The newly appointed Acting Inspector General of Police, Solomon Arase, has taken over as the Nigeria’s 18th IGP.
Arase was named the Acting Inspector
General of Police following the removal of his predecessor, Suleiman
Abba, by President Goodluck Jonathan on Tuesday.
The new IGP warned potential lawbreakers
that the police would not hesitate to deal decisively with anybody
caught breaking the laws while taking over from his predecessor in Abuja
on Wednesday.
He stressed that the police would deal
decisively with troublemakers just the way it was committed to the
protection of law-abiding citizens.
Arase said that it was his mission to
ensure that the police took over its deserved place in the area of
providing effective internal security in the country.
He said, “…Unrepentant felons that may
want to put our common will to test, the message is being relayed here
loud and clear that in securing the law abiding, we shall also not
hesitate to deploy our potent assets to deal firmly and decisively with
deviants.
“If the quality manpower potential of the
force are blended with purposeful and motivated leadership at strategic
level, the lost primacy of the force within the internal security
architecture of our beloved country can and will be restored.”
He said that the police under his
leadership would come up with a strategic document that would emphasise
intelligence focussed and a reassuring policing system with respect for
human rights.
He said that the immediate challenge
before the police was the need to ensure a successful conduct of re-run
elections in some states and also ensuring the smooth inaugural ceremony
for elected office holders.
He stressed that the police had the
capacity to actualise the desire to aid hitch free re-run elections and
to ensure peaceful inauguration of elected officials.
He stated also that the police would
partner the Independent National Electoral Commission to ensure that the
issue of electoral violence was erased from the nation’s electoral
system.
In his comments, the outgoing IGP called for support for his successor to ensure a successful conclusion of the elections.
Meanwhile, a former Commissioner of
Police in Lagos State, Alhaji Abubakar Tsav, has said President
Jonathan’s decision to sack Abba smacks of vindictiveness.
Tsav said this in a telephone interview with one of our correspondents, in Abuja, on Wednesday.
Tsav explained that while it was true
that the constitution gives the President power to hire and fire, the
timing of the decision was faulty.
Nigerians, he said, would like to know
why the IGP was sacked “because there is definitely something fishy”
about the way the IGP was forced out of his job with four years left
before his due retirement date.
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