I miss our Africaness. As judge over a dispute, it is an age long Africa tradition that you listen to both parties before passing judgement. Here Mbu, CP RS, tells his own side of the story. By Stanley Azuakola The Rivers state commissioner of police, Mbu Joseph Mbu, is arguably the most popular policeman in the country today. The frequency with which he has appeared on the news is quite unusual for a police officer, and for the most part, coverage of Mbu has been mostly negative. Respected Nigerians including Nobel laureate Wole Soyinka, legal luminary Femi Falana, among others have called for Mbu to be relocated from Rivers due to his alleged highhandedness, partisanship and disrespect for the rule of law. However there is a school of thought that argues that Mbu’s negative coverage is the result of the superior propaganda machinery of the Rivers state government. The Guardian newspaper gave Mbu the chance to tell his own side of the story in an in-depth interview. This was Mbu’s own narrative of the happenings in the state with lots of additional information about him, his family and his career. Mbu was more than willing to begin the interview by telling his interviewer, Odita Sunday, that all that Gov. Amaechi of Rivers was interested in doing was to push him away from Rivers State by force “so that a puppet that the governor can kick and shout at could be posted.” He decided that the best way to explain the fact that he was the principled one in the dispute was to tell the readers the kind of person he is and his philosophy of life. “My name is Mbu Joseph Mbu. I am a graduate of Political Science from University of Lagos,” he said. “I joined the Police in order to serve this nation. I was given employment with the Nigeria Customs Service, but I preferred to join the Police. I have held various appointments in the Police. I was the Director of Police Education and under my watch, we witnessed great transformation in our schools. I have been a controversial person right from time because I am very strict. If you want to know how strict I am, you can see it from the naming of my children. The name of my first son is Kwame Nkrumah and my second son is Patrick Lumumba. My third son is Fanon, I have a daughter named Indira, and I named her after Indira Gandhi. I want you to know who I am. I am not easily pushed over.” Mbu portrayed himself as an anti-corruption crusader, a strict no-nonsense officer, and a professional policeman who would not be pushed around by any politician. When he was Director of Police Education for three years, Mbu narrated how he “fought contractors who took money and failed to renovate our schools.” He boasted that no contractor could say: “I gave Mbu N10, 000.” “I went to the United States of America for a conference and I got to know about Books For Africa programme, I brought books worth N350 million and Laptops free of charge and distributed it among our schools,” he said. He also recalls how it was he who conducted the election that brought Governor Adams Oshiomhole back to power in Edo State. “My IGP sent me there to do the right thing. The IGP gave me enough money and I paid everybody and I refused to collect any kobo from any politician,” he said. As commissioner in charge of the Nigeria Mobile Police Force, Mbu said that he brought back order and discipline, such that he was given a commendation by the Inspector General of Police. From the Mobile Police, he was sent to Oyo state as commissioner, and confessed that “it was not easy between the governor and me for the first three weeks.” Soon though, he said they began to get along very well, as the APC governor of Oyo, Abiola Ajimobi, “later came to understand me.” In his words, “The headquarters of Oyo State Police Command was not in order. You would not even know you were passing through a Police Command. I said: ‘why won’t armed robbers be invading Ibadan everyday.’ I renovated the whole place and I got a Commendation Letter from the IGP. The Commissioner of Police’s house was like a forest. I pulled everything down and with the support of the great gentleman, the Governor of Oyo State, Mr. Abiola Ajimobi, and the CP’s house has become a modern edifice. The present Chief Medical Director of UCH, Professor Alonge, did the landscaping of that house.” From Mbu’s description of Ajimobi as “the great gentleman”, it’s clear that he enjoyed his relationship with the governor. He described that relationship in details during the interview, narrating how Ajimobi would call him at 2.00am and seek advice, how his relationship with members of the state assembly was so cordial that up till now when he travels to Ibadan, he buys fish for the Speaker who still sends him text messages. “Ajimobi came out to say that I was the finest officer he had seen in the Police. If Governor Ajimobi travels, he would call me and ask for my shoe size. We were very close but he knew my stands on issues and he did not witch-hunt his opponents. He is not a tyrant. He is highly respected. He does not force people to respect him, he exudes respect. He talks to you himself. He calls me personally,” said Mbu. Mbu claims that he was not happy when he was told that he was being moved to Rivers as commissioner because of his love for Oyo. But “as an officer, you don’t query your boss over any transfer. It is against our rule of engagement. I resumed in Rivers State and thinking I was coming to work with my brother, I felt elated.” Mbu says the Rivers state he saw was not the one he expected to see. “I discovered that policemen were not controlling traffic. It was the Man O War and the Rivers State Traffic Management Authority who were doing that. I called a conference and warned officers and men to sit up or shown the way out. I said: ‘ If you are in the Nigeria Police, you must work’. “Everybody is now doing his job very well. When I came here, a very important personality in Oyo told me that the governor was his friend. He called him on my behalf