IG Apologises for Detaining Journalists

[Richard Akindele]

The police apologised yesterday to three journalists for detaining them after the Independent Corrupt Practices and other Related offences Commission (ICPC) complained they had been misquoted. The journalists had quoted ICPC officials who claimed the police and the Power Holding Company of Nigeria (PHCN), were the most corrupt in the country.

Officers at the ICPC complained to the police they had been misquoted. The journalists were detained by the Inspector General for about four hours yesterday. But after listening to tapes of the journalists' interview with the ICPC, they were released, while the Inspector General apologised. Inspector General, Sunday Ehindero, said: "I'm sorry for wasting your time and delaying you unnecessarily."

The journalists, Benjamin Auta of Daily Trust, Funmi Peter-Omale and Patrick Ugeh of ThisDay newspapers were detained by detectives from the office of the Commissioner of Police, 'X' Squad in the force headquarters from where they made statem ents. The retraction letter from the commission addressed to the Inspector-General of Police, read in part, "the commission wishes to state categorically that the news report as published is totally false and a complete misrepresentation of what transpired at the press briefing of the commission held on Wednesday in Abuja."

The ICPC letter signed by Folu Olamiti, the resident consultant (Media and Event) of the commission, said neither Mr. Mike Sowe, the spokesman of the commission who was quoted in the newspaper reports nor any member of the commission made that statement. The newspapers had quoted Mike Sowe as saying that a survey had revealed that the two agencies, PHCN and the police are the most corrupt establishments followed by local government chairmen in Nigeria. However, when the IG summoned the detained reporters to his office, he demanded to know the facts of the matter, saying, "You pressmen are witness to everything we are doing to fight corruption in this forc e.

Even members of the public are convinced that we are doing a lot and they are seeing changes. "If you want to attack me on the pages of your newspapers as an individual, I have no problem with that. But if it has to do with the police as an agency, please report the true situation. Why report that we are the most corrupt in the country when you know that is not true? "I agree we have some bad eggs in the force. But you have seen clearly what we are doing with them. We are arresting, prosecuting and dismissing them from the force. The ICPC wrote to me denying that they did not make that statement to you. So where and how did you get that statement" the IG asked.

Other superior police officers like the Deputy Inspector-General of Police (DIG), Investigation, Mr. Onovo and the AIG Zone 7, Mr. Kieran Dudari, who were at the meeting also stressed the need for the press to always clear such stories with the police high command before publication.

Daily Trust.

[Richard Akindele]

Nigeria has no freedom of speech, or freedom of the press.

Why in the world would journalists be detained by the police simply because PHCN was accused of being corrupt? This is one of the reasons why our nation is stagnant. Something like this will not happen in a civilised world.

[Richard Akindele]

No matter by what rule of justice and fair play we consider the arrest and detention in custody of Mr Mike Sowe, head of public enlightenment at the Independent Corrupt Practices Commission (ICPC) on the orders of the Inspector-General of Police, Sunday Ehindero, recently, it is something very arbitrary, highhanded and unfair. Coming from a police officer of the IGP's reputation and stature moreover, this action comes as an unpleasant surprise which renders his public image as a reformer and a stickler for decency and discipline in our police force suspect.

We are at a loss to understand how Mr Ehindero would react to such a case of some other person or public official being the accuser and judge in a matter which affects him or her, without due process and/or judicial inter-mediation between the accused and the accuser. No matter the level of provocation or perceived injury to the assumed good name of his organisation, it must be taken for granted that the IGP is a strong enough respecter of justice and civility in a democratic polity founded on law and the healthy defence of human rights to forbear from taking such an action in such a towering rage as to becloud good judgment and fair play.

Certainly, every fair-minded citizen of this country will know that it is tempting for us to applaud the arrest and detention of Mr Sowe, given the fact that the police had earlier taken four journalists into custody in a far-too-hasty reaction to the uncomplimentary story which so provoked the police leader. But the very fact that he immediately released the journalists and apologised to them upon the discovery that their arrest and brief detention was unfair and unjust should have put a strong cautionary restraint on him, such that he would hesitate before taking any further action in anger, especially as the ICPC official in question is also a high-ranking law enforcement agent in his own right. As this matter now stands, we find absolutely no justifi cation for the IGP's rather rash decision to let anger dominate his actions in the public domain and to stand in judgment in a matter to which he and his organisation are interested and injured parties, and strongly urge him to release the other party for legal and due process intervention if he cannot let the entire messy affair fade away at this juncture.

Even if the report and data which informed Mr Sowe's declaration of the Nigeria Police be one thousand years old and not just five years, it has now become clear that they were based on solid and meticulously-gathered evidence by a number of respectable university researchers. Besides that fact, there are the considerable empirical daily experiences of the majority of Nigerians which confirm quite undoubtedly that our police organisation is sadly still unacceptably corrupt, notwithstanding Mr Ehindero's yeoman efforts to sanitise it since he assumed office. All of us know that our police are indeed one of the most corrupt bodies in the land, and no amount of making Mr Sowe the fall-guy for such an unsatisfactory state of affairs can undo that basic known fact. We therefore urge the IGP once again to immediately release the ICPC official and turn his full attention once more to the Herculean task of continuing to clean up our police setup. It is most important for him not to uphold corruption in the police by committing further injustice in defence of it.

Daily Trust