Mohammed Adamu: A New Sheriff in Town

Fri, Jan 18, 2019 | By publisher


Cover, Featured

After several days of anxiety, President Muhammadu Buhari picks Mohammed Adamu, a former assistant inspector general of Police, to lead the Nigeria Police Force as the inspector-general in place of Ibrahim Idris, who retired on January 15, thereby raising Nigerians’ confidence of a better policing

 

By Olu Ojewale

THE change of baton in the Nigeria Police Force was done seamlessly. On Wednesday, January 16, Ibrahim Idris, the immediate past inspector general of Police, who retired from service on Tuesday, January 15, at the age of 60, formally handed over to Mohammed Adamu, his successor in acting capacity. Both the former and the new police boss had met in Aso Rock Villa, on Tuesday, January 15, where President Muhammadu Buhari decorated Adamu with his new rank and Idris said his farewell.

Indeed, it was the end of a stormy tenure of two-and-half years for Idris as the Nigeria Police boss and the beginning of the tenure of Adamu, a former assistant inspector general of Police, as the new IGP. As some Nigerians must have been relieved to see the departure of Idris as top cop, the focus is now on Adamu on how he would lead the largest Police Force in Africa.

No doubt, his first major task is dealing with the serving seven deputy inspectors general of Police because they were his senior before being elevated above them. It is now incumbent on the Police Service Commission based on Adamu’s recommendation to either ask them to go or remain in service if ready to take orders from the new IGP. That should be sorted out in a matter of days.

In any case, Adamu made a popular decision ahead of his being decorated as the acting IGP on his way to Aso Rock when he ordered that all the postings made by Idris should be suspended and that the status quo be maintained.

Ibrahim Idris
Idris

Nevertheless, the euphoria that greeted the retirement of Idris and the appointment of the new Police boss may be short-lived considering the fact Nigerians will be going to the polls next month. He himself admitted that the upcoming 2019 general elections would be an avenue where professionalism and commitment of the force would be subjected to scrutiny.

At the take-over ceremony at the Police headquarters in Abuja, on Wednesday, January 16, Adamu urged politicians to assist the police and other law enforcement agencies in sustaining the gains recorded in the country’s democratic journey by playing politics in accordance to the dictates of the rules guiding it. “On our part, we assure the nation of our determination to play our roles fairly but firmly toward guaranteeing peaceful electoral process. We shall not hesitate to deploy our potent asset to deal firmly and decisively with electoral deviants.

“With your support, I am confident that we have the operational capacity to ensure the success of the elections,” he said.

Besides, the past IGP has left behind a record that possibly no senior Police officer will be proud of. In his two-and-half-year reign as the IGP, Idris was severally in the news for wrong reasons. Isa Hamma Misau, the senator representing Bauchi Central, on October 25, 2017, accused Idris of manipulating his retirement age. He alleged that the expected date of retirement of the IGP was fraudulently doctored on the staff list of Senior Police Officers from January 3, to January 15, 2019.

Misau, who appeared before the Senate committee investigating the allegations against the then IGP, told the eight-man panel that Idris employed four civilians in his office with the salary of the rank of assistant inspector-general of Police, AIG.

He said the police boss engaged the services of a retired police officer to handle investigation as against the code and Act establishing the Police Force, adding that all investigative cases were supposed to be under the deputy inspector-general of Police, DIG, in Area 10, Garki, Abuja, and not a retired officer.

Under Idris, Misau alleged that: “Sometime in July 2017, I was in the office of Senator Baba Kaka, chairman, Senate Committee on Rules and Business when a Daily Trust reporter sought my views on the information that policemen pay as much as N500,000 for special promotion.

Buhari
Buhari

“To verify this information, I called some serving police officers who confirmed to the three of us that the information was not only true, but that the amounts paid are up to N2,500,000, in addition to other information.”

Besides, the senator accused the IGP and the Police Service Commission of deploying between 50,000 to 100,000 policemen to oil companies, oil servicing companies, banks, oil marketers, and private individuals etc, with regular payments made to the police. “While these monies are estimated to run into billions monthly, they are, however, unaccounted for,” Misau said.

In response to the allegations, Misau was taken to court for allegedly being a deserter from the Nigeria Police Force and libel.

Also in October 2017, the former IGP was accused of impregnating a junior female officer and had her promoted. The news prompted some controversies in the media, but Idris explained that he had married the officer, adding that there was no law prohibiting him from doing so.

That notwithstanding, the former IGP was famously reported to have disobeyed President Buhari’s directives to move to Benue until the bloodletting between farmers and herdsmen was resolved. The directive was given on Tuesday, January 9. The order followed the January 1, killings of more than 70 villagers in Logo and Guma Local Government Areas of the state, a development that sparked nationwide outrage and calls for a new approach to end the killings linked to farmer-herdsmen crisis across central Nigeria.

Idris had reportedly spent less than 24 hours in the state before leaving.  The former Police boss had initially obeyed by going to Makurdi, capital of Benue State, on Wednesday, January 10, but after meeting with Samuel Ortom, the state governor, on January 11, he returned to Abuja. It is not known whether the president sanctioned the police for his insubordination. Nevertheless, the development drew insinuations that Buhari was not interested in the security situation in the country.

