The military high command has rejected a recent National Industrial Court (NIC) judgment overturning a long-standing mandate requiring armed forces personnel to serve at least 15 years before resigning.
The controversial clause remains enforceable, officials say, because the governing law, the Armed Forces Act, is yet to be amended or repealed.
Justice Emmanuel Subilim of the NIC, Abuja, declared the clause in question, contained in the Harmonised Terms and Conditions of Service (HTACOS) for officers of the Nigerian Armed Forces, as “unconstitutional and oppressive.”
Delivered in a suit brought by Flight Lieutenant J. A. Akerele, the ruling upheld his right to resign, characterising the regulation as “modern-day slavery in the name of national service.”
Akerele, commissioned in 2013, alleged systematic victimisation by the Nigerian Air Force (NAF) following his attempt to resign.
He recounted abrupt cancellation of his foreign training, repeated reassignment between roles, denial of promotions, and eventual declaration as absent without leave, with a signal issued for his arrest .
The court ruled that his resignation was valid and effective from the date his letter was received.
A perpetual injunction also barred the Chief of Air Staff and the NAF from arresting, detaining, or compelling him to remain in service.
In response, the military’s Director of Defence Media Operations, Major-General Markus Kangye, stated that the Armed Forces Act, not adjudications, remains the binding authority.
Until the Act is revised, all serving personnel must comply with the existing terms and conditions of service, he emphasised.
Kangye underscored that the armed forces comprise different categories of entrants: regular cadets via the Nigerian Defence Academy, graduates through short service, and professionals such as doctors, lawyers, and accountants via direct short service. Each category operates under distinct terms of service, all of which currently require adherence unless the conditions are officially rewritten.
“The Armed Forces of Nigeria, the military, has a document which refers to us as conditions and terms of service. In that document, everything regarding the disengagement and otherwise of military personnel are spelled out,” he said.
“Unless the terms and conditions of service, Armed Forces of Nigeria are rewritten, we will still go by what is contained in that document. That is it for that.”
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