The Nigeria Police Force has commenced nationwide recruitment of constables barring persons with the following forms of disabilities; persons with bow legs, knock knees, bent knees, and gross malformation of teeth from being enlisted into the Force.
Others barred from the exercise include persons with amputated body parts, defective eyesight, and a speech impediment.
This is contained in a public notice signed by the Force Public Relations Officer, DCP Frank Mba.
According to the notice, applicants must be within the ages of 17 and 25 and must possess a minimum of five credits in the West African Senior School Certificate Examination in not more than two sittings.
The police further stated that women who wish to apply must not be pregnant as of the time of recruitment.
Interested candidates must have a functional email address and National Identification Number.
The online application would be open from July 14 2020, to August 23, 2020.
My question is the police going to meet the provisions of PART VI section 29 of Discrimination against Persons with disabilities ( Prohibition) Act 2018 which states that All employers of labour in public organisations shall, as mush as possible, have persons with disabilities constituting at 5% of their employment.
The law did not give room for exceptions, the Nigerian Police should find ways to accommodate 5 percent of persons with disabilities in their new recruitment.
In as much as the police are looking for frontline officers, they should look inwards and employ persons with disabilities in offices/ departments where they can work effectively to meet the 5 percent of employment as the law stipulated in Discrimination against Persons with disabilities (Prohibition) Act 2018 which came into being courtesy of President Muhammadu Buhari assent to it in January 2019.