In May 2018, the Nigerian public was sent into an unusual state of surprise when Idris allegedly found it difficult to read a speech placed before him at the inauguration of the Police Technical Intelligence Unit in Kano.

“I mean, transmission, I mean effort, that the transmission cooperation to transmission, I mean transmission to have effect, ehm, apprehend, I mean, apprehensive towards the recommendation, recommended formation effective and effect, I mean, apprehensive at the transmission of…and transmission and transmission for the effective in the police command,” Idris allegedly said in the viral video.

Saraki
Saraki

Jimoh Moshood, the then police spokesman, later said the video was deliberately doctored to embarrass the police boss.

Twice in the year 2018, May and July, the National Assembly summoned Idris over cases of insecurity in the country, but he declined on both occasions, saying he was only accountable to Buhari, who is commander-in-chief of all armed forces.

Asides the farmers and herdsmen crisis in Benue State, there was also a case of the killing of 19 worshippers including two priests in a Catholic church in the Gwer East Area of Benue state, North-Central Nigeria, among others.

Idris’s decline to honour the summon of the National Assembly stirred various opinions among lawyers in the country on the power of the National Assembly to do so. The IGP later went to court to challenge the power of the National Assembly, but the case struck out in October 2018. Despite the court ruling, Idris refused to appear before the Assembly.

In the build-up to the Saturday, July 14, 2018, governorship election in Ekiti, Ibrahim Idris ordered the deployment of 30,000 policemen to the state for security purposes. Also, a similar number of security operatives were present at the ruling All Progressives Congress, APC, national convention on Saturday, October 6, 2018, at Eagles Square, Abuja.

Meanwhile, a day before the APC national convention, four persons including a soldier and a policeman were reportedly killed during a midnight attack by suspected Fulani herdsmen in Nkiendoro village in Bassa Local Government Area of Plateau State.

Nigerians argued that the number of deaths recorded at those places would have been reduced if there was much security presence in Plateau, Benue and Borno states like the number of policemen deployed for the Ekiti State election.

The Operatives of the Department of State Services, DSS, and police officers laid siege to the Abuja homes of Bukola Saraki, the Senate president and Ike Ekweremadu, the deputy Senate president, on Tuesday, July 24. The siege happened at the time when the ruling APC sought the removal of Saraki as the Senate president following his defection to the opposition Peoples Democratic Party, PDP. The siege was rumoured to be a plan by the police and lawmakers of the APC to restrict Saraki and Ekweremadu from attending the Senate plenary to effect their removal. Saraki, who later attended the plenary, said he was not in the house when the siege took place. The siege on Ekweremadu’s residence lasted until about 6:00 pm on the day.

Idris, however, said he did not authorise the siege and ordered a probe into the unauthorised act by the policemen.

The Offa robbery incident, which took place in April 2018, had Idris in a direct confrontation with Saraki. Idris, in July 2018, asked Saraki to be at the Intelligence Response Team, ITR, office for investigation after some of the robbery suspects confessed that they were thugs of the Senate president, an allegation Saraki denied.

Melaye
Melaye

Saraki, on the other hand, had invited Idris to explain why Senator Dino Melaye was maltreated by the police despite his status as a federal lawmaker and the killing of seven police officers at Galadimawa Junction in Abuja.

Little wonder Saraki openly displaced hostility towards Idris on Tuesday, in Abuja, during the Armed Forces Remembrance Day Celebration. The Senate president refused to accept a handshake extended to him by the former Police boss. Both of them were at the event held at the National Arcade, Abuja, to mark the climax of the activities of the 2019 Armed Forces Remembrance Day celebration.

Saraki could not also have been happy with the way police operatives have been treating his colleague in the Senate. Recently, the police laid an eight-day siege at residence of Dino Melaye, a senator representing Kogi State. Melaye was accused of gunrunning and sponsoring of hoodlums to disrupt peace in Kogi State after his supporters allegedly shot and wounded a police officer.

Melaye had also accused Idris of plotting his assassination. “There is a plan by the IG to arrest me today and inject me to death. Men deployed already. CP Kogi and others removed. Nigerians watch out,” Melaye tweeted.

The police, thereafter, accused Melaye of committing a defamatory offence and urged him to confess crimes levelled against him.

The police said Melaye’s decision not to grant the invitation necessitated the siege which began on Friday, December 28, 2018, till Friday, January 4, when the lawmaker surrendered for arrest.

The above cases are some of the mess that Adamu would need to clear off without adding to it if his tenure is not going to be rancorous as that of Idris.

In addition, he would need the unwavering support of his constituency and Nigeria at large, to succeed. The acting IGP is mindful of all this as he acknowledged in his take-over speech on Wednesday. He said: “My appointment represents a call to duty and a charge to restore the dwindling primacy of the Nigeria Police Force within the internal security architecture of our beloved country. Ladies and gentlemen, commanding the largest Police Force in Africa, particularly, at this crucial time that the country is faced with multi-faceted security challenges and at the peak of preparations for the general elections, is undoubtedly an arduous task.”

