President Goodluck Ebele Jonathan has reportedly sacked the Inspector-General of Police (IGP), Mr Suleiman Abba, and has already made a replacement with the announcement that he has appointed Deputy Inspector-General of Police, Mr Solomon Arase as Acting IGP, with immediate effect, according to a tweet by Dr Reuben Abati, spokesperson of the president.

In the release, the presidential spokesman recalled that the Jigawa State-born Abba, NPM, NPOM, mni was the 17th indigenous inspector-general of police and was appointed by President Goodluck Jonathan, GCFR. Abba, it would be recalled, formally took over on August 1, 2014 officially from former police boss, IGP MD Abubakar (rtd), who had piloted the affairs of the Force from January 25, 2012, when he was appointed, to July 31, 2014, having completed 35 years of service. Abba who hails from Gwaram Local Government Area of Jigawa State holds university degrees in history and law, and has reportedly attended several management and security courses within and outside Nigeria. He is an alumnus of the National Institute of Policy and Strategic Studies, Kuru, Jos.

Before now, speculations were rife in the grapevine that the disgraced police chief fell out with his commander-in-chief for reportedly disobeying an unlawful order to withdraw police operatives from the presidential election's collation centre at the International Conference Centre, Abuja to enable those who intended to disrupt the announcement of the results to successfully execute their dare-devil plot, when it became apparent that the opposition candidate was having upper hand as the results were reeled out installmentally. Erstwhile Niger Delta Minister Godday Orubebe, widely lampooned for his shameful act of disrupting temporarily, the proceedings at the collation centre, has, however, dismissed the rumour as tissues of lies. Observers say the coincidence of the removal of the IGP to the rumour of his breach of the alleged plot of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) was too close to call. A foreign news agency even circulated a story without attribution that Mr Orubebe intended to 'kidnap' Mr Attahiru Jega, the chief electoral umpire, suspected of playing the Northern agenda. This syndicated report never cited any reliable news source. Funnily enough, those who now wants to make a hero out of Mr ABBA, the sacked police chief, conveniently forgot his shameful misconduct at the twilight of his reign, when he directed the commissioner of Police in FCT to stop the Speaker of the House of Representatives, Mr Aminu Waziri Tambuwal, from accessing the green chambers because he had defected to the opposition All Progressives Congress (APC), from the ruling PDP. Then he claimed that a previous court order had ruled that defection should be punished with expulsion from the national or state legislature. People who bandy false stories weaved around some conspiracy theories on the sack of the IGP also forgot that under the Abba, police discipline nosedived to a very shameful dimension; to an extent that erstwhile police commissioner in Rivers State, Mr Mbu, openly sabotaged the authority of the Governor of that State, Mr Rotimi Chibuike Amaechi, just because the governor was in a political combat with the President and his wife, Mrs Patience Jonathan. Under the watch of Mr Suleiman, police operatives in the South-east and most parts of Nigeria went haywire with open extortion of road users, even as extra judicial killing in police detention centres became commonplace, because the trigger happy police operatives who shoot and kill innocent members of the public or even persons in conflict with the law, knowing that it is an official policy to waste suspected armed robbers arrested. They do so because, in their warped imagination, there was really no need taking the suspects to court since they could end up being freed only for them to come back to the same police that nearly put the robbers out of circulation.

IGP Abba took no decision, nor did he enforce any internal mechanisms, to clean up the messy moral deficits weighing down the nation's policing institution. Under him, the police in the North-east became almost extinct following series of bombardments by armed terrorists who raided police armouries for arms and ammunition. Under Abba, a former divisional police officer in Enugu indicted for alleged kidnapping and murder and declared wanted by an Enugu State Magistrate Court, was not only reinstated into the Police Force where he was declared AWOL (absent without leave) for years, but he actually got promoted to assistant commissioner of police and posted to Umuahia as provost: a position that should be occupied by an officer without blemish or such a heavy criminal indictment by a law court. Was it not under Suleiman's watch that armed robbers in Lekki, Lagos - raided a commercial bank and slaughtered several police operatives and innocent passersby - on the day President Jonathan was visiting the state? The police, under the last IGP, became anything but professional. As a result, the appointment of a replacement for this less-than-impressive former IGP should serve as a tonic for a total personnel reform and fundamental structural and architectural reforms of the crime-fighting capabilities of the men and officers of the nation's police.

Solomon Arase must make his mark without further waste of time because he has to restore public trust and confidence in the Nigerian Police Force, conscious of the fact that a policing institution bereft of public trust is as good as dead. He has to enforce strict disciplinary measures and prosecute erring officers who commit crime against humanity, such as extra legal executions. He has to clean up the mess that is the police formations across the country, and ensure that police stations stop being used as brothels whereby female detainees are wantonly and systematically raped by senior police officers. There is no doubt that virtually all police stations and barracks are in such a dirty environmental condition, to an extent that diseases are spread from these outlets. He must clean up the police and rebuild it to make the operatives become people-friendly and professionally competent, just as he has to strengthen the human rights desk and elevate it to a full-fledge department. The sack of IGP Suleiman marks a watershed in the policing history of Nigeria, as it will be remembered as another messy era, when police chiefs took unlawful orders like zombies, to ensure that their political bosses would be happy with them. Let no one deceive Nigerians with adulation that Suleiman Abba achieved any major feat, even though he paraded a string of good graduate certificates. The truth is that his tenure remains a messy era.

•RIGHTSVIEW appears on Saturdays, in addition to special appearances. The Columnist, popular activist Emmanuel Onwubiko, is a former Federal Commissioner of Nigeria’s National Human Rights Commission and presently National Coordinator of Human Rights Writers’ Association of Nigeria (HURIWA). We apologise for the sudden disappearance of the column for some weeks due to the columnist’s foreign medical trip.

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