BENIN CITY – Chief Press Secretary to Edo State Deputy Governor, Comrade Ebomhiana Musa has further clarified action taken by the state government to stop the arrest and detention of some of its senior appointees by men of the Nigerian police. Some police officers who claimed to be from the special squad unit of the Inspector General of Police office in Abuja stormed the ancient city of Benin, Edo State capital Sunday evening with a list of some senior government officials marked for arrest and onward transfer to Abuja for interrogation.
But the state Deputy Governor, Rt Hon Comrade Philip Shaibu, on behalf of the state government intervened and stopped the arrest because it was a slight on the state government, describing it as ” an invasion that negates the true tenets of rule of law”. He went further to say that ” as a government we deserved to be notified of the arrest of our officials, especially a government that came to power on the campaign to maintain law and order and to respect the human dignity. If they had notified us, we would not have stopped them from doing their job as law enforcement agency. But we felt slighted with the way the men went about the arrest in a clandestine manner”.
According to the CPS “On Sunday evening the message filtered in that the Special Adviser
to Governor Godwin Obaseki on Security Matters, Hon Andrew Momodu was arrested and detained at the Police Command.”
Paraphrasing Momodu on the said development, the CPS stated, “Momodu said he left a church programme in company of his wife and went to his business place along
Airport Road. After taking stock of sales of the day, , he decided to go home but some persons came out of a Hilux van and acosted him, saying they were policemen. They identified themselves with their police identity cards. This was at around 9 pm. .
“They brought out a detention order which authorised the arrest. When the wife alerted some government officials, he was traced to the state police headquaters where we found him in a cell.”
He stated that in the midst of the confusion, the Deputy Governor made some frantic telephone to the Force Police Public Relations Officer (PPRO), Frank Mba and other top hierarchy of the police and was informed that Andrew Momodu, Osaigbovo Iyoha, Special Adviser to Obaseki on
Politics (Edo South) and Head, Public Works Volunteer (PUWOV), Murtari Osagie were among those invited for questioning by the police. “Comrade Shaibu made a commitment in his capacity as the state Deputy Governor that Andrew be released to him that night, promising to personally bring him and others to Abuja,” the CPS stated.
“After a long wait in the open at the premises of the state police command headquarters, the Deputy Governor was able to effect the release of Momodu in the wee hours of Monday (past 12 midnight) with the promise to personally hand them over to the police authority in Abuja instead of having them whisked away as common criminals.”
. The obviously eleted Shaibu said: Th Inspector General of Police has brought in new reforms to the police force, hence he needs maximum support to succeed.
“These police officers who came here may have gone beyond their briefs in carrying out this brazen invasion of our state. They may have embarked on this mission to satisfy some political intrests somewhere. The Inspector General is well traveled, well informed and enlightened officer. With all these coupled with his sound educational background, i don’t want to believe that he authorised this invasion” Shaibu said.
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He advised that the police should not allow themselves to be used under the current dispensation by anybody, no matter how highly placed in the society.
He stated that despite the level of provocation undermining whose ox was being gored, this was a government that had come to stay and was poised to maintain the rule of law and order, adfing that the era of impunity was over for good.