Kola Ologbodiyan,
Ologbodiyan

Nevertheless, he assured Nigerians that: “I am mindful of their yearnings for a policing system that will not only assure them of their safety, but treat them with civility and hold their rights sacred. While I promise on behalf of officers of the Force that their deserved aspirations will be met henceforth, I also call on the citizens to work with the police in the interest of community safety and national security.”

He also promised to deliver to Nigerians, the Police Force they will be proud of.

The new police boss was born on September 17, 1961, in Lafia, Nasarawa State. He earned his first degree in Geography at the Ahmadu Bello University between 1980 and 1983 and later got his MSc from the University of Portsmouth, England, from 2009 to 2010.

Prior to enlisting in Police, Adamu was the vice-principal and Geography teacher at the Government Day Secondary School, Gunduma, Keffi, Plateau State, but presently in Nasarawa State between 1984 — 1986.

In 1986, he joined the Nigeria Police Force as a cadet assistant superintendent of Police and trained at the Police College, Ikeja, Lagos State. He was later seconded from the NPF to the INTERPOL General Secretariat, where he worked as “specialised officer” on Economic and Financial Crimes in the Economic and Financial Crime Sub-Directorate between 1997 and 2002. After holding several positions at INTERPOL, he was elected as INTERPOL’s vice president responsible for Africa at its meeting in Hanoi, Vietnam.

In the course of his career in the Nigeria Police Force, Adamu had carried out several important criminal investigations for Nigeria in the United Kingdom, United States of America, Switzerland, Hong Kong, Taiwan, The Netherlands, and several West African countries. He had been a commissioner of Police in Enugu and a deputy commissioner of Police in Ekiti and Kaduna states.

Between 2016 — 2017, he was the assistant inspector-general of Police, AIG, in Benin City, Edo State and was responsible for the overall management and operations of the Nigeria Police Force, NPF, Zone 5, comprising Bayelsa, Delta and Edo State Police Commands.

He has attended several professional courses within and outside Nigeria, including the Senior Executive Course 38 at the National Institute for Policy and Strategic Studies, NIPPS, in Kuru-Jos, Plateau State, and earned the qualification of Member of National Institute, mni.

Adamu was an AIG and head at the NIPSS, Kuru-Jos, before his current appointment.

In 2018, he was awarded an Honorary Doctor of Philosophy, PhD, in International Relations by the Godfrey Okoye University, Enugu, Enugu State.

Adamu’s appointment on Tuesday, January 15, ended weeks of speculation and suspicion over the alleged plan by Buhari to extend Idris tenure. Idris was appointed the IGP by Buhari on March 21, 2016. He then replaced Solomon Arase, who retired from service after reaching the statutory age of 60.

Nevertheless, Nigerians have been expressing their expectations from the new police boss.

Ubani
Ubani

The 36 state governors of the federation in congratulating Adamu, said it was a worthy appointment and described the acting IGP as a man of impeccable character. Asishana Okauru, the director-general of the Nigeria Governors’ Forum Secretariat, who said this in a statement on Tuesday, January 15, in Abuja, stated:  “The NGF sincerely wishes that the new top cop will harness his experiences from previous offices, at home and abroad, with dexterity to curb crime, ensure peace in the entire country and once again propound the policing principles that will lead Nigerians to believe that police is their friend.”

On its part, the Coalition of United Political Parties, CUPP, enjoined Adamu not to be biased. The coalition made the call through Ugochinyere Ikenga, its spokesman, who addressed a press conference in Abuja, on Tuesday. The CUPP warned the new police boss against intimidating members of the opposition parties ahead of the general elections.

“He must make that commitment to political stakeholders that the police will not go to the homes of opposition leaders, 24 or 48 hours to the elections and start arresting them,” Ikenga said.

The coalition also appealed to Adamu to release those it described as “political prisoners” in the custody of the police before his appointment as IGP.

In the same vein, the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, berated the immediate past IGP for shameful and partisan tenure, which, it alleged destroyed professionalism in the police and compromised the lives and property of Nigerians. The PDP demanded that he must be held accountable for all the perceived atrocities he allegedly committed while in office.

Kola Ologbondiyan, the PDP national publicity secretary, in a statement in Abuja, said Idris would be remembered as the only IG who allegedly surrendered the responsibilities of his exalted office to the whims and caprices of politicians close to the Buhari Presidency.

Ologbondiyan also urged the new police chief to avoid the pitfalls of his predecessor and be professional in handling issues.

Similarly, Monday Ubani, a former national vice-president of the Nigeria Bar Association, NBA, told Realnews that Idris was an underperformer. “He didn’t impress me as an inspector-general of Police. He was involved so much in politics. It is not supposed to be that way. He is not supposed to be involved in politics but he was so much involved in politics. So, let him go,” he said.

Ubani advised the new acting IGP to show interest in the welfare of his officers. “He must also ensure that lives and properties are secured and that average Nigerian must be secured,” Ubani said.

If he should follow his promises and be more professional, Adamu is likely to get more cooperation to be a successful IGP. The ball, as the saying goes, is now in his court.

– Jan. 18, 2018 @ 14:15 GMT |

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