Group demands investigation into removal of Akwa Ibom CP

Akwa Ibom Liberation Movement (AILM), a pressure group, has urged the Police Service Commission to open investigation into the activities of policemen in Akwa Ibom.

The commissioner of police in the state was replaced shortly before the elections while Kaoje Ibrahim was deployed as the new police commissioner.

But AILM said Ibrahim compromised police affairs and structures in the state during the elections.

In an open letter to the police service commission signed by Emmanuel Sam, the group leader, AILM accused Ibrahim of partiality, incompetence, ineptitude and partisanship.

The statement reads in part: “the Akwa Ibom CP has not shown courage, independence and strength expected of an officer of that professional height. Since he got his posting to Akwa Ibom State, CP Ibrahim has shown that he has subjected himself to external influence particularly to DIG Udom Ekpudom (rtd), who has become the de facto Police Commissioner, and now dishes out orders to the commissioner and other officers within the command.”

The group expressed shock over a comment by the CP who reportedly told INEC that the police cannot guarantee safety of the INEC staff when his services were sought for the announcement of election result for Essien Udim local government area during the presidential election.

The statement said if the police under Ibrahim confessed that it cannot guarantee security for a few staff of INEC, it therefore means the CP did not have the capacity to provide compact security to state and must be immediately redeployed.

“The commissioner has been so partial in his dealings against the standard practice of the force. Few days to the elections, the General public were alerted of the planned movement of some APC thugs from Edo State into Akwa Ibom. Few hours after the alert, youths from the border community of Obot Akara, arrested 15 loaded buses with thugs who confessed they were heading to Uyo for burial of an unknown person,” he said.

“Barely 24 hours after the same thugs were arrested and handed over to the police in Uyo, they were released on the orders of the CP who was said to have directed the command PPRO, Odiko MacDon to issue a statement claiming that the thugs caught were in the State to attend APC youth rally, whereas the APC had issued a press release denying knowledge of such people.

“It therefore means that the CP is more APC than some of the APC leaders in the State. It is sad to disclose that there have been reported increase in house-to-house robbery in the State. This can not be divorced from the huge infiltration of the State by those suspected thugs and importation of arms during the election.

“The height of the CP’s ineptitude was when he told the INEC REC that the police cannot guarantee safety of INEC staff in Essien Udim for the announcement of the results of the presidential election in the local government area.”