivering judgment on Tuesday in a suit filed by Flight Lieutenant J.A. Akerele, Justice Emmanuel Subilim ruled that the provision in the Harmonised Terms and Conditions of Service (HTACOS), violates fundamental rights under the 1999 Constitution.<\/p>\n
He affirmed that members of the Armed Forces have a statutory right to resign voluntarily, and held that Akerele\u2019s resignation was valid from the date of submission, despite the Nigerian Air Force\u2019s (NAF), refusal to accept it.<\/p>\n
The court also issued a perpetual injunction restraining the Chief of Air Staff and the NAF from arresting, detaining, or compelling Akerele to continue serving.<\/p>\n
Akerele, commissioned in 2013, had sued the NAF under case number NICN\/ABJ\/25\/2025 after his resignation was rejected, leading to him being declared absent without leave and marked for arrest.<\/p>\n
His counsel, Inibehe Effiong, argued that Akerele faced systematic persecution, cancelled training opportunities, abrupt termination of U.S. flight training, and professional stagnation that caused severe emotional and mental distress.<\/p>\n
Despite endorsements from his superiors, the Chief of Air Staff rejected Akerele\u2019s resignation, citing the HTACOS rule mandating 15 years of service.<\/p>\n
Justice Subilim dismissed this stance as \u201cmodern-day slavery under the guise of national service,\u201d stressing that the right to resign cannot be curtailed by administrative technicalities.<\/p>\n
He further ruled that Akerele\u2019s use of the term \u201cvoluntary retirement\u201d instead of \u201cresignation\u201d did not invalidate his request, as substance must prevail over form.<\/p>\n
The judgment is expected to set a major precedent for Armed Forces personnel seeking to resign before completing the erstwhile mandatory 15-year term.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
By Onyeanya Ebere Immaculata The National Industrial Court in Abuja has invalidated a military regulation requiring officers of the Nigerian Armed Forces to serve a minimum of 15 years before resigning, declaring it unconstitutional and oppressive. Delivering judgment on Tuesday in a suit filed by Flight Lieutenant J.A. Akerele, Justice Emmanuel Subilim ruled that the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":29,"featured_media":74860,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[182],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-74859","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-defence-and-security"],"aioseo_notices":[],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74859","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/29"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=74859"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74859\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":74862,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74859\/revisions\/74862"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/74860"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=74859"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=74859"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=74859"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}