Jonathan May Drop IGP, March

Official of Security and Exchange Commission (Sec) sealing off a premises used by a Private Capital Market operator for operating a Ponzi scheme in Calabar last Tuesday. Photo: NAN

The Inspector General of Police, Mr Mohammed Dahiru Abubakar has allegedly fallen out of favour with the Presidency and may not be allowed to remain on the job till July when he is supposed to retire from the service, The Tide has learnt.
Abubakar has been lobbying for the extension of his service till after the 2015 general elections but well-connected police sources revealed that he may not even be allowed to stay beyond next month.
“There will be a tsunami in the police soon. The IGP may be removed in March,” a source said last Saturday at the Presidency, Abuja.
The source said it was instructive that the statement announcing last week’s redeployment of 13 commissioners of police was issued by the Police Service Commission and not by the Police Headquarters.
“In normal times, the statement should have come from the IGP’s office,” the source said.
Our correspondent reports that Abubakar stands accused of ethnicising the force by favouring northern Muslim officers while tactfully weeding out Igbo officers, in particular.
Just last Monday, a frontline rights group, the International Society for Civil Liberties and the Rule of Law (Intersociety), had petitioned President Goodluck Jonathan, the National Assembly and the Federal Character Commission (FCC) on the dangers posed by Abubakar’s deliberate exclusion of Ndigbo from producing police top officers in the next 10 years.
“In view of the foregoing, Mr. President, we demand for your immediate intervention and ordering of full scale and conclusive investigation into the promotion and posting policy of the present Nigeria Police Force,” Intersociety had said in its explosive petition.
The group added: “On account of our demand for Mr. President’s full scale investigation, it is our further demand that a thorough shake up should be carried out in the NPF command hierarchy, which will include mass retirement of all serving DIGs and AIGs so as not only to pave way for injection of new blood in the NPF command hierarchy, but also to put in place geopolitically-oriented policy for future promotions and postings.”