Following a recent unbecoming statement from him, the All Progressives Congress, APC, has called for an urgent reprimand of the Assistant Inspector General of Police, AIG, in charge of Zone 2 Command, Mr. Joseph Mbu, who it described as lawless and barbaric, before he begins another round of negative upset in his new station.
The party in a statement issued in Lagos on Saturday by its National Publicity Secretary, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, said the AIG’s actions since he was posted to Lagos State have neither dignified the police as an institution nor portrayed him as a well-trained law enforcement agent. It added that Mbu’s temperament, comportment, utterances and actions are capable of inciting mass killings, violence and anarchy.
According to the statement, “Since his posting to the Zone 2 Command, this contumacious policeman has exhibited an egregious act of lawlessness by barging through the Lekki Toll Plaza without paying toll and then ordering the arrest of policemen and workers at the Plaza. Is it not an irony that a man who is trained to enforce the law is the same who is breaking the law?
“But that action, as bad as it was, pales into insignificance when compared to his most recent statement in which he was basically inciting the police against the citizenry and encouraging the killing of civilians. It is sheer irresponsibility for a senior policeman to say that for every policeman who is killed during the election, he will kill 20 civilians.
“Lest we are misunderstood, our party will never condone the killing of police personnel or of any law enforcement agent for whatever reason, just as we will not condone the killing of any innocent Nigerian. If a senior police officer does not know how to convey to his officers and men that they should protect themselves while also avoiding extra-judicial killing of any citizen, then the funds spent in training him have been wasted,” the opposition party said.
APC lamented that Mbu’s languages such as “fire-for-fire”, “If one of my men is killed, I shall kill twenty of them” or “you have the power to stop the Governor” are inappropriate, inciting and barbaric, particularly under a democratic dispensation, stressing that it is most unbecoming of a senior law enforcement agent.
It consequently stated that the Police chief should be held solely responsible for any violence or killing of innocent citizens before, during and after the elections in the area under his command.
While advising the AIG to mind his utterances and actions, shake off all the vestiges of lawlessness and barbarism for which he has become infamous, and comport himself like a senior police officer that he is if he wants to succeed in his new assignment, the party warned that, “if he continues in his old, unedifying ways, he will face a public opprobrium as he has never done before.”
