Enugu's corrupt police command

Professor Dora Akunyili, newly appointed information minister, is very sad. Akunyili, hitherto Director General of National Agency for Food and Drug Administration (NAFDAC), is moody because of treachery of the Nigeria police (in particular, Enugu state command, headed by Mr. Sanni Magaji) to arraign a god father of a kidnap syndicate in Enugu, Chief Hyacinth Nnubia. Nnubia is a wealth oil dealer resident in Enugu, and his kidnap syndicate is said to have terrorized people of the southeast geopolitical zone for a long time now.

In particular, Chief Nnubia’s syndicate, on December 1, 2008, kidnapped Professor Akunyili’s younger brother, Dr. Paul Edemobi. The gang abducted Edemobi on the fateful day at No. 10B Savage Crescent, GRA, Enugu where he runs a Non-Governmental Organization called Paul and Grace Foundation. Of course, the kidnap was for ransom, as the bandits demanded a N50 million ransom for his release. Akunyili said she was the actual target of the kidnappers, but they had to settle for her brother when they did not see her.

But in a spectacular rescue operation, following a tip-off, the police smashed the kidnap gang at their hideout in Enugu town, and rescued Edemobi. It was learnt that while the leader of the gang was killed in the rescue operation, two of his colleagues were arrested.Residents and indigenes of the southeast states developed goose pimples when one of the arrested kidnappers, still undergoing medical treatment, sang to the police, implicating Chief Nnubia in their several kidnap exploits and other crimes. The singing kidnapper volunteered that Nnubia was their god-father and patron, who had been providing them with the logistics for their ungodly assignments. It has to be pointed out that Chief Nnubia’s syndicate had been using Enugu as a base from where they carried out their kidnap activities across other southeast states of the country.

But a curious twist was to creep into the story when several weeks after the kidnappers were, alongside Chief Nnubia, nabbed, the police is yet to bring the culprits to justice.

Chief Nnubia had initially fled Enugu on hearing that his devilish deals had blown open, only to hand himself in when his wife and some members of his house-hold were, in his stead, hauled into police detention. Since then, Enugu police command had remained economical with the truth over their investigation of Nnubia’s involvement in Edemobi’s kidnap, and, indeed, other cases of kidnaps in the area.

It was gathered that Chief Nnubia’s kidnap syndicate was was, also, involved in assassinations. In fact, confessions of the nabbed kidnappers were said to have included the brutal murder of Igwe Mathew Uche Chukwuka, traditional ruler of Obe-Uno autonomous community in Nkanu West Local Government Area of Enugu state. Igwe Chukwuka was abducted from his MacRoyal Hotel, off Presidential Road, Enugu on Saturday November 29. The following day, his bullet-ridden corpse was discovered dumped by his abductors at the outskirts of the town. Shockingly, Nnubia’s men confessed to Igwe Chukwuka’s dastard murder!

KlinReports is, as it were, in possession of information that the oil magnet has paid several millions of naira to Magaji, the state police commissioner, as well as to the rank and file of police in the state in order to forestall his parade before members of the public for the crime. As a convention, smashed kidnap or armed robbery gangs in Nigeria are paraded before the public before they are, eventually, arraigned in court over their crimes. But Chief Nnubia’s case is, inexplicably, different!

Our information is that it is as a result of Chief Nnubia’s ‘settlement’ to Compol Magaji and his men that the command has been playing hide and seek with the people over the matter. And to justify the suspicion, the command secretly took Chief Nnubia to court with wrong charges on Christmas eve, but the court session was aborted with the intervention of Barrister Sullivan Chime, governor of Enugu state, who insisted on the law taking its course. Chime insisted that justice must not be short-circuited in his state. KlinReports learnt that, having been ‘heavily’ compromised by Chief Nnubia, the police stealthily prepared charges to facilitate his release on bail by the court. The arrangee arraignment was to enable Nnubia, an indigene of Anambra state, to celebrate Christmas with his kith and kin.

KlinReports learnt that Chime directed his Attorney General, Nduka Ikenyi (Esq), to, without further delay, prepare appropriate charges for Chief Nnubia and members of his kidnap syndicate. Ikenyi had already drafted the charges, and sent to Eze O. Eze, the state’s Director of Public Prosecution for legal opinion. It is hoped that any moment from now, Chief Nnubia will face judgment over his atrocious deeds. If convicted, Chief Nnubia will, of couse, be headed for jail for life!

But Professor Dora Akunyili remains pissed off with the attitude of Magaji’s command.

“I don’t even know what to say. It is such a shame! It is such a shame. What can we do? I don’t want to talk about it because we went through a terrible period. It was too traumatic”, Akunyili retorted when KlinReports asked her to comment on the police compromise saga.

It is an old story that Nigeria police is one of the most corrupt in the world. If not for the timely intervention of Governor Chime, maybe, the sheik would have, by now, been throwing banquets and working free in the streets.

KlinReports, therefore, enjoins Governor Chime to continue to pursue this matter to its logical conclusion, to ensure that Chief Nnubia and his co-travelers in heinous crimes in Igbo land do not continue to evade the long arms of the law. We, also, call on the police high command in Nigeria to launch a high powered probe into this compromise mess of its men in Enugu command. So doing will go a long way towards sanitizing our society, distorted and disorientated by our warped value system. The time is now!