APC Says Mbu Killing Threat Barbaric, Inciting

Posted by African Examiner Featured, Latest Headlines Saturday, February 14th, 2015

By Niyi Adeyi, Lagos – Following his recent frightening utterances, the Nigerian leading opposition All Progressives Congress (APC) has described the AIG in charge of Zone 2 Command, Joseph Mbu, as a lawless and barbaric policeman who should urgently be called to order by his boss before he begins another around of his trade-mark nihilism in his new posting.

APC in a statement issued Saturday in Lagos by its National Publicity Secretary, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, said Mbu’s actions since he was posted to Lagos have neither dignified the police as an institution nor portrayed him as a well-trained law enforcement agent.

The party held that the temperament, comportment, utterances and actions of Mbu, who by rank, is a very senior police officer, were capable of inciting mass killings, violence and anarchy.

”Since his posting to the Zone 2 Command, this contumacious policeman has exhibited an egregious act of lawlessness by barging through the Lekki Toll Plaza without paying toll and then ordering the arrest of policemen and workers at the Plaza. Is it not an irony that a man who is trained to enforce the law is the same who is breaking the law?

”But that action, as bad as it was, pales into insignificance when compared to his most recent statement in which he was basically inciting the police against the citizenry and encouraging the killing of civilians. It is sheer irresponsibility for a senior policeman to say that for every policeman who is killed during the election, he will kill 20 civilians.

”Lest we are misunderstood, our party will never condone the killing of police personnel or of any law enforcement agent for whatever reason, just as we will not condone the killing of any innocent Nigerian. If a senior police officer does not know how to convey to his officers and men that they should protect themselves while also avoiding extra-judicial killing of any citizen, then the funds spent in training him have been wasted,” APC declared.

The party said such language as ‘fire-for-fire’ ‘If one of my men is killed, I shall kill twenty of them’ or ‘you have the power to stop the Governor’ was inappropriate, inciting and barbaric, especially under a democratic dispensation, and was most unbecoming of a senior law enforcement agent.

The opposition therefore said Mbu should be held solely responsible for any violence or killing of innocent citizens before, during and after the elections in the area under his command.

It also warned Mbu to mind his utterances and actions, shake off all the vestiges of lawlessness and barbarism for which he has become infamous and comport himself like a senior police officer that he is if he wished to succeed in his new assignment, adding ”if he continues in his old, unedifying ways, he will face a public opprobrium as he has never done before”.