Now that El-Rufai Controls Army, DSS, Police

After boasting recently that he has the 1 Mechanised Division of the Nigerian Army in Kaduna, Department of State Services and the Nigeria Police to arrest whoever he wants to arrest in the state, Ejiofor Alike wonders why the Kaduna State Governor, Malam Nasir el-Rufai, has not deployed these massive federal forces to root out the terrorists that have made his state unsafe, instead of threatening political opponents

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any Nigerians were stunned last week when Governor Nasir el-Rufai of Kaduna State boasted that he has the 1 Mechanised Division of the Nigerian Army in Kaduna, Department of State Services (DSS) and the Nigeria Police to arrest and detain anyone in the state. The Kaduna State governor made the shocking revelation at an interactive session organised by the Arewa Joint Committee in Kaduna, while narrating how the presidential candidate of the Labour Party (LP), Mr. Peter Obi allegedly arrested him in Anambra State in 2013 when Obi was the governor of the state.

He accused the LP candidate, who also spoke at the event of arresting and detaining him for 48 hours between November 15 and 16, 2013, when he was seeking a second term in office on the platform of the All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA).

He said: “In 2013, I went to Anambra State as an official of the APC to witness the by-election for governorship. Your next guest, Peter Obi, as governor, got me arrested and detained for 48 hours in my hotel room.

“Now, I am the Governor of Kaduna State and he’s coming to Kaduna. In addition to the police and the State Secret Service, I have one Mechanised Division of the Nigerian Army here, if I need to arrest and detain anyone. But we are northerners; we are civilised. We don’t do things like that. I wish you all safe journey back to your destinations.”

However, an old video that made mockery of el-Rufai’s allegation against Obi has since gone viral. In the video, the governor explained that he was arrested by “three state security service (SSS) officials holding AK-47 threatening me that they have directive from Abuja to restrict me to my room.”

He did not mention Obi or the Anambra State Government as being behind his arrest.

The Kaduna State governor also failed to tell his audience that neither Obi nor the Anambra State government was the respondent in the suit No: FHC/AWK/CS/310/13, which he filed against the DSS and the Attorney General of the Federation and Minister of Justice for his detention.

He also failed to disclose that it was the DSS that the Federal High Court presided over by Justice Ibrahim Bature Gafai, ordered in September 2014 to apologise to him and also pay him N2 million in damages for the unlawful detention, and not Obi or his government.

However, the Kaduna State governor met his match in the LP presidential candidate.

Obi, at the same event in Kaduna, described the governor’s comment as a reckless one, which should not have been made in the public space.

“I believe that as we grow older and are saddled with more responsibilities, we are expected to become circumspect in our thinking and avoid recklessness in our speeches and utterances.

“How does the circumstance he referred to relate to bigotry, to warrant such a label?

“All I do for people like el-Rufai is to pray for them and encourage them to concentrate on doing those things that will better the lots of Nigerians rather than engage in hate speeches that will divide and destroy the country,” Obi said.

Obi said it was impossible for him at the time to order agents of the DSS from Abuja to arrest el-Rufai.

“The police commissioner that was there then was from Adamawa State, and the AIG was from Nasarawa. There’s no way I could have done that.

“My chairman, I never asked anyone to arrest you. As governor of Anambra State, I had the best policeman in Nigeria as ADC, and he is from Kano; so, where will I give the order and tell a man who lives in my house every day that I want to deal with his people, and he will say yes?

“I was in APGA during the elections in 2013; the ruling party was PDP; how can I instruct the PDP in Abuja to detain anybody? Even me as state governor was detained in my own local government,” Obi explained. He said that it was suspicious for a private citizen to travel to another state and move from one local government area to another on the day of an election unless the person belongs to an accredited election monitoring group.

Interestingly, the same el-Rufai who boasted that he has the Nigerian Army, the police and the DSS to arrest anyone had cried out on several occasions that governors failed to tackle insecurity in their states because they are not in control of the federal security forces.

For instance, the governor, who featured on a live Nigerian television programme from  Dubai, United Arab Emirates (UAE) on November 30, 2020, had argued that the October 2020  #EndSARS protest by youths exposed the weakness of the governors despite being called the chief security officers (CSOs) of their states.

“We are all frustrated. I am frustrated in my state; many governors are frustrated in their states; we are called chief security officers only in name; we have no control over cohesive instruments of the state,” the governor said.

He added, “We are almost helpless. The #EndSARS protest clearly showed the limit to the control of governors over the police and the military.

“Some of us have more influence than others, but to a large extent, you ask the commissioner of police to do something and he has to clear with the Inspector-General of Police; this is the reality.

“We are not in control of the police; I don’t determine who gets posted to my state as CP and if I give him directives, he can decide to flout the directives. So, we are all frustrated,” he added.

He suggested the decentralisation of the police force, stressing that Nigeria is the only federation in the world that has only one police force.

Since el-Rufai took charge of Kaduna in 2015, the state has known no peace as thousands of people have been killed by terrorists in a ruthless fashion. Thousands of homes and communities have also been destroyed and sacked by these monsters.

He raised the alarm recently that security agencies know the location of the bandits wreaking havoc in the state, but have refused to bomb their hideouts.

Having admitted that he has the Nigerian Army, police and DSS to arrest anyone he wishes to arrest, el-Rufai should quickly arrest these terrorists and make his state safe. With his latest admission, the world now knows that his previous lamentations were part of the mischief of some Nigerian leaders to explain away their shameful performance and failure to tackle insecurity in their states