A contest of wits and drama has raged in Abuja over several weeks between the Nigeria Police and Senator Dino Melaye [APC, Kogi West]. The latest episode featured the Police stopping him from embarking on an official trip to Morocco and forcefully trying to transport him to Lokoja to aid on-going investigation into alleged possession of firearms. The Police said Melaye failed to honour an invitation by the Kogi State Police Command, hence they got Immigration officials to stop him from traveling.
Later the same day, Police arrested him, bundled him into a bus for the trip to Lokoja, only for the public to hear that Melaye fell or jumped off from a police vehicle and ended up in hospital. Police said he sustained injuries when he jumped out of the moving vehicle conveying him to Lokoja. Dino on his part said the Police was acting out a plot hatched by Governor Yahaya Bello of Kogi State to kill him, given their very public political falling out.
Meanwhile the Lokoja investigation of alleged possession of firearms also featured curious twists and turns. The prime suspects in the case who had told police that Melaye supplied them with firearms somehow escaped from custody at the Kogi State Police Command. Police Inspector General Ibrahim Kpotun Idris was so miffed by it that he removed the state Commissioner of Police. The commissioner was however reinstated when the suspects were rearrested a few days later.
Dino’s tangle with the Police goes beyond the topical Lokoja investigation over alleged illegal possession of firearms. That case was preceded by another one at an Abuja High Court in which he is charged with providing the Police with false information about an assassination attempt on his life. At the same time there was a massive push, with visible support of the Kogi State government, to recall him from the Senate. That process however ended at the weekend when the Independent National Electoral Commission [INEC] announced that only ten percent of the voters who purportedly signed the recall petition turned up at the polling stations and verified their signatures. As such the petition could not proceed to the referendum stage.
Alleged supply of firearms to thugs is a serious charge which the police must thoroughly investigate. However, the drama between the Police and Dino from inception had political undertone which the Police need to be careful about. the officers involved in the investigation have conducted themselves with a mixture of overzealousness and incompetence. While it must do its duty of investigating crime, especially possession of firearms given the security situation in the country, it must remain above board and worry for its image lest it is dragged into a fight by two unscrupulous political factions.
Even though Senator Dino Melaye is well known to be a volatile man who is given to controversy and drama, the police could have avoided being sucked into his script if they had pursued the matter in the right way. The Police said they contacted the Senate President and the Clerk to the National Assembly over Dino’s invitation. This is the proper procedure with respect to the invitation of public officers who are undergoing Police investigation. Why Dino did not honour the Police invitation and why the two top National Assembly officers did not facilitate his honouring it, remain to be explained. Even though Dino had personal misgivings about his safety in the hands of the police in Lokoja, the matter should have been sorted out by the Senate President.
While Dino failed to honour the Police invitation, the Police also failed by orchestrating a simple procedure of administering criminal justice to assume the undeserved status of drama which distracted the country during a period when more critical issues of security should have been attended to. Finally, Senator Melaye and Governor Yahaya Bello should stop their political cat and mouse game and apply their time and energy to solving the problems of their constituents.
Credit: Daily Trust
