INSPECTOR GENERAL OF POLICE: MOHAMMED ABUBAKAR
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BEVERLY HILLS, July 30, (THEWILL) – As the race for who succeeds Mr. Mohammed Abubakar as Inspector General of Police peaks, some top northern leaders have reportedly presented Mr. Bala Hassan as their top candidate.
Abubakar is expected to pull out of the police force today having clocked the mandatory 35 years in service.
Bala Abubakar Hassan is Assistant Inspector General of Police (AIG) in charge of Zone 10. He had served as Commissioner of Police in Rivers, Edo and Borno States, as well as Commandant, Police Staff College, Jos.
The same leaders had earlier fielded Mr. Suleiman Abba, the Assistant Inspector General of Police in charge of Zone 7, but jumped ship following disturbing revelations on Abba’s shady past.
THEWILL gathered that the resort to Bala Hassan followed desperate moves by some top northern leaders to keep the police top job in the region.
Bala is from Kano, the same state that has produced former IGP Adamu Suleiman, and the same zone that has produced four other IGPs – Mohammed D Yusuf, Ibrahim Coomasie, Hafiz Ringim and Abubakar.
The North West has produced the most number of IGPs, and has the highest number of AIGs and Commissioners of Police.
However, Bala’s candidacy may have run into a credibility storm following his indictment by a police committee report for “conspiracy, forgery and stealing”.
As Commissioner of Police in Rivers State, he had allegedly framed up a former colleague, Mr. Augustine Okpara and auctioned the suspect’s exhibit vehicles to himself and cronies when the matter was still in court.
In the “Police Investigation Report RE: Case of Conspiracy and Fraud reported against the Exhibit Section RE: Request for Police Report’ with Reference No. CR:3000/X/SFU/, the police panel indicted Bala for ‘conspiracy, forgery and stealing”.
The report was dated 8th Dec., 2010, and signed by Douglas U. Agbonleni, Assistant Commissioner of Police (Admin) for Commissioner of Police Special Fraud Unit.
The report had confirmed a petition by Okpara that Bala, who was not particularly in good terms with him, had out of vendetta, misled the police headquarters into auctioning the petitioner’s vehicles at ridiculously low prices.
As ‘punishment”, the Police Service Commission (PSC), the body empowered to discipline and promote officers, redeployed Bala to the Legal Department of the Force headquarters, Abuja. From there, he was promoted Assistant Inspector General of Police.
Bala has since claimed Okpara, with whom he joined the police in 1982, was out to smear his name having been dismissed from the police.
Bala, in an interview with The Punch newspaper claimed that “Okpara duped UBA Choba of N48m in Port Harcourt”, saying “that is the genesis of this problem”.
According to Bala, the “Force CID then arrested him and put Okpara’s vehicles there. Part of the stolen money was used to purchase those vehicles. Okpara is a dismissed policeman. He stole pipes when he was an ASP in Diobe and was dismissed from the force in 1995.”
However, AIG Bala has refused to comment on the police report that indicted him for “conspiracy, forgery and stealing.”
A Commissioner of the PSC lamented the decay that has hit the police institution.
“As a police officer, you not only should be above board, but should be seen to be so. In civilised societies any officer with as much as a query cannot attain certain ranks. Here we are talking about an officer who has been indicted for fraud.
“When we raised questions on MD Abubakar’s role in the Jos crisis, some people felt we didn’t like his face. He was accused of religious partisanship. As IG, he showed the world on which side of the divide he was as far as the war on Boko Haram is concerned,” he stressed.
“The responsibility of appointing an IG is solely that of Mr. President. The candidate he chooses would go a long way in telling the world if the President wants business as usual, or if he really wants to create a police force than can meet the present challenges of securing lives and properties,” he added.
