NEWS: IF I WASN'T A SENATOR, INSPECTOR GENERAL IDRIS' POLICEMEN WOULD HAVE PLANTED A GUN ON ME - ISA MISAU
Recently,
you accused the Inspector General of Police, Ibrahim Idris, of being
involved in a financial scandal amounting to N120bn. What is the scope
of the allegation and what evidence do you have?
I made that allegation because I know
that oil companies, oil servicing companies, multinational companies,
corporations, big hotels, embassies, oil marketers and private
institutions dealing with the police pay for services rendered by the
police and the amount is in the range of more than N10bn monthly, most
of which goes into private pockets. I said if this money was collected
legally and properly documented and accounted for, the police would be
better for it. I suggested that instead of the police always complaining
about the lack of operational funds, such money should be paid into the
government’s coffers so that it can be appropriated. Apart from that,
the police are about the only institution you hear that state
governments donate vehicles and operational funds to. There should be a
way to know what every state government is contributing or donating to
various state police commands.
As we speak, there are no records. You
don’t know what the Federal Capital Territory Command spends on the
police; the same with Kaduna, Kano and elsewhere. You will only see on
television that so-and-so state governor has donated 20 Hilux vehicles
to a police command. What about operational vehicles budgeted annually
by the Federal Government for police commands across the states? There
is no state in Nigeria where a governor doesn’t give money to the police
on a monthly basis. If we want to get rid of corruption, we must start
by being accountable. If a state government is donating equipment to the
police, there should be records – records should be kept at all levels.
This will reduce waste because when the police come for appropriation
at the National Assembly, we will be in a position to say, ‘Look, you
were given 100 vehicles in Kaduna, 250 in Rivers and so on.’ As we
speak, nobody can tell you the number of serviceable vehicles the police
have because they are collecting vehicles and equipment from
individuals, states and international donors. Even embassies pay monthly
fees for special protection (by the police).
How do you know this?
I worked in diplomatic protection at some point.
How true is it that you and some of your colleagues are putting together a bill to legalise the collection of these fees?
Yes, we are working on a bill. We want a
situation where, instead of these fees or levies going into individual
pockets, they would be paid into government coffers so that government
will have records of what is going to the police, so that it will help
in the appropriation process. This money can be used to improve police
training, housing and provide equipment to help the police become more
efficient.
What is the genesis of your face-off with the police boss?
I was in the office of Senator Baba
Kaka, who is the Chairman of the Senate Committee on Rules and Business,
when a reporter saw me and said he heard that policemen are paying
N500,000 for special promotions. I told them, ‘It is more than N500,000’
because some people called me and said it was even up to N2.5m. There
and then, I put a call through to some people who are still in service
and they confirmed this to the three of us (present) that the allegation
was true and it was frustrating a lot of good people out of service.
Even one of the people who spoke said if he had capital to start a
business, he would have since left the service. The story was reported
(in the media) and the Police High Command and the Police Service
Commission became uncomfortable with the exposé.
Normally, it is the Inspector General of
Police that makes recommendations which he sends to the PSC for
approval. Special promotion is alien to the Police Act and the PSC
guidelines. All officers in the Nigeria Police Force are also guided by
civil service rules. Within these rules, promotions are based on merit.
But most of the special promotions you have in the police today are
given to policemen attached to politicians and other VIPs (very
important persons). All the policemen and officers being killed in
Maiduguri (Borno), Lagos, Port Harcourt (Rivers) and other troubled
zones do not get considered for such promotions. When I granted that
interview, they set up a funny panel headed by a retired assistant
inspector general of police, who is also part of those involved in the
whole thing (special promotions) – how can the IGP bring a retired AIG
and make him head of a police unit to investigate police matters? The
retired AIG sent one deputy commissioner (of police) and one other
police officer to my office to engage me. They wanted to know the people
who told me what I said. I told them that the people I spoke to are
serving police officers and I cannot compromise their safety by giving
up their names because I have to protect people who give me information.
I have to protect my informants.
What steps did you take after the visit?
After that meeting, I wrote an official
letter to the Police Service Commission demanding a list of
beneficiaries of special promotions from 2009 to date. The commission
got scared and called me through somebody from my local government to
say they wanted to sit down and speak with me. But I said I was not
going to sit down with anyone because we are trying to reform the
system. After this, I don’t know what happened – the retired AIG wrote
to me to say they wanted my statement regarding the matter – this is a
retired AIG writing a letter to a senator using the official letterhead
of a serving inspector general of police. I have a copy of the letter.
Can you see the level to which the service has degenerated to? It is
like a retired permanent secretary writing an official letter using the
letterhead of a serving minister.
