Photo: Mohammed D. Abubakar, the Inspector-General of Police

Why has the Nigeria Police, which is charged by law with the maintenance of law and order in the country, refused to obey the order of a court concerning its own officers who were illegally sacked in 2010?

According to an account obtained by SaharaReporters, the men, who were attached to B’Ops of the Imo State Police Command, were ambushed by about 40 armed bandits on February 3, 2010 while they were on escort duty with First Bank.

“They were armed with sophisticated weapons including sub-machine guns and rocket launchers,” a letter to SaharaReporters by one of the affected officers said. “We were armed with two smoke guns with two canisters each, k2 riffle, pump action and some AK47 with twenty five rounds maximum.”

He stated that during the attack the police vehicle in which they were driving somersaulted and was damaged beyond repair.  Six of the officers were shot and wounded.

“We disembarked and returned fire for fire wounding some of the robbers but when we saw that the bandits will over power us, we called for re-enforcement but non-came for over two hours of operation, as a result they went away with the money.”

The officers said they were then detained under the orders of the Inspector General of Police at that time, Mr. Ogbonna Onovo.  A few days after being released from detention, but with some of the injured officers still receiving treatment for their wounds, they received instructions they had been dismissed.

The officers said that since they had not been given neither fair hearing nor time to appeal, they had no option other than to go to court which eventually ruled their dismissal to be unlawful, wrongful and without due process and ordered that they be re-instated with their entitlements.

“The judgement was sent to the legal department of the Inspector General of police and the Police Service Commission on the 3rd of May, 2011.  [The] police acknowledged the receipt of the judgement and promised to comply. Seven months after without any action from the police, we sent reminder on the 4th of December 2011. But up till this moment we have not heard from either the police or the Police Service Commission.”

In an interesting twist, the affected officers noted that Assistant Commissioner of Police B’Ops in Imo State, John Achuam, who had taken the matter before the IGP in the first place, accusing the men of failing to protect the money from the robbers, was eventually ordered by the Commissioner of Police to mobilize a team to arrest the same armed robbers that had attacked the First Bank escort team in February 2010.

That development followed intelligence available to the commissioner as to where the robbers were hiding and that they were planning another attack.

“The assistant commissioner mobilized 82 policemen well-armed [but] even with the advantage of a surprise attack [under] cover of darkness they were completely overwhelmed by these robbers and a policeman, one sergeant Emmanuel Onwunanim, was shot and killed by the robbers.  Police vehicle [was] destroyed and a rifle and a police walkie-talkie [was] snatched from them by the robbers.”

Stressing the refusal of the police to implement the judgement of the court, the complainants noted that prior to the incident, none of the men had a bad record.  Indeed:

    Inspector Ubi at the time of  the incident had only two years to retire; he had served Nigeria meritoriously for 33yrs with his life at stake without a single dent in his record;
    Inspector Kufre was a cadet inspector who joined the force only in 2007, and had no dent on his record.

“We were not on illegal duty, we were not on road block,” the complaint said. “Our only offence is that we [were] supposed to have died in the operation but we refused.”

They further pointed out as follows:

 

    The monitoring unit of the IGP’s office which investigated the case as ordered by the IGP also took the cell phones of the officers for analysis but nothing incriminating was found.
    The Imo State Criminal Investigation Department (CID) investigated the case and nothing was found which implicated the officers.

 

They said the Abuja provost were just acting on the instructions of Mr. Onovo and that the men did not receive a fair trial; they did not sign their statements as they were supposed to, and their punishment was not read to them.

“This is almost four years since this incident happened and we cannot keep waiting again,” they said, calling on Nigerians to come to their aid.  

“We are suffering.  Our children have stopped going to school as we hardly can give them food, not to talk of school fees. We are just being unjust and inhumanely treated, we are Nigerians citizens, we were on official duty to protect Nigerians, we don’t deserve this treatment,” they pleaded.

The office of the IGP has not responded to the invitation to respond to this complaint.

Just yesterday, while ordering the redeployment of 14 police commissioners to various formations in Nigeria, the IGP, Mr. MD Abubakar, said it was aimed at greater efficiency and better performance in the fight against crime and criminality.

An official statement said, “The affected CPs have been urged to vigorously step up the fight against all forms of criminality in their new Commands and Formations. They are enjoined to leverage on the cordial relationship among sister security agencies in their respective beats, to ensure that criminal activities are reduced to the barest minimum. They have also been charged to ensure that officers and men under their supervision are mindful of the rights of the citizenry, while cultivating the trust and confidence of the public in the discharge of their statutory responsibilities.”

Source: Sahara Reporters