Blunders: How safe are Nigerians under IGP Idris?

Last Friday blunder by Adamawa State commissioner of police, Mohammed Ghazzali, has heightened apprehensions over insecurity of lives under IGP, Ibrahim Idris.

If there is anything Nigerians are gravely concerned about at the moment, aside the dwindling economy, it is insecurity and quality of decision making in the police force.

Reports of armed robberies, kidnappings, militancy in the Niger Delta and the rampaging menace of the Fulani herdsmen against farmers, especially in the North Central geopolitical zone of the country, have become of serious concerns.

But recent actions of the Nigerian Police, the government body saddled with the responsibility of detecting, and , or preventing such crimes has rather raised more concerns among Nigerians as to how safe they really are in their own land.

Last week, there were reports of an attack in Adamawa State, in the North East, by suspected Fulani herdsmen which left about 30 Nigerians dead.

The police had initially said no one was killed in the attacks, but capitulated when the villagers displayed the corpses of those who had been killed.

The attacks, were allowed to go on unchallenged and unchecked by the Nigerian Police because the state’s Commissioner of Police, Ghazzali Mohammed, was trying to save face from being labeled partisan.

The police boss said “My men were on the ground. We would not risk our men to be there just to give security to one side so that the other side will not think we have taken side with one side.

“There are two different people involved in these clashes, the herdsmen and the farmers. And we have to be very careful in handling such type of communal clashes,” he said.

Bottom line: The police stood by while 30 Nigerians were slaughtered!

Read also: Rumbles in police as IGP Idris accuses Arase of carting away 24 cars

In saner climes, the Adamawa police boss would have been sacked, and probably prosecuted, if he lacked the honour of resigning himself.

Concerns as to the ability of the current leadership of the police to fully keep Nigerians safe surfaced just after the new Acting Inspector General of Police (IGP) Ibrahim Idris, assumed duties as head of the body.

Ibrahim, had raised what many have come to term a false alarm that his predecessor, Solomon Arase, left office with over 24 vehicles belonging to the police force.

For many, this was a serious gaffe for such a high ranked crime fighter; an IGP rushed to the media to announce the ‘stealing’ of police vehicles, only for them to be reportedly found at the police auto garage in Abuja undergoing maintenance repairs.

The IGP’s action raised concerns among Nigerians who wondered how, the number one police officer in the country, with all the investigative and intelligence machinery at his disposal, could be flippant with such a weighty allegation.

They wonder how the police under his leadership can secure the millions of lives, and thousands of miles of properties if he cannot locate police property in his backyard.

His predecessor, Solomon Arase while reacting, expressed disappointment that Idris could make such a weighty allegation against him, without even trying to find out the true position, or hearing from him, given that he was just a phone call away.

If the police, under Idris, could not manage the basic task of tracking its vehicles, what would happen to the task of gathering intelligence, the task of detecting crime and preventing same?

The emergence of Idris, and its implication for the safety of Nigerians raises more anxiety, given that almost a generation of tested senior officers of the force were flushed out as they were senior to Idris, and could not be expected to take orders from their junior.

The gains in public perception of the police, and whatever little confidence Nigerians still have in the institution is currently being eroded with the present happenings, and many are of the view that there is a need for Idris to reassure Nigerians that the police is truly up to the task of carrying out its constitutional assignment, diligently.

By Timothy Enietan-Matthews

 

 

 

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