The Public Officers (Special Provisions) Decree No. 10 of 1976 was promulgated by the Supreme Military Council under General Murtala Muhammed and, after his assassination on 13 February 1976, continued under General Olusegun Obasanjo. The decree formalised and provided legal scaffolding for the sweeping public-sector purge that Murtala had initiated immediately upon seizing power on 29 July 1975. The regime established an Assets Investigation Panel system across federal and state levels, with panels empowered to investigate the assets and conduct of public officers who had served between October 1960 and July 1975.
The purge was unprecedented in scale and speed. Within weeks of the July 1975 coup, approximately 10,000 public servants—including civil servants, military officers, police, judiciary members, and university administrators—were dismissed without recourse to tribunal process, under the initial wave. Decree No. 10 then established formal panels to investigate those already removed and to identify further misconduct and unexplained assets. The panels, operating across Nigeria's then-twelve states, examined bank records, property holdings, and contract awards. High-profile indictees included former military governors, senior civil servants, and prominent public figures. Anthony Enahoro, the nationalist politician, was among those indicted by the federal assets panel in 1976 and had properties forfeited. The findings and forfeiture orders were published as government gazettes in 1977, including the Public Officers (Forfeiture of Assets) Order 1977 under LN 13 of 1977.
The constitutional due-process implications were significant and contested. The Supreme Court in cases such as Uwaifo v. Attorney-General Bendel State (1976) grappled with whether dismissed officers retained natural justice rights. The tribunals operated without right of representation in all cases and without appeal to ordinary courts, as Decree No. 6 of 1976 ousted court jurisdiction. The aggregate findings remain partially dispersed across state government archives rather than in a single consolidated public report. The regime's ostensible anti-corruption rationale was subsequently questioned, as many dismissed officers were rehabilitated under later governments and some forfeited assets were not properly accounted for. The episode nonetheless established the precedent—repeated in 1984–85 under Buhari-Idiagbon—of using mass assets-inquiry tribunals as a tool of regime legitimation.