Edo State Governor, Comrade Adams Oshiomhole yesterday in Benin appealed to the Police Service Commission (PSC) to revisit the case of former chairman of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), Mallam Nuhu Ribadu who was recently dismissed from the Nigeria Police Force.
He said that Ribadu''s travail and recent dismissal from the Nigeria Police Force has done a lot of incalculable damage to the corporate image of the force and Nigeria as a nation.
According to Comrade Oshiomhole who made the appeal while hosting the chairman of the Police Service Commission (PSC), Mr. Pary Osayande in his office, "I am just pleading that Nuhu Ribadu like every other Nigerians must have made some mistakes, some of them very serious. I am pleading that let the thing be handled in a way that it should not be misunderstood".
"Things are hard and things are tough. As a Union leader who has had the opportunity to plead on behalf of victims who are victimized, I want to plead that the police revisit the case of Nuhu Ribadu. It is doing a lot damage to the corporate image of the police force.
When an employer makes a mistake, in favour of the employee and the fact of that mistake is established, by law you do not seems to correct it at the expense of that employee in a manner that could be injurious to his social life".
"If Nuhu Ribadu was over promoted, if indeed that was a breach, the state should find the courage to deal with the person responsible for the breech not the victim. Each time this thing happens, they did damage to our collective psyche".
"The police as an institution should not be seen to target just an officer with all the weapon in the armory, including trivializing whether or not he should get a certificate for a course that was impose on him by the same police authorities. And a lot of Nigerians are saying is it because he fought corruption".
"In a democracy, those issues of perception if it is not real become a problem. We do not think that the way Ribadu has been treated makes the best statement of the police. I am not entering any defence about how Ribadu operated but the greatest problem he had which many people observed was that he was used to fight certain persons and in the process he shielded certain persons".
"Others says, I think is untrue he appears to be arrogant with the way he went about it. My own thinking is you can''t fight corruption without a certain level of self-confidence and even arrogance. After all those who have held us down have held us down with the same degree of arrogance".
"That there is no question where you create a situation that people who have held us down are now celebrating you are going to find it very, very hard if not in the future to find someone who will risk as much. I thought the challenge of Nuhu Ribadu successor to now go after those Nuhu Ribadu did not go after. Yar Adua has shown that he is not ready to shield anybody".
"Many Nigerians misunderstood what is happening now. They think that the man is being victimized because of what he did.
I am begging sir. As a governor, I should not be talking like this. If the Police Service Commission under your leadership finds favour by reviewing it, where an employer listens and help those who are down is not an indication of weekends. The man is already down. The court can''t help. Only God and you can help him".
Earlier in his speech, the chairman of the Police Service Commission, Mr. Pary Osayande, a retired Deputy Inspector General of Police said that he was in government house to commiserate with the governor on the loss of two of his aides and congratulate him for successfully dismantling a clique that constituted a cog in the wheel of progress of the state.
He disclosed that since he retired from the Police Force about 16 or 17 years ago, this was his second time of coming into the government house as he deliberately refused to interact with those who were at the helm of affairs in the state.
While thanking the governor for what has done for the police command in Edo State so far, Mr. Osayande disclosed that the Nigeria Police was the single largest police institution in the world with manpower of 377,000.
He lamented that during the 29 years of military interregnum, the police force grew in various direction, uncontrolled and unplanned for, adding that either by default or design, successive regimes neglected the institