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Trouble for Two Police Chiefs

By newswatchngr.com 27/01/2012 00:47:00

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Hafiz Ringim, inspector general of Police, and Hassan Zakari Biu, commissioner of police, get marching order to produce a Boko Haram kingpin who escaped from their custody in suspicious circumstances or face disciplinary action

For more than eleven years, Hassan Zakari Biu was out of public glare. Not a few Nigerians, except those in police circles, could remember who he was. It was indeed rightly so. Between November 17, 1993, and June 8, 1998, when General Sani Abacha was head of state, Biu, then an assistant commissioner of police, headed the administration’s Special Task Force on Terrorism, set up to combat bomb blasts that rocked some towns, especially Lagos.

The blasts were often ascribed to the National Democratic Coalition, NADECO, a body of pro-democracy activists, fighting for the validation of the June 12, 1993, presidential election won by Moshood Abiola. In that capacity, Biu even forayed into military terrains – trial of coup plotters. As the junta’s torture expert, he dealt gruesomely with Colonels Lawan Gwadabe, Bello Fadile and others. Thus, he slipped into oblivion as soon as democracy returned to the land in 1999 with the new government of Olusegun Obasanjo declaring that he was undeserving of remaining in the police.

But on Monday, January 16, Biu returned to national consciousness, although with opprobrium. In this sudden appearance, he may drag down and end abruptly the career of Hafiz Ringim, the inspector general of police, the tenure of Caleb Olubolade, police affairs minister, and many police officers for the scandalous escape of Kabiru Sokoto, a Boko Haram kingpin, believed to be second in command in the dastardly organisation that has killed scores of Nigerians through bombings. The Presidency has ordered Ringim, Olubolade and Biu to produce the suspect within 24 hours or face untoward consequences.

For one week, between January 9 and 16, Nigeria had been grounded by nationwide protests against the removal of fuel subsidy by President Goodluck Jonathan on New Year’s Day. The fuel subsidy removal war had pushed to the backburner the slaughtering and continued killing of Nigerians by Boko Haram, the fundamentalist Islamic sect that wants Sharia in all Northern states. The sect’s suicide bombers have unleashed mayhem on citizens first in Borno and Yobe states and later Bauchi, Gombe, Adamawa, Kaduna, Plateau and Niger. It has killed at least 500 persons in the last two years.

On December 25, last year, the group bombed St Theresa’s Catholic Church, Madalla, Niger State, near Abuja. About 48 persons died in the attack while over 200 Christians were hospitalised. On Friday, January 6, members of the sect struck in Mubi, Adamawa State and killed 20 Igbo men and women. Earlier, the sect had issued a three-day ultimatum to Southerners, mainly Christians to leave Northern Nigeria.

Since the December 25 dastardly incident, security agents had launched a manhunt for the masterminds of the Christmas Day bombing near Abuja. Their efforts paid off on January 14. The previous day, one Ibrahim Umar Abba, an indigene of Borno State and a post-graduate student at the University of Birmingham in the United Kingdom, called the permanent secretary of the Borno State Liaison Office in Abuja. According to Baba Ahmed Jidda, secretary to the government of Borno State, in a statement on Monday, January 16, Abba said he was scheduled to catch a British Airways flight back to the UK the following day and would like to spend the night at the Governor’s Lodge in Abuja. The permanent secretary, who at the time, was in Maiduguri, granted Ibrahim Abba Umar permission to spend the night at the Lodge.”

But Abba came with two other persons - an Air Force officer and a civilian. However, security agents had been on the trail of one of them, later identified as Kabiru Sokoto, believed to have co-ordinated the bomb blasts that killed 48 people in Madalla last Christmas Day. Two lorry loads of policemen raided the premises and arrested the three men as well as all the staff of the Governor’s Lodge.

After the gesture to its citizen turned awry, the state government said the matter was a security breach. Jidda decried attempts by detractors to score political points by linking Governor Kashim Shettima with the dreaded sect. “Neither Governor Shettima nor any other top official of the Borno State Government ever knew the said Kabiru Sokoto or the other two men. In fact, their surreptitious gaining of entry into the lodge where His Excellency often stays during his visits to Abuja is a very serious breach of security which has caused acute embarrassment to the state government,” he said.

The three men were handed over to Biu, commissioner of police in charge of Criminal Investigation Department, CID, Zone 7, Police Headquarters, for investigation. Biu, whose son, Tahir, an operative of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC, was killed in the October 1, 2010 Independence Day bomb blasts in Abuja, bungled the assignment willingly or otherwise in unclear circumstances. While an account said he led the operation to Abaji, about 130 kilometres from Abuja, another source said he detailed just four men to search the home of a dangerous, high-profile man arrested by two truck loads of policemen the previous day. More worrisome was the allegation that he bypassed the investigating police officer, IPO, in the assignment.

