•Southern, Middle Belt leaders demand their sack
Romanus Ugwu, Abuja
Southern, Middle Belt Leaders Forum has demanded the sack of Inspector General of Police (IGP), Ibrahim Idris and Chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), Prof Mahmoud Yakubu.
The forum, comprising Chief Edwin Clark, Ayo Adebanjo, Chief John Nwodo, Air Commodore Dan Suleiman, Chukwuemeka Ezeife, among others, equally tagged the All Progressives Congress (APC) government’s extreme intolerance to patriots.
In a communique, after several hours meeting in Abuja, yesterday, the forum said: “We are worried about the latest overheating of the polity as politics continues to overshadow governance in our country with its attendant national embarrassment as professionalism is fast becoming alien in many of our public institutions.
“The latest in the serial assaults on decency in public affairs is the audacious refusal of the police to submit to civil authority and the elastic tolerance of the growing impunity of its Inspector General.
“It is on record that the IGP defied the authority of the president when he refused to relocate to Benue State; to restore law and order. Since the president confessed that the IGP ignored his directive, there has been no evidence of his compliance with the order and no sanction has been imposed on him for this.
“We are gradually rolling towards anarchy, as all sense of decency and order have been eroded. We have not forgotten how the police spokesman, taking a cue from his boss, declared a state governor “a drowning man” and how the IGP has flagrantly refused to honor Senate’s invitation to explain why the authority has not been able to stop the killings going on across the country and bring the killers to book. We have looked at the career record of this IGP and we have not seen any outstanding performance that would make Mr. President keep such a man in such an esteemed ofiice beyond the fact that he was the Commissioner of Police in Kano in 2015…”
In demanding Yakubu’s removal, the forum said: “As we move towards the 2019 elections, there are accumulated indications that there are efforts to manipulate the result in forth coming election and to rig the elections which Nigerians must be vigilant to and thwart.
We, therefore, strongly demand the replacement of the INEC chairman with a man/woman of integrity from another zone in order to restore public confidence in the electoral body as it prepares for the 2019 polls.”