The prominent civil Rights advocacy group – HUMAN RIGHTS WRITERS
ASSOCIATION OF NIGERIA (HURIWA) has lambasted the inspector general of
police Alhaji Mohammed Adamu for embarking on a meaningless voyage of
discovery in search of infantile reasons for the failures of security
management during the just ended governorship polls in Kogi and Bayelsa
states.
HURIWA has also canvassed broad based media BLACKOUT by the independent
Nigerian media industry of the activities and statements of the State
Security Services (SSS) also known as DSS for deliberately defecating on
top of the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria of 1999 (as
amended) by their disgraceful resort to illegality and illogicality in
clear violations of subsisting and binding Orders of Competent Courts of
law in their wilful failures to release Omoyele SOWORE and Olawale
Bakare from illegal detention days after the Federal High Court ordered
their immediate release.
“The media should stop using the disjointed and illogical statements
emanating from State Security Services which graphically paints Nigeria
like a Banana republic or a failed state in the eyes of the
international community. The varying weird explanations of tthese
violations of the constitutional rights of citizens SOWORE and Bakare
and many others languishing in solitary confinement held by the DSS as
against binding bail orders from the Federal High Courts amounts to
deliberate misinformation and the spreading of fake news and should not
be encouraged by the Nigerian media. If the officers of SSS have lost
their collective sense of shame please the media should stop allowing
themselves to be used by DSS or SSS to insult and assault our
sensibilities “.
The Rights group stated that it was shocking that the chief of police of
the Nigerian state can be heard saying that politicians used fake
policemen to undermine the security of the elections even when the
police’s hierarchy had deployed 66, 241 police operatives for the
exercise.
The Rights group said if Nigeria was indeed a constitutional democracy
and were it not that the Federal government is the chief promoter of
impunity, lawlessness and flagrant disregard for the Rule of law, the
inspector general of police having failed abysmally to secure the Kogi
and Bayelsa elections would have either resigned or would have since
been dismissed.
In a statement by the National Coordinator COMRADE Emmanuel Onwubiko,
HUMAN RIGHTS WRITERS ASSOCIATION OF NIGERIA (HURIWA) has asked President
Muhammadu Buhari to sack the failed inspector general of police Mohammed
Adamu unless the Federal government of President Muhammadu Buhari and
his party the All Progressives Congress are the direct beneficiaries of
the gale of insecurity and threats to national security that was
witnessed during the heavily manipulated and orchestrated electoral
heist that took place in Kogi and Bayelsa states few days ago.
“In saner climes, the chief of police could have tendered his
resignation for absolute failure to stop the bloody violence that
trailed both the Kogi and Bayelsa election including the burning to
death of a Peoples’ Democratic Women leader Mrs. Acheju Abuh by All
Progressives Congress armed thugs but here we are in a Country that
masquerades about as a constitutional democracy and we conducted a
violent election in which many lives were lost but the boss of the
Police who failed in his duty rather than take responsibility and then
quit is busy dishing out cock and bull stories to explain his apparent
failure of leadership of the Nigerian police Force. Can we tell the
failed IGP that scholars of management science say that responsibility
means state of being accountable or answerable for any obligation,
trust, debt or something or in other words it means obligation to
complete a job assigned on time and in best way. Responsibility
according to management experts refers to an obligation to do something.
When authority is delegated then some responsibility for getting the
assigned task done is also fixed. Why has the police under the watch of
the inspector general of police refused to arrest the armed thugs that
killed the innocent woman politician and the nephew of senator Dino
Melaye? The president should immediately remove the IGP unless of course
the All Progressives Congress benefitted from the bloody violence that
characterized the charade of an election.”
“We in HURIWA aligned ourselves with the clarion call by good spirited
non-governmental groups that have rejected the elections that took place
in Kogi and Bayelsa which from every indications, were cases of daylight
robbery of the mandate of the electorate. The failures of security is a
direct breach of the part 2 of the Nigerian Police Act which in Article
6 of the Act provides that the force shall be under the command of the
inspector general and contingents of the Force stationed in a state,
shall, subject to the authority of the inspector general of police be
under the command of the commissioner of police: If therefore there are
cases of breaches of the security the type we saw in Kogi and Bayelsa
the inspector general of police must take responsibility and be punished
instead of letting him ochestrate a comedy of the absurd and dance naked
in the market place by way of trying to manufacture excuses for the
clear dereliction of duty.”
HURIWA rejected the claims of the Inspector-General of Police, Mohammed
Adamu, who said politicians and other actors made plans to counter
security arrangements for Saturday’s governorship poll in Bayelsa and
Kogi states.
“HURIWA hereby demands that the Nigerian President stops the IGP from
further disgracing Nigeria before the World. The European Union
monitored these elections and have issued damaging reports of compromise
of the security management of the elections but here we are being
insulted by an IGP who said part of the counter plans before the
election made by the politicians was to sew uniforms for persons that
posed as policemen and security officials. But this IGP has not
tendered one single empirical evidence of arrest of these politicians
and the Police have failed to arrest the fake police but rather the IGP
Mohammed Adamu, who spoke with State House Correspondents after
President Muhammadu Buhari and the service chiefs, held a meeting at the
Presidential Villa, Abuja, maintained that the police and other security
officers deployed for the elections carried “special identification
tags.” even when he admitted that while the police did their
arrangements, politicians and persons the IG called the “bad guys”, also
made counter plans to cause problems in some isolated areas in Kogi and
Bayelsa states. The IGP Mohammed Adamu has indeed failed in his duty and
the least he can do is to resign or apologise and then go after the
agents of criminality that unleashed the blood cuddling violence in Kogi
and Bayelsa states during the polls. He should stop insulting our
collective psyche.”