By Austine Uche-Ejeke
Feelers from a great majority of Nigerians indicate that this present Inspector General of Police Ibrahim Idris is about the worst Inspector General of Police since the assumption of indigenous Inspector General of Police in the country. Their reason is predicted on the perceived and obvious sins of this top cop Idris!
It’s on record that the re-emergence of Police road blocks escalated on his assumption of office. Hitherto police road block was outlawed, and we had some sanity on the roads.
But these days one sees policemen mounting road blocks on streets of Lagos and other cities whereas the major duty of policing the country is left undone. Travelling from Lagos to the Benin, one encounters not less than 10 police road blocks. The case is worst in the South-east region as a census of Police road blocks from Onitsha to Aba will not be anything less than 20. What are they doing on the road? They are doing nothing but wanton extortion of money from motorists and hapless Nigerians! Just recently such police road block culminated in the untimely death of a cab driver in Benin as mere refusal of the taxi driver to part with N100 led to his untimely death in the hands of the police. This has been a reoccurring decimal of at least one such avoidable deaths every month by the police.
Also, it’s in this Idris dispensation as Inspector General of Police that the activities of SARS have become notorious leading to harassment, intimidation, extortion and killing by the special police squad. This led to national, global and strident agitations and campaigns to End SARS. Regrettably SARS is still in force and its activities are still ferocious with nobody controlling them!
These days you see them stopping people on the way and forcefully checking their phones after frisking them publicly. There is daily report and observations of policemen chasing people to banks and courier companies that have Western union transactions to extort money from them. The list is endless.
As that is not enough this same Inspector General of Police has been accused by a serving Senator of collecting billions of naira from oil companies and prominent Nigerians under the guise of providing security to them. These monies are not properly appropriated or accounted for. As at today, the Federal Government have not done anything on the issue and as usual it is been swept under the carpet!
On the moral standpoint, Inspector General of Police Idris has not lived above the board like Cesar’s wife. Same Senator accused him of dating and sleeping with serving junior police officers. This has culminated in his impregnating some of the police women. In fact, he has married one of the impregnated police officers. Idris has not denied this rather what he did was to ask for any extant law that forbids a senior police officer from befriending or marrying a junior police officer.
Assuming there is no written law, high moral standards and good conscience and equity should have told the Inspector General of Police that sleeping with a junior police officer will be breeding indiscipline, lawlessness, insults and dereliction of duties as there will be no respect among the rank and file!
Recent events in the polity has also shown that Inspector General of Police Idris is the most political and partisan head of Police in the history of policing in Nigeria. His activities in the frequent Kaduna uprising, the IPOB crisis and Niger Delta issues are all indicative of an IG that is more pro-government that even the government itself! In cases of protest this Inspector General of Police will provide guard and direction to pro government protesters but will be in the forefront to lead his men to stop or question any protest against the status quo!
The crescendo of the sins of this Inspector General of Police that must lead to his exit was his role in the recent Fulani herdsmen killings in Benue State. A chief law officer of the federation had the audacity to come out openly to declare the brazen slaughtering of 73 Nigerians by the herdsmen as mere communal clashes! His deployment to Benue State to contain the situation could only but aggravate the matter as his body language and utterances tilted towards one of the parties to the case! Upon all the threats and open press conference of Miyetti Allah taking credits for the killings and promising more killings this Inspector General of Police has not arrested any of them.
How can a serving Inspector General of Police come out openly to say that the cause of the crisis and killings in Benue State is as a result of enactment of Anti Open Grazing law by Governor Ortom! To add salt to injury the Force Public Relations Officer, Jimoh Moshood, on national television called an executive governor a drowning man and called for his resignation. What arrogance, indignation and mockery of our democracy. And up till now nothing has been done to the Inspector General of Police or the Force PRO even when the National Assembly has called for the immediate resignation of the IG and the FPRO!
To cap it all, this same Inspector General of Police hurriedly declared Kassim Afegbua, Babangida’s spokesman and former Commissioner in Edo State, wanted for authoring a statement for his principal, Babangida. Imagine the unprofessionalism! No attempt was made to verify the authenticity of the press release or not from Babangida. You did not invite Afegbua and he declined your invitation and the next thing was to declare him wanted whereas there are other statements, utterances and activities that the IG has not deemed fit to address.
Police force in its true nature is supposed to operate on the level of neutrality and selflessness. Not in this case of Inspector General of Police Idris whose tenure has witnessed a lot of national crisis, killings here and there, open romance of Police with partisan politics and general ineptitude!
In the face of all these, it may not be out of place for the Inspector General of Police, Idris Abubakar, to throw in the towel and vacate that seat. He has caused a lot of damage to the image of the police and his action and inaction has unleashed incalculable damages to the country. Without wasting much saliva, it’s about time that this IG is shown the way out before he commits more damages to the country!
Austine Uche-Ejeke , publisher and editor-in-chief AGENDA Community Newspaper and public Affairs Analyst, wrote vide eaustineuche@yahoo.com
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