THE POLICE AND THE PEACE CORPS
Rabiu Garba argues that the police are mischievous
‘’The devil is the father of lies. But members of the present generation have made tremendous improvements on it so much that even the devil is green with envy’’ -Jonathan Swift
In furtherance of its desperate bid to ensure that its evil nay premeditated desire to serve as the undertaker for the Peace Corps of Nigeria (PCN) out of existence is realised at all cost, no lie is considered too ‘sacrilegious’ to be told against it by the Police, including lying on oath. This explains why this supposedly foremost government law-enforcement agency has long parted ways with the truth in its official dealings with the public.
Ever since it invaded the new corporate headquarters of the PCN, arrested and detained the National Commandant, Dr. Dickson Akoh and 49 other officers, the Police, in trying to justify their action against the Corps, have been feeding the public with half-truths, or worse still, outright lies.
As a concerned parent of one of the officers of the corps, I have been following the altercation between the police and the corps and while in the court on Tuesday, October 24, 2017 to witness the proceedings over a motion-on-notice filed in October 2017 by the police to seal the headquarters of the Peace Corps in Jabi, Abuja (an office that has been under lock and key by the police since February 28, 2017), I stumbled on an affidavit deposed to at the Federal High Court, Abuja on Monday, October 23, 2017 by one Sgt. Philip Tumba of the Criminal Intelligence and Investigation Department (CIID), legal section of the FCT Police Command, Abuja. The aforementioned affidavit, I make bold to assert, is a complete misrepresentation of the issues at stake.
One of such noticeable misrepresentation is that the new official headquarters of the PCN situated at No. 57 Iya Abubakar Crescent, Off Alex Ekwueme Way, Opposite Jabi Lake, FCT Abuja is a ‘’proceed of crime’’. The police further claimed that the statement by the corps that the complex was rented was a ‘’fabricated lie and falsehood’’ designed to ‘’deceive the honorable court’’.
The police further went on to declare with magisterial impudence that investigations (purportedly) conducted by it revealed that the said property belongs to the corps. To add insult to a festering injury, the police equally averred that the complex was ‘’built wholly by the Defendants (Corps) with illicit money derived from criminal acts of Advance Fee Fraud and Money Laundering’’. Nothing can be further from the truth.
The mother of all misrepresentation in that affidavit is the claim that the ‘’Nigeria Police did not at any time seal the building,’’ stressing that what it did was to ‘’merely maintaining the normal and professional routine observatory patrol of a scene of crime to prevent further commission of crime and illegal tampering with vital exhibits in the interest of justice and overall public good.’’
First and foremost, I wish to respond to some of these misrepresentations by the police starting with this last assertion that it did not seal off the office of the corps. This claim flies in the face of the press statement issued by the Force Public Relations Officer, CSP Jimoh O. Moshood dated March 1, 2017. In that press statement, the FPRO amongst several other issues said: ‘’it is in furtherance of the above that the Nigeria Police Force, the personnel of the Military, Department of State Service, had in a joint security operations swooped on the Head Office of the Peace Corps of Nigeria on February 28, 2017 situated opposite Jabi Lake, Utako, SEALED OFF THE BUILDING (emphasis mine) and effected the arrest of one Mr. Akor Dickson, the leader of Peace Corps of Nigeria and 49 others for investigation in the interest of public safety and security. They will be arraigned in court on completion of investigation.’’
This triggers the following questions: between the FPRO and Sgt Tumba, who does Nigerians believe? Do these conflicting statements not confirm the publicly held opinion of the present Nigeria Police as an institution that has scant regard for truth?
To further clarify some of these issues, it has been reported that one DSP Abdullahi Abubakar, an administrative officer with the State CID FCT Command allegedly locked the corps office complex and went away with the key. Till date, the key is allegedly still with him, claiming to be acting on ‘’orders from above’’, even without a valid court order. If the police are indeed sure that the documents of the building tendered by the corps in the court are cooked up, why didn’t they buttress their assertion with superior documents to counter that of the corps? It is not enough for the police to deny the authenticity of the documents, let them go further by proving it with their own documents.
This same property, which the police claimed was built by the corps was actually erected in 1985 and used initially as an apartment and suites before the corps rented it from the owner this year, with an initial deposit of three years.
No doubt, the police in their frenzied bid to tarnish the hard-earned international reputation of the Corps patently ignored the need to do a diligent investigation on the true ownership of the property from AGIS, even when the Peace Corps leadership had tendered the tenancy agreement and receipt of payment it entered into with the agents of the bonafide owners of the property. The current police onslaught against the corps does not surprise keen observers of Nigeria’s history as it did the same thing to the Nigerian Security Organisation (NSO), the precursor of the current DSS, NDLEA, Federal Roads Safety Corps (FRSC) and of late, the Civil Defence when their bills were passed by the National Assembly. Judging from the way and manner the police have been going about this matter, it is becoming irresistible to discountenance the allegations flying around that one of the officers in charge of legal services, FCT Police Command, has not been discharging his official responsibilities with due diligence. Critics alleged that he has been standing his oath of office on its head, ostensibly to satisfy certain vested interests.
On this note, since the police authorities cannot sanction him because he is protecting its interest, the Nigerian Bar Association (NBA) should rise up to the occasion by properly sanctioning him with a view to protecting its well-known reputation.
It is a sad commentary on the nation’s legal jurisprudence that a case that has already been taken over by the Attorney-General of the Federation and Minister of Justice, can still be allegedly interfered with by a so-called officer without fear of repercussion, as Nigerians are currently witnessing in the case between the Peace Corps and the Police.
In that same aforementioned affidavit, the Police went on to further lower their esteem in the eyes of the whole world when they described their closure of the Peace Corps offices nationwide, especially the National Headquarters, Abuja, which the police had sealed off with Armoured Personnel Carrier and a pick-up van conspicuously stationed in front of the office as a mere cordoning off of a ‘’scene of crime to secure it for further and detail investigation.’’ Garba wrote from Abuja