After this, I granted another interview
in which I said the Nigeria Police Force and the Police Service
Commission cannot be judge and jury in their own case. I suggested that
the Department of State Services or the Independent Corrupt Practices
and Other Related Offences Commission should investigate the allegation.
This got the IGP enraged and he started issuing press statements to
attack my character. I have been interacting with previous IGPs,
including Suleiman Abba, who was in charge of the security at the 2014
National Conference. My late father, AIG Hamman Misau, retired from the
police after 34 years. When he died during the conference, Abba took
personal charge of ensuring that the necessary things were done up till
when he was buried. I am not an unknown entity within the police.
Concerning the issue of
special promotion, when does a police officer qualify for such promotion
and why has it become contentious?
On July 11, 2016, I wrote a letter to
this IGP in which I detailed information I received about the corruption
which has been introduced into the system (police). (Misau displayed a
letter titled, ‘Corrupt use, abuse and misuse of special promotion in
the Nigeria Police Force by past Inspectors General of Police and the
Police Service Commission.’) I wrote that (reading portions of the
letter): ‘I hereby bring to your attention, the unwholesome corrupt use,
abuse and misuse of special promotion in the Nigeria Police Force…I am
particularly disturbed, given my position as Chairman, Senate Committee
on Navy, a retired police officer and member of the Senate Committees on
National Security and Intelligence and Anti-Corruption and Financial
Matters, that this abuse negatively impacts on the level of respect the
force now enjoys from sister security organisations due to the apparent
non-standardisation of the promotion in the force.
‘Special promotions are understandably
given to gallant and courageous officers who risk their lives to serve
and protect their fatherland. Regrettably, this incentive given as a
motivation has now been bastardised. The records now show that only
officers attached to, associated with or related to politicians are now
considered for special promotion.’ I went on to say that sadly, gallant
officers who ought to be considered for such promotions are not
recognised, neither are officers on special anti-robbery operations,
special investigations and intelligence officers. The use of special
promotion on a massive, corrupt scale started with the curious promotion
of the former Chairman of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission,
Mallam Nuhu Ribadu, and 133 others. This officer was promoted from
assistant commissioner of police to assistant inspector general of
police within a space of two years by the former IGP, Mr. Sunday
Ehindero, and the situation was however remedied by Mr. Parry Osanyande,
the then chairman of the PSC who reversed all such promotions.
Rather unfortunately, this trend bounced
back during the tenure of Mr. Mike Okiro through the period of MD
Abubakar, Suleiman Abba and assumed the worst dimension under the tenure
of Solomon Arase. The Police Service Commission appears to have
abandoned its core mandate of recruitment, training, discipline and
retirement of officers to engage exclusively in promotion racketeering.
The abuse of office has not only worsened corruption in the force but
has bred animosity among officers, especially those passed over. This
has led to lack of capacity within the service, low morale among
officers and other policemen, and without discipline, no organisation
especially a security agency like the police can function effectively.
Some officers so promoted find it hard to give orders to their
subordinates, who in actual fact are their superiors. Some have attained
such ranks as commissioner of police without operational experience and
this has led to a display of lack of capacity when the security of such
states comes under threat. The present inspector general acknowledged
my letter and called to thank me and even said he was going to set up a
committee to investigate the matter. Unfortunately, instead of doing
just that, he continued (with the practice). When he did his own special
promotion, I even met one of his staff and I said to him, ‘Ah, we are
trying to correct this anomaly and you are now a beneficiary.’ The
officer said, ‘Oga Hamma, if we can’t beat them, we should join them.’
That was what an assistant commissioner of police told me. This was a
man with whom we were fighting the injustice together and all of a
sudden he became a beneficiary.
How do you think this issue can be dealt with?
Simple, all politically motivated and
corrupt promotions should be reversed. Discipline, training and
re-training of officers and men should be enhanced and the welfare of
officers and men and their families should be given priority.
Why did you refuse to attend the junior officers’ course at the Police Staff College, Jos?
I am not a magician. If you are working
with a VIP, like I was at that time (Misau was the Aide-De-Camp to the
then Minister of FCT, Senator Adamu Aleiro), the service normally writes
you an official letter nominating you for the course and another letter
is written to your principal informing him that the services of his ADC
are required elsewhere or that he is being sent on a course, and a
replacement is sent to take over. This never happened in my case. I was
never informed about the course. They did not post a replacement. This
happened in a country where a serving Minister of Justice (Chief Bola
Ige) was assassinated because his security details looked the other way,
and to date, the security people are facing criminal charges. I could
not leave my duty post without proper procedure and no replacement was
sent.
The police also accused you
of refusing to report to the Niger State Police Command when you were
posted out of the FCT. How true is this?
I reported and was properly documented. I
gave my letter of voluntary retirement to the commissioner of police.
The commissioner forwarded the same to the then AIG Zone 7 with a
covering letter that I had submitted my letter. The AIG in charge of
Zone 7 duly forwarded it to the IGP and the process was followed through
until it got to the PSC – that is the procedure. This was done and I
have copies of all these letters. The moment I submitted the letter,
whether they replied or not is not an issue; because if they had issues
they would have replied to say I couldn’t leave until I have done this
or that. After the PSC received my letter, I was given an identification
card given to retired police officers upon retirement. I spent 10 years
and four months in service.
But you were accused of
desertion, with the police saying there are documents indicating you
went AWOL (absent without leave). What happened?
The provision of the law when it comes
to the issue of voluntary retirement from service is that you give three
months’ notice or one month’s salary in lieu of notice and attach it to
your letter as the case may be. There is nowhere in the constitution
that says you can be compelled to work for an employer when you wish to
leave. My employment ended from the point I dropped my letter of
voluntary retirement with the commissioner of police, Niger State
Command. I paid one month’s salary in lieu of notice.
The police said the letters of disengagement you presented to the public were forged.
If they have two letters, that is their
business because I was given the letters in my possession by the same
commission. I was not there when they were writing it. I don’t know how
they processed it. How can they invite me to verify a document which was
signed by a person who has since left the commission and relocated to
the United States of America? So, who is verifying the signature? And
why are they talking about sighting the original when, four days after,
the inspector general declared that the letter in my possession was
forged? He wrote the PSC that they should verify whether my letter was
forged.
The inspector general of police issued a
press statement on August 24 that my letter was forged, and on the 28th
of the same month, he wrote to the Police Service Commission to find
out the authenticity of my letter. What is happening shows what the
police under the current inspector general are capable of doing to
ordinary citizens when they are desperate to implicate an individual. If
they can do this to a senator you can only imagine what ordinary
Nigerians go through (at the hands of the police on a) daily (basis). If
it was an ordinary person who came out with this allegation, maybe by
now they would have planted a gun to incriminate him for a crime he
didn’t commit.
You have been invited by the Police Service Commission. Are you going to honour their invitation?
There is no way I will honour such an
invitation. The only people they have the right to invite are members of
their staff. They have the right to call serving police officers or
people seeking for employment but they have no right to call even a
person selling recharge cards on the street. It is an abuse of office
for them to invite a senator to present his original documents for
verification. It is my personal property.
What motivated you to join the force in the first place?
My late dad influenced me a lot. I
joined the force out of respect for him. I was working in Port Harcourt.
I had my National Youth Service Corps programme in Shell but my dad
encouraged me to join the force.
How did you become a politician?
I have always been a politician right
from my days in school as a student unionist. I participated during the
(Ibrahim) Babangida transition period. I contested during the era of
zero party and became one of the 30 delegates. I have always been in
contact with my people. It never crossed my mind to join the police but
my dad felt the police was the best place to bring about change and
enhance public good. But I have always been an activist in and out of
uniform. I have always told those around me that I was leaving the
service to go to the Senate because I knew that I would make a greater
difference on society in politics because when you are in the police,
even when you see things going wrong, your opinion is limited to your
rank. I am the kind of person that, once I see injustice, likes to speak
out. I found out that the police force was not a place for me.
Where do you think reforms in the police should begin?
No society can make meaningful progress
without an effective police system. Any anti-corruption move that we are
making will fail without the police keying into it. This is because
most of the functions which the ICPC and the Economic and Financial
Crimes Commission are performing today were originally functions
performed by the police. The police must be carried along in this first.
The police are the first agency that should be reformed because it is
the face of our country for most visitors – law and order are the basic
ingredients of a functional society and this is the core duty of the
police. If we don’t get it right, I am afraid we cannot get our society
to function optimally and this is the truth. What we are doing is not
personal; we are after the good of the society, and we must leave behind
a functional society for future generations.
As the Senate resumes next week, what do you intend to do about this issue?
I will certainly table it before the
Senate. There is nothing personal about this whole thing, it is not the
police versus Misau, and it is about the proper use of our resources for
the good of Nigerians. This 8th Senate has supported and will continue
to support every genuine effort by Mr. President to deal with the
monster of corruption. I am confident that when the anti-corruption
treaty recently signed by the President with the United Arab Emirate is
brought before the Senate, it will be passed.
Credit @Punchng
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