17th July, 2013
The Lagos State chapter of the Action Congress of Nigeria, ACN, has said that the increasing insubordination of the Rivers State Police Commissioner, Mr. Joseph Mbu to the authority of the Rivers State Governor and his complicit role in the increasing wave of sponsored crisis in Rivers State is a serious threat to democracy that must be quickly dealt with.
The party said that retaining the Police Commissioner who has shown open bias in the Rivers State crisis and indeed had been supervising series of illegalities and outright banditary by the perpetrators of the crisis amounts to deliberate subversion of the legal authority of the Governor of Rivers State who is the chief security officer of the state.
In a release in Lagos, signed by the Lagos State Publicity Secretary of the ACN, Joe Igbokwe, the party said that from the callous and unguarded statements emanating from the police commissioner and his regrettable action of providing police cover for criminals and thugs to cause havoc and mayhem in Rivers State, Mbu is on a dangerous mission to subvert democratic rule in Rivers State.
It urges the National Assembly to rise up to its role and arrest the wild predilection of Mbu and his sponsors before they cause incalculable damage to the present democracy.
According to the party, “either from his real mission of supervising and indeed helping procure mayhem and crisis in Rivers State, in deference to the mission his masters have for him or in protecting the lives and properties in the state, Mbu has failed woefully and needs to be removed and prosecuted for his shameful role in the continuing crisis.
“A situation where a state police commissioner should not only be used as a tool by criminals and urchins desirous of inflicting maximum harm on democracy in Rivers or cause maximum breach of security but also show naked and abrasive disdain for a sitting governor does not need further argument but the outright removal of such police officer who have shown such weakness of character that he cannot resist being used by people with inordinate ambition and desires. Mbu is like salt that has lost its taste; it is only good for the trash bin so we demand that Mbu should be eased off from the police to protect the image of the Nigerian police.
“With the escalating crisis and the police commissioner’s undisguised partisanship in the crisis, which has manifested not only in his statements but also in his role as the protector of criminals and vandals who visit the state with unrestrained brigandage, we feel that he is a big dent on the image and integrity of the Nigerian police and deals further blow to the force’s image problem.”
The party says it wonders why the Inspector General of Police is still playing deaf to the loud and universal demand for the removal of a police commissioner that not only shows such naked partisanship and interest in the crisis but has embarrassed the entire police force by his regrettable spat with the Governor, the chief security officer of the state.
“If the governor is the chief security officer, as constitutionally guaranteed, having a police commissioner that is beholden to the hideous interests of the antagonists of the governor is like running two governments and we warn that such pose serious danger to the security of lives and properties in Rivers State.
“More than any other thing, Lagos ACN sees Mbu’s uncurbed bias in the Rivers State crisis as the greatest proof that just as the opponents of state police fear that governors will misuse state police, the Nigerian police force is being misused in a bigger scale by the PDP to pursue its nefarious interests. We therefore put up an unequivocal demand for state police, not to procure our political interests, as the PDP is using the Nigerian police to do but to deal with rising security challenges the respective states are facing in the face of the inability of the Nigerian police which is used more as a political attack dog by the PDP,” the party said.
The party demands from the National Assembly “an immediate provision for state police for we believe that if states control their own police forces, people like Mbu would not be employed in the bizarre manner he is being employed by the PDP and the presidency in ensuring the escalation of the crisis in Rivers State.
“We call on the National Assembly to quit playing the ostrich in the Rivers crisis as it stands to consume the same democratic pedestal they are standing on if not curbed. We challenge the National Assembly to immediately curtail the excesses of President Jonathan and his minions who are on a full time business of destabilizing Rivers State so as to achieve their nefarious ends. We call on the National Assembly to immediately order the removal and prosecution of Joseph Mbu who is at the centre of the crisis in Rivers as a way of upholding the constitutional integrity of Nigerian states. We warn that dithering while Rivers is enmeshed in a contrived crisis will cost us our present democracy so the National Assembly should not sit idly by and watch in conspiratorial disinterest as Rivers boil from an orchestrated political crisis.”