The Inspector-General of Police, Mr. Usman Alkali Baba, has directed the Deputy Inspector General of Police (DIG), Force Criminal Investigation Department (FCID), to investigate allegations of gross human rights abuse, extortion, intimidation, and abuse of office levelled against his Chief Security Officer (CSO) and some officers of the Special Tactical Squad (STS) by an Abuja based Publisher.
The Publisher of Daily Focus, Alhaji Sanusi Muhammad Inuwa, had through a petition sent to the IGP alleged that Mr Hamza Galadima, a Deputy Superintendent of Police (DSP), who is the IGP’s CSO, ordered some men of the STS to invade his Sokoto country home and forcefully brought him to Abuja without a warrant of arrest. Inuwa who spoke to New National Star last week claimed that he was locked up in a cell with hardened criminals for 40 days before his plight was made public by his friends which prompted the CSO to hurriedly arraign him in a Magistrate court. According to him, the court’s attention was drawn to the fact that he had been in a Police cell for over 40 days and the prosecutor did not present before the court the First Information Report(FIR).
The court was persuaded to grant him bail, which it did, but the Police prosecutor frustrated his gaining temporary freedom as he was quickly rushed to the Keffi Correctional Centre when he spent some days. At the Keffi Correctional Centre, Alhaji Inuwa alleged that the prosecutor, a Warder, one of his staff, and some court officials forced him to transfer N435,000.00 into the bank account of his staff which was shared by the prosecutor, court officials, and Correctional Centre officials. Inuwa said his trouble with the CSO to the IGP started when the CSO bought a piece of land from his company for N13million.
According to him, DSP Galadima paid N10million out of the N13million and refused to pay the balance. Instead of paying, he said the DSP started to develop structures on the land which was not part of the contract they had. He said in the course of persuading the police officer, his staff stumbled on some stories on the embattled police officer which he felt were uncomplimentary thus his resort to self-help. The Publisher said his petition to the IGP prompted the nation’s number one Policeman to direct his Deputy to go into the root of the issue. According to him, although DSP Galadima initially refused to appear before the DIG’s team of investigators, he finally did when he saw the IGP’s body language. So far, Inuwa disclosed that it had been established that the men that invaded and destroyed his house in Sokoto were on illegal duty, he was kept in an STS cell for over 40 days and that he was a victim of an organized cartel operating within the Wuse Zone 3 Magistrate court and Keffi Correctional Centre where he was allegedly swindled of N435,000.00. “My finding revealed that there was no signal from Abuja to the Sokoto State Police Command for the visit to my house. I was able to discover that the STS officer (Sergeant Abubakar Takwando from Kaduna state Command) was the one that destroyed almost all the doors in my house, seized my International Passport, confiscated N300,000.00 found in my home, and extorted N435,000.00 from me while I was in the Keffi Correctional Centre for nine days, “ he stressed, adding that his lawyer had sent a petition to the Federal Capital Territory Judicial Council, the ICPC and the Police Service Commission.
Attempts to get Mr. Frank Mba, Force Public Relations Officer to comment on the incident failed but an officer in the IGP’s office told this newspaper that the IGP is a polished gentleman who is determined to be fair and just to everybody that appears before him. He said it was deliberate on the part of the IGP to transfer the case to the DIG FCID since he wanted to get to the root of the matter. It was gathered over the weekend that both the petitioner and the suspected Police Officers might appear before the DIG FCID this week.