But trouble began for the escorts on their way to the palace of Ona of Abaji, the traditional ruler of the town. A gang of youths waylaid the Toyota Hilux in which the suspect was being driven and snatched the prized man and spirited him away.

In a terse statement on Monday, January 16, the Police Force Headquarters, Abuja, announced the escape of the suspect and the subsequent suspension of a police commissioner. “The Nigeria Police Force wishes to confirm that a suspect was arrested in a successful police operation and was rescued from a team of policemen detailed to carry out further investigation in the matter,” said Olusola Amore, a deputy commissioner of police and Force Public Relations Officer, FPPRO.

Amore also said:, “The suspect was handed over to a commissioner of police for further investigation and he consequently detailed his men to take the suspect to Abaji in furtherance of investigation. In the course of undertaking this important procedure, the policemen on escorts with the suspect were attacked by the suspected sect gang members and in the process the suspect was freed. The police view this development as a serious negligence on the part of the commissioner of police and have since been queried and suspended him from duty. If a criminal case is established against him and his team, they will be prosecuted.” He, however, refused to name the suspended police commissioner. But the police top shot has since turned out to be Hassan Zakari Biu, the torture expert and boss of the anti-terrorism squad in the Abacha administration.

The escape of Kabiru Sokoto, a Physics and Chemistry graduate, a qualification that places him in good stead to package and co-ordinate the Boko Haram bombings, has provoked outrage in the land, coming barely six months after Aliyu Tishau, another Boko Haram suspect, who had been nabbed by the police and detained for ten months during which he made statements that implicated top police shots, was freed miraculously. He forewarned of the impending bombing of police headquarters, Abuja, slated for June 17, 2011. The police maintained that Tishau was released to a sister security agency for further investigation from whose custody he disappeared. He has not been re-arrested till date.

For President Goodluck Jonathan, the current happening appeared a vindication of his stunning revelation on January 8, at the inter-denominational service to mark the 2012 Armed Forces Remembrance Day at the National Christian Centre. He said that members of the Islamic fundamentalist group had infiltrated the three arms of government and the military. “Some of them are in the executive arm of government; some of them are in the legislative arm while some are even in the judiciary. Some are also in the armed forces, the police and other security agencies. Some continue to dip their hands and eat with you and you won’t even know the person who will point a gun at you or plant a bomb behind your house,” he told the gathering.

The commander-in-chief of the armed forces described the situation as worse than the civil war. “During the civil war, we knew and we could even predict where the enemy was coming from, you even knew the route they were coming from, you could even know the calibre of weapons they would use and so on. But the challenge we have today is more complicated. I remember when I held a meeting with elders from the North-East and some parts of the North-West where the Boko Haram phenomenon is more prevalent, somebody said the situation is so bad that even if one’s son is a member, one will not even know. That means that if the person will plant a bomb behind your house, you won’t know.”

Even so, he praised the security agencies for their efforts. “We have a police force that is about 300,000 in number. Countries that have the kind of challenge that we have today which have about 20 per cent of our population have five times more than that number. That number would have been okay some years back but definitely not the number that can cope with the security challenges we have now.”

A few days after the president voiced his frustration, Audu Abubakar, deputy inspector general of police, DIG, operations, debunked the president’s assertion. During his tour of Bauchi State police command, he told newsmen that the insinuation was a mere speculation as it lacked substantive facts. “Whatever you hear about Boko Haram’s existence in the police has not been proved by anyone,” Daily Sun quoted him as saying on January 18.

He reportedly said: “We the police are like judges. If we have not proved any case we cannot base issue of that magnitude on hearsay. There is need to verify things very well. Until such is confirmed after making arrest, investigation and prosecution in the court of law, before anyone can be declared a member of Boko Haram sect. As of now, we have not detected anyone in the police. This is my personal opinion.”

But Biu’s handling of the latest suspect has made nonsense of Abubakar’s view. And the government is set to deal with the NPF top hierarchy decisively. On Wednesday, January 18, President Jonathan gave the IGP 24 hours to produce the fleeing suspect, believed to be second in command of the leader of the Boko Haram and has been on the police’s wanted list or face severe sanction for negligence of duty. Ringim was queried on the incident.

Caleb Olubolade, police affairs minister, who addressed the press after the Federal Executive Council meeting, ordered Biu’s arrest and placement on close watch. All officers who went on the ill-fated trip were also ordered to be detained.

The IG, according to the minister, was queried and given 24 hours to produce the suspect because “he is the field officer, he has the responsibility to ensure that all operations regarding arrest and all that, are conducted in the usual manner. If he is found guilty of complicity, he will have to account for his mistakes,” adding “Anybody could be sacked including myself.”

Since Sokoto’s escape, scores of policemen have been drafted to the town, the headquarters of Abaji area council of Abuja. Abuja has six area councils. It is just 45 minutes drive to Lokoja, the Kogi State capital, and about one and half hours drive from Abuja Central area.

Hitherto, Abaji was very quiet. This is no more since the escape of Sokoto from the hands of the police and the directive from the presidency to the inspector general of police to produce the suspected mastermind of the Christmas Day bombing of a church in Madalla. Hundreds of well armed policemen have been deployed from the police headquarters in Abuja, under the command of a DIG for the manhunt of Sokoto.

A source, who wishes anonymity told Newswatch, that the paramount ruler of the town as well as Muk Madaki, the officer second in command at Abaji police divisional office, have been arrested and transferred to Abuja, for questioning over their possible complicity in the escape. The palace guards refused to talk to this magazine on Thursday, January 19. A man who simply identified himself as a palace worker said the chief was not around and that he was not authorised to speak to the press on his whereabouts. At the time of our visit on Thursday, several people among them relations of Sokoto and the Imam at his mosque had been arrested and detained for questioning at the Abaji police divisional office.

A source at the office confirmed that Sokoto was brought to the headquarters in Abaji on the ill-fated day accompanied by four policemen. However, there was no entry in the station’s diary as to their mission in the town. The source said it was only after Sokoto had escaped that police officers who were on duty knew.

Senior police officers sympathetic to Boko Haram’s cause are believed to have made Sokoto’s escape possible. Could Biu, an indigene of Borno State, where Boko Haram men began their activities, been one of such officers? Sources said he might be as a revenge for the slaughter of his son by Niger Delta militants who bombed Abuja, October 1, 2010.

Audu Ogbeh, former chairman of the People’s Democratic Party, PDP, and now a chieftain of the Action Congress of Nigeria, ACN, believes that policemen deliberately freed Sokoto. “The so-called escape was packaged at the highest level by an individual who hates this country, who wears uniform of security agency. How does anybody convince us that Kabiru Sokoto was arrested in a Governors’ Lodge in the presence of an air force officer, after he was searched for by the SSS for so many days and then he was handed over to Zakari Biu, who accompanied him nicely to the road and then told him to go home, and he is telling us that he escaped?” he asked newsmen in Abuja, rhetorically last week. He promptly called for Ringim’s resignation and a setting up of a judicial probe to unmask those responsible for the orchestrated escape.

Inuwa Bwala, Borno State commissioner for information, who told Newswatch that the three men nabbed at Borno Governor’s Lodge came together and “apparently knew themselves” was, however, worried about the turn of events. “The intrigues and drama of the reported escape of the alleged Boko Haram suspect from the police does not only sound as fairy tale, it justifies our suspicion to the effect that there may be a grand conspiracy intended to either embarrass the governor and government of Borno State or to eliminate Governor Shettima,” he said.

He raised some posers, the answers to which, according to him, may give a clue into the seeming mystery. He asked: If Sokoto escaped while under escort, how could a man possibly in handcuffs outrun more than a platoon of armed policemen? Could the alleged sympathisers of Boko Haram, which Mr. President said have infiltrated the security agencies, have facilitated the escape?

Femi Falana, a Lagos-based lawyer and human rights crusader, said Ringim should be punished for the escape of the Boko Haram suspect. He also blamed government for ignoring calls to remove incompetent security chiefs. “It was particularly embarrassing that Ringim was retained as the Inspector-General of Police after hosting a co-founder of the dangerous Boko Haram sect last year. When asked to justify the meeting which was held at the police headquarters, the police chief claimed that he handed over the prime suspect to an unnamed security agency. In an interview aired on Africa Independent Television, AIT, later, the wanted suspect claimed that he alerted the IGP, in advance, of the bombing of the police headquarters,” he said.

Falana said he was worried that the serial murderer who bombed St Theresa’s Catholic Church, in Madalla, Niger State, made useful statements to the police on the masterminds of the sect but that in a bid to prevent him from exposing the sponsors of terrorism, he was allowed to escape in questionable circumstances. “Whereas he was arrested by two lorry loads of mobile policemen on Saturday, only three policemen were detailed to accompany him to his house for a belated search. After the escape of the suspect, Mr Ringim attempted to divert the attention of the government and Nigerians by threatening to charge unarmed protesters with treason,” he said.

