RSG, IGP And Court Verdict

The judiciary, last week, filliped The Tide’s ageless commitment to truth when it vindicated the newspaper’s position on the probe panel – clearly a kangaroo court – hurriedly constituted  by the Police High Command, to uncover those behind the violence that marred the December 10, 2016 legislative rerun elections in Rivers State.
The Tide had, in an earlier editorial, questioned the propriety of constituting that panel and alerted on its illegality, considering the fact that it was deliberately meddling into purely election matter; a matter that it had absolutely no business with, in the first instance, just to please its paymasters.
Thank Goodness. The Federal High Court in Abuja, penultimate Tuesday, declared as illegal, the Special Joint Investigation Panel put together by the Inspector General of Police (IGP), Mr Idris Ibrahim, to unmask the dramatis personae behind the rampage that hallmarked the aforesaid polls.
In a 106-page judgement, Justice Gabriel Kolawole described the panel, which included operatives of the Department of State Service (DSS), as “a strange contraption whose existence will create legal doubt”.
The 15-man panel, Kolawale held, was a body unknown to any law in Nigeria , and that neither the Police Act, Security Agencies Act nor the 1999 Constitution, as amended, empowered the IGP to set up and co-opt the DSS which was not answerable to him (IGP) but to the Presidency, into the Rivers re-run probe panel.
Kolawole said the panel, in so far as it was not limited to the Nigerian Police Force over which the IGP has authority, but co-opted another security agency, neither has the backing of any known law in Nigeria nor the Criminal Justice System.
He further held, among others, that the Police panel lacks the power to indict any person or to make definitive pronouncements.
Like every conscientious individual that sees the truth of a matter and says it as it is, not minding whose ox is gored, The Tide agrees no less with the fearless and respected jurist for his superlative and commendable display of uncommon courage in affirming the rule of law and in defending the constitution and the tenets of our hard-won democracy.
We applaud Justice Kolawole for that judgement, moreso, as it came at a time when judicial officers are daily hounded by the agents of  State to do the biddings of some unscrupulous powers  that be, much against the grain of the very etiquette undergirding the free exercise of the time-honoured judicial independence.
When the 19th century Jihadist, Uthoman Dan Fodio, saw conscience as an open wound which only truth can heal, he  meant that conscience must at all times be nurtured by truth, only the truth and nothing but the truth, no matter whom it hurts. This is what the court has done in  upholding the letters and spirit of the law and the constitution, in this case.
It is irrefutable that the judgement would serve as the ultimate elixir to aggrieved individuals or organisations seeking judicial respite for the violation of their rights by the Nigerian Police or any other security agency.
The judgement will also, indubitably, serve as a queer tonic for the Nigerian Police and indeed other security outfits that have so far proven  to be, for all  intents and purposes,  not too different from Hitler’s Gestapo. We say this because we had, for the umpteenth time, lamented the excesses of the executive arm of the Federal Government in flagrantly and arrogantly using the Police or the DSS to go after perceived enemies and critics of its actions and inactions.
If anything, the judiciary, by the verdict of the Federal High Court, has proven to be a veritable purgative for a highly constipated security agency as the Nigerian Police which has, over the years, defied all known pills to make it healthier to properly perform its statutory duty of safeguarding lives and property in the country.
The Tide is, indeed, gladdened that the judiciary, with that verdict, has rekindled the confidence of the citizenry in our march towards enduring democracy and ipso facto, proven to be the last hope of the common man.
While we exhort the Nigerian Police to imbibe the message of the court verdict, we implore the judiciary and the media to assiduously maintain their constitutional watchdog role in sustaining  the nation’s democratic project.