to say I was a good officer. I asked later: ‘Have you called him and he said Yes! But he was cold. It was four months ago he told me that Amaechi told him I was posted to come and fight him,” he said. He said that Gov. Amaechi did not receive him well. But worse than that, Mbu said the Rivers Police Command, was in disarray with so many things wrong. According to Mbu, “if the governor wanted to hold a meeting with his commanders, he would ask his Aide De Camp (ADC) an Acting Assistant Superintendent of Police to call me a few hours to the meeting. I would ask: ‘Is that how you hold meetings here? The state where I came from, the personnel in the Chief of Staff’s Office would write the service commanders and attach the agenda for the meeting as well as the minute of the last Security meeting. But I have not seen it happened in Rivers State. “One day, I told his Excellency: ‘ I am not saying we should not have emergency meetings, but we should be having formal security meetings. A meeting you would be attending with the governor, the deputy governor is not there, the Chief of Staff is not there, Special Assistant Security is not there. We just come for meeting and no one is taking minutes. We talk and talk without minutes. It is not proper. “He talks to me through his ADC. He does not call me. An ASP would call me and say ‘ something happened in a particular place, why should you allow it to happen? I would tell him to ask His Excellency whether Police are ubiquitous or ghosts? Governor Ajimobi would never allow me to face such insult from a very junior officer. “The next time that ADC called me, I warned him and threatened to visit him with police disciplinary action when next he would call to give me instructions. He stopped calling me and the governor started calling me personally.” Narrating further, the problems in the command, Mbu said that “when I came to Port Harcourt, every commissioner under Governor Amaechi had five mobile policemen and Counter- Terrorism Unit men attached to him, I withdrew all of them and gave them one conventional policeman each. The Speaker of the House had 25 policemen and I said: “We must prune them to nine. Local Council chairmen were having seven policemen each and I saw it as an abuse. How do we protect the public if all my men are attached to politicians? Because of this action, we did not witness any bank robbery since I came till December. The governor became very angry with me, saying I was sabotaging him and I was sent to fight him. He started insulting me in the public. He told me: ‘look CP, if IGP gives instructions in Abuja, I and the Commissioner of Police would sit down and adjust it. I told him I could not do it because “I am enjoying the favours of my IGP, who is my immediate boss. I don’t want to create an issue of breach of trust because he is my boss. He treats me like a servant. “There was a day we were to have the security meeting. He called me and asked me to come back again for five times, as if I was his house-boy. He once told me I was sent to Rivers State to kill him. There was nothing he did not tell me and I would always keep my cool.” He said when the Minister of State for Education, Nyesom Wike visited Rivers, he protected the minister because that was his duty. Prior to that time he had never met Wike. However Mbu claimed that the governor got angry and wondered why he should protect him. “It was because of their party problem that the governor roped me into the matter and I know nothing about that. The same governor started accusing me that I leaked secrets to Abuja. I told him that we write our reports to the IGP after every security meeting. He wanted to create problem between me and my colleagues in the other services, he said that the Army Brigade Commander would now become the Head of the State security meeting in his absence, I said: ‘No’, that cannot happen in a democracy. I brought out a circular showing him that the Commissioner of Police “is the head of the other security agencies.”” Mbu claimed that Amaechi once told him in the presence of witnesses that “My CP, if we were in good terms, I would be giving you contracts’. I told him: ‘Your Excellency, I am not interested in all these things. I don’t even have a house apart from my father’s two-storey building.’” Hitting Gov. Amaechi some more, Mbu said, ”This is the only state that the governors’ convoy is like a gang star convoy, this is the only state that all plate numbers of the governor and other commissioners are concealed; I insisted that they must not be concealed. I pleaded with governor, I said ‘You are the elected governor of Rivers State, your supposed to be respected, but you drive like a cowboy, if you conceal all your numbers, the people will not respect you. You should hang your party flag and the national flag with the coat of arm, your symbol of authority opened for people to know who is passing by’. All the policemen attached to him behave like gods. They don’t take instructions from us. One day, the governor called and said: ‘ CP, do you know you were the first person to give query to my ADC? I said ‘Yes, he is a police officer under me and if he misbehaves, I will give him query’. He told me, ‘Do you know you were indirectly giving me query? I said: ‘Your Excellency, I could not give you query. The boy in question is part of the police. If he misbehaves, we would have to discipline him, according to the rules guiding the job’. I don’t go to Deputy Police Commissioner (DC) to say “I want money from the governor, I do my job, I don’t beg for money. “ The police commissioner ended the interview by saying the reason Amaechi’s camp was not getting permission to hold their rallies was because they never sought permission. Considering the amount of allegations against Amaechi made by the police boss, we expect a reaction from the governor’s team anytime soon.
Posted on: Tue, 21 Jan 2014 20:18:54 +0000
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