Rights Group Condemns Appointment of Northerner as IG

A human rights group, International Society for Civil Liberties and the Rule of Law(Intersociety), on Tuesday stated that the appointment of Abubakar Muhammed Adamu another Northern Muslim from Lafia, Nasarawa State, as Inspector General of Police (IG) is a slap on the face of Southeasterners.

The group said the shame of shunning of Igbo officers in the appointment of a new IG has affected some South-east leaders and governors who have been canvassing for President Muhammadu Buhari.

In a statement signed by the Chairman of the group Board of Trustees (BoT), Mr. Emeka Umeagbalasi, Intersociety said it is a shame that despite the calls for the appointment of an officer from the South east for the IG position as a way of placating the people of the zone for their non-representation in the security architecture of the country, but the president did otherwise.

According to the statement, “It is also our position that the appointment of Police AIG Adamu is not only a slap on the face of that Igbo nation, but also the Buharists in Southeast, including the Southeast Governors in general and Governors Willy Obiano and Dave Umahi of Anambra and Ebonyi States in particular.

“They should go and bury their faces in shame. If such brazen regional isolation in the country’s top security architecture could repeatedly be manifested and cemented in this crucial national election campaign period, then the position of the Igbo nation in the country’s scheme of things in post 2019 election Nigeria is irreversibly or intractably doomed and darkened.”

The group said in one of its publication, it disclosed that out of the country’s 22 top security and justice establishments and their headships, 18 are held by the North and four by the South; out of which 19 are Muslims with only three are Christians.

It said none of those 22 top security positions was allocated to the Southeast, and that it had advised the president to show that he does not hate the people of the Southeast, as has been severally believed, by appointing a top police officer from the zone to the position of the IG upon the retirement of the previous ones, but regretted that such plea failed. 

It said: “The Buhari administration is totally condemned for refusing to appoint a senior police from the Southeast as the next IG to console the region from the past four years of central and regional socio-political segregation, exclusion and structural violence. “

The group also said the former IG, Ibrahim Idris, stayed12 illegal days after his stated date of retirement, alleging that he may have falsified his date of birth to gain 12 more days in office, after he was supposed to vacate office on January 3, 2019.

“The Federal Government of Nigeria is therefore called upon to thoroughly and conclusively investigate former IG, Idris, over the subject matter and recover all public funds, including overheads and operational costs as well as paraphernalia allowances, personal earnings and other illegitimately authorised expenditures; cumulatively authorised funds spent by Idris in his 12 illegal days in office as Nigeria’s IG,” it stated.