He called on President Jonathan to remove Ringim without any further delay, saying “The country needs a new IGP who will be ready to partner with the management of the State Security Service to combat the menace of terrorism. However, if Ringim is not punished for the gross negligence which led to the release of two chieftains of the nihilist organisation, I will not hesitate to request the special prosecutor of the International Court to investigate and prosecute him for aiding and abetting crimes against humanity.”

Biu’s suspension last week, a source said, has been duly communicated to the Police Service Commission, PSC, lest it becomes another futile effort as was done by the Obasanjo government in 1999. The former president reportedly saw him at a function and wondered what he was still doing in the force. He eased him out informally. At the expiry of Obasanjo’s tenure in 2007, Biu was said to have petitioned the PSC. Mike Okiro was IGP then. The man who enlisted in the Nigeria Police Force as a Cadet Inspector on March 1, 1977, argued in his petition that he was retired without getting a query and that only the PSC was empowered to punish him.

Parry Osayande, former DIG, and chairman of PSC, recalled him in January 2010, in the twilight of President Umaru Yar’Adua’s administration. Comfort Obi, a member of PSC, told Newswatch that when Biu petitioned the commission and the matter was looked into, the body found nothing against him, not even a query. “It is only the PSC that can sack a police officer. In the case of Biu, he was sacked by Obasanjo, there was no query, no case against him,” she said.

On his return, Biu was posted to the Police Academy, Wudil, Kano, as an instructor. On December 15, 2011, the PSC approved his promotion from the rank of deputy commissioner to Commissioner of Police based on the IGP’s recommendation, barely two years after he was reinstated to the Force.

Sources said Ringim was so affectionate of Biu so much that he made him boss of CID Zone 7, Force Headquarters, unmindful of his allegedly notorious links with killings and bomb blasts that characterised Gen. Abacha’s military junta. One of the victims was Sola Omasola, former security chief at the Murtala Mohammed International Airport, Lagos, who died in a car bomb. Biu was allegedly used to implicate him as a NADECO member, who aided the escape of perceived government opponents through the airport. He was branded a terrorist.

Newswatch learnt that Omasola was neither a NADECO member nor a terrorist as government had portrayed him. To cap his exploits, on August 18, 1998, barely two months after Gen. Abacha’s death, Biu claimed that he had solved the 32-month riddle over the identity of a man who died on January 18, 1996, at the bomb blast that rocked the Durbar Hotel, Kaduna. He claimed he was Bagauda Kaltho, the Kaduna-based senior correspondent of TheNEWS magazine.

However, local and foreign newspapers then had quoted Umaru Suleiman, the then state’s acting police commissioner, to have said that the dead man’s stomach was ripped open, legs shattered and face burnt beyond recognition. “If anybody tells you this is the name of the person, that person must be a liar. We did not see anything, any exhibit along with him that can identify the dead man. The only thing we recovered is a book which he had just bought from the Durbar Hotel and the title of the book is The Man Died, written by Wole Soyinka. He wrote the name Y.Y Yusuff on the book,” the police boss said. Yet Biu claimed almost three years later that the dead man was Kaltho, a journalist.

But discerning Nigerians knew he had lied. At the Justice Chukwudifu Oputa Panel which investigated human rights violations of the Abacha regime, Biu had said that Kaltho was a terrorist who was killed in the process of planting a bomb. James Danbaba, former commissioner of police, who also appeared before the panel, gave a contradictory account. Quoting sources within the police, he said Kaltho was “summarily executed on the orders of the inspector-general of police.”

Having executed the journalist, Danbaba claimed further that a plan was hatched to cover up what transpired by linking him with a bomb explosion. “After Kaltho’s summary execution, a bomb was attached to his corpse and detonated. I reliably learnt that this was directed at selling a story to the C-in-C that a NADECO journalist has died of a bomb explosion, while attempting to plant a bomb, thereby finally covering their track of having killed Bagauda Kaltho and the reason for his murder,” he said. The task of covering up the murder was said to have been given to Biu, once he was asked to investigate the case because he was the leader of a group of loyalists of the IGP, in the Federal Intelligence and Investigation Bureau, F.I.I.B, Alagbon.

At the Oputa panel, Biu said that he had never seen Kaltho in his life. He blamed his death on Major Hamza al-Mustapha, chief security officer to Gen. Abacha. “I have never seen Kaltho in my life, either alive or dead and don’t know the whereabouts of Kaltho. Only the chief security officer to the late Abacha, Maj. Hamza al-Mustapha, can explain what happened to Kaltho,” he said. He claimed that he based his earlier press conference on a report by the SSS which was sent to the Police on December 22, 1997.

Professor Wole Soyinka, who once watched Biu at the panel, said the man was just there to demonstrate his superiority – a fantasy of his own mind. “The garment of contradictions in Biu’s statements was mind-boggling. He shifted blames onto his superiors, entertained the audience with conspiracy theories in arbitrary doses of probability and mind-boggling banality…”

In an interview with the Tell magazine on May 14, 2001, Abubakar Tsav, a retired commissioner of police, who also appeared before the Oputa Panel, said Biu’s testimony was a tissue of lies. “Everything he is saying is not true. I mean the evidence he gave in respect of Bagauda Kaltho. He said he got photographs from the wife of Bagauda Kaltho. He also said he got reports from the SSS through the inspector-general of police, which said the person who was killed in the bomb blast at the Durbar Hotel was Bagauda Kaltho. And he said that he never met Bagauda anywhere in his life. Then how could he come to that conclusion that the man killed was Bagauda Kaltho? He merely saw his pictures. He should be in prison. As far as I’m concerned, he is a prisoner on parole,” Tsav said.

Many other journalists, including Chris Anyanwu and Babafemi Ojudu, both senators, had raw deals in the hands of Biu. The policeman so tortured Anyanwu that she almost lost her sight. Biu was said to have put a gun to Ojudu’s head and threatened to blow it off during interrogation.

Now, alone in the cold under house arrest, what stories will Biu spin for the escape of a suspect under his nose? Nigerians can’t wait for his ranting this time round. A source close to the presidency said what happened in Sokoto’s case was scandalous and that Ringim will go in for it. Already, there is disquiet among the rank and file. Many officers were said not to be happy with the goings on in the force. Their grouse is in connection with the daily allowances paid to the officers and men who were drafted to quell the Boko Haram menace in Borno and Yobe States. Despite this and other constraints, the security agents have recorded some feats in the fight against the sect. They have arrested some members of the organisation who in turn named some of their alleged sponsors including a former governor and an ex-envoy. On November 21, security agents arrested Ali Ndume, a senator, after Ali Sauda Umar Konduga a.k.a Usman al-Zawahiri, a suspect, named him as Boko Haram sponsor.

The suspect also fingered former Borno State Governor Ali Modu Sheriff and the late Saidu Pindar, Nigeria’s former ambassador to Sao Tome and Principe, as the sect financial backers. Konduga said he was trained by Mohammed Yusuf, the late Boko Haram leader summarily executed in police custody in 2009.

Last week, soldiers in Kaduna, arrested Nuhu Mohammed Marafa alias Babawo, a suspected Boko Haram financier. One of his two sons was also nabbed in the operation. When his house was searched security men recovered several arms and ammunitions. Authorities of the 1 Division, Nigerian Army, Kaduna, said he would be handed over to the appropriate agency soon.

Surprisingly, however, as the nation grappled with the escape of one of the most dangerous members of the Boko Haram last week, a Federal High Court in Abuja, Wednesday, January 18, granted bail to six Boko Haram suspects alleged to be masterminds of the bombing of the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, office in Suleja, Niger State, in a sum of N2 million with one surety each in like sum. The six men - Shuaibu Abubakar, Salisu Ahmed, Umar Babagana Umar, Mohammed Ali, Musa Adam and Umar Ibrahim – were accused of detonating improvised explosive devices, IED, at various public places which killed 16 persons at the INEC office in Suleja on April 8, 2011. They were also accused of killing three persons at a political rally in Suleja on March 3, 2011; three peace officers on May 23, 2011, at Dakwa village in Bwari Area Council of the Federal Capital Territory, FCT, and three persons at the All Christian Fellowship Church, Suleja, on July 10, 2011. They were allegedly trained in weapons handling by one Ibrahim Bashir Madalla who is still at large.

Bilikisu Aliyu, the trial judge, said the sureties must be Grade Level 12 civil servants working under the federal government or the Federal Capital Territory Authority and must be resident in Abuja. Each surety must sign a bond of two million Naira while his or her status would be confirmed and verified by the prosecution. The suspects were remanded in the Kuje prison pending fulfillment of their bail conditions. The case was thereafter adjourned to February 7 and 8, for continuation of trial on the grounds that the court could not proceed with the trial of the accused persons due to the absence of the lawyer to some of the accused persons.

Reported by Anza Phillips, Sebastine Obasi, Victor Ugborgu, Pita Ochai and Ishaya Ibrahim