Inspector General of Police Must Apologize To Rauf And Osun State - Tunde Fagben

[Defender]

It's been two weeks since it happened, the unthinkable, when some free citizens of this country heading for Abuja, the federal capital, were turned back at some bridgehead in Kogi State and forcefully deposited at the boundary of their state by the Kogi State police command and told to go find another route to Abuja if they must!

Fiction? In detail, yes, but in reality, no. It did happen. And even in Nigeria where the most absurd and the most abhorrent happen, it is bizarre.

On October 25 some twenty-eight ACN party supporters from Osun state headed out to Abuja, as I gather, on a party solidarity rendezvous. They were travelling in an Osun State Government branded vehicle, which in itself ought to assure easy passage. But there on the Lokoja-Abuja highway before they could cross into the Federal Capital Territory they were intercepted by a detachment of policemen. They must go no farther!

Reports say that the Kogi State's police commissioner, Mr Ababakasanga, justified the action of his men acting on his authority (and him possibly on higher authority) on the ground that the party folks could not give satisfactory reason for their journey to Abuja! Going to one's country's capital city for the fun of it must be against the law; Ababakasanga's law.

"Somebody that is going to Abuja should be able to tell his mission. Since they have no mission going to Abuja, I asked my men to escort them outside Kogi. They can use another route to Abuja, but not through MY STATE (caps mine). Anybody who is leaving his house must have a mission. But in this case they don't have. So we see it as secret, and the secret might be evil," he was quoted to have said.

All of that coming from someone in the calibre of a commissioner of police? Let us remind ourselves that when we encounter irrationality in the hands of low rank policemen, it is to a senior officer we run for respite. Commissioner of Police is as senior as you get at state level!

There's been surfeit of newspaper report and commentaries on the sickening episode since then but it is doubtful if the full import and implication of the police action have dawned on the police and political leadership of this country for up till the moment of writing this there has been no apology, or even comment, tendered by the police Inspector-General or the presidency as should. Disdain and impunity – the sort that have been at the bottom of our woes and the bane of our development in Nigeria.

To be sure, the drama in Kogi was not without the full intervention of a flabbergasted governor of Osun state, Ogbeni Rauf Aregbesola; indeed it was in spite of it.

Governor Aregbesola, as he explained to me, when he was called by his emissaries (for his emissaries they were, travelling in an Osun State Government branded vehicle) that they had been stopped and turned back in Kogi, put a call through to the Inspector-General of police, Mr. Hafiz Ringim, to seek protection for the travellers. The IG assured Ogbeni no such action of the police had his blessing and promised to look into it. He never got back to the governor. Ogbeni then called Ababakasanga who also feigned ignorance, promised to look into it and get back. He never did. The governor then ordered his men to head back into Kogi and continue on their journey. The drama went all night long. Twice the travellers moved on, twice they were stopped and "repatriated".

Repatriated! That is the applicable word for the action of the police who seem to be redefining the concept of citizenship of a country and the freedom of movement as enshrined in the constitution.

Those who take this lightly on the basis that police irrationality is not uncommon or that those affected are "jobless political party followers" or that their mission to Abuja was "useless", miss the point.

Police actions, such as this, have grave implications to the sanctity of our constitution and country as a whole. Demarcating where a free citizen could move freely to is capable of triggering counter actions that may threaten the security or even unity of the country. It is from little silliness such as this that huge inferno have been known to engulf countries. And Nigeria is not without its own examples, from the civil war to June 12. It is not the business of police to play partisan or ethnic politics with their uniform. As the great Fela sang: "uniform wey dem take our money to buy!"

Ababasanga is an officer of the law. He has acted most lawlessly. His boss, the IG, necessarily must take responsibility for the action of his men, doubly so since the governor called him to action. That neither the Kogi state Commissioner of Police nor the Inspector-General of police has thought it fit to call Governor Aregbesola, either in return of his calls or to apologise for the mess, bespeaks volume about the quality and character of these officers and the impunity of those in power; transient power.

It is sad.

Osun Defender