Atiku-Agbaje group wants IGP sacked over irregularities

Atiku-Agbaje Media Engagement Network (AAMEN) has called for the sack of the Inspector General of Police, Ibrahim Idris.

This followed the recent occupation of the Akwa Ibom State House of Assembly by police authority.

The group in a statement yesterday by its Executive Director, Felix Oboagwina, said the police siege on assembly complex was a deliberate coup by the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC).

The group accused the police boss of aiding and abetting the APC, in the dispute that has split the lawmakers into two camps.

AAMEN expressed concerns about the several anti-democratic abuses by the police under Idris against known opposition voices.

It cited the refusal by police in April to stop thugs who invaded the National Assembly and stole the Mace and subsequent failure to arrest and prosecute anyone for the infraction

Another was the July’s stopping of the convoy of the Senate President, Dr. Bukola Saraki, and the Deputy Senate President, Senator Ike Ekweremadu, from accessing the National Assembly complex.

There was also the November 5, dismissing by the police without investigation, a reported assassination attempt on Ekweremadu and his family.

Alo mentioned was the April’s police harassement of Senator Dino Melaye and the withdrawal of the lawmaker’s security detail.

Also in October, the group added, the police attacked with teargas a peaceful protest in Abuja led by the Senate President, Sokoto Governor Aminu Tambuwal and PDP National Chairman, Uche Secondus over the controversial Osun State governorship poll in October.

AAMEN said that the police IG had clearly lost his professional impartiality and had demonstrated gross incapacity to provide the neutrality required in the 2019 polls.

AAMEN added that Idris had brazenly changed the commissioners of police in PDP-controlled Bayelsa State, in which it had seen eight CPs within two months.

“It is clear that the action of the police under President Muhammadu Buhari reflects a hangover from his short-lived tenure as a military dictator, when in 1983 he staged a coup to upstage the Second Republic,” the group said.