Friendship should bring gratuitous joy, like the bliss afforded by art or life and the best of guilty pleasures. But in many a friendship subsists great fault. That is because the eyes of a friend often tells lies. Ask Oba of Lagos, Oba Rilwan Akiolu; his inability to discern the depth or shallowness of former vice president, Atiku Abubakar’s professed love for him has become his Achilles heel.
Oba of Lagos, Oba Rilwan Akiolu, monday disclosed that former Vice President, Abubakar Atiku;Director-General of Department of State Services (DSS), Mr. Lawal Daura, others plotted his ouster from the Nigeria Police in 2002.
The monarch also said it was possible for them to convince former President Olusegun Obasanjo to summarily retire him from the Nigeria Police because the Police Service Commission (PSC) “is a toothless bull-dog.” He revealed this at a stakeholders’ meeting held in Victoria Island, Lagos, describing his retirement from the force as conspiracy by chieftains of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) to win 2003 elections in Lagos.
At the meeting, the monarch lamented the state of the Nigeria Police, which he said, was crippled by the previous military regimes, especially from 1984 to 1999 and outright neglect by the successive administrations.
He said he “was a victim of that circumstance. Then Atiku, Daura and others sat down and advised President Obasanjo that if he wanted to win Lagos in 2003, I should be removed. It was written on paper.”
The monarch therefore, defended the former president, whom he said, argued that he “did not know anything about it. He had to send for the Inspector-General of Police (IG) because the then Chief of Staff challenged the plan to retire me.
“For someone to sit at the PSC and determine who retires from the police is unfair. This is not how to run a very efficient and effective police force,” Akiolu lamented.
He condemned the manner former IG Mr. Tafa Balogun, was humiliated out of office, saying Alhaji Gambo “is still bitter because he wanted Balogun to disclose what the PDP wanted him to do in 2003.
“All the money they alleged Balogun was possessing was contributed by some serving governors then. So, the PSC is a toothless bulldog. I have asked the officers who took the federal government to court to withdraw the suit and go and claim their benefits.”
Akiolu narrated what he encountered in 1984 when he was serving as the head of the police strike force, lamenting that it was the military that killed the efficiency and performance of the Nigeria Police.
Unlike in the past, the monarch said President Muhammadu Buhari “is willing and prepared to assist the Nigerian police,” thus urging him to work with open minded people who would give the IG free hand to run the Nigeria Police.
He said: “We are clamouring for community policing at the moment. But I must tell you that it requires dedication, funds and men who are prepared to work. The reason for police barracks collapsing was that
“The federal government needs to release funds to rehabilitate the barracks in order for the Divisional Police Officers and others top police officers to live within the community they have been assigned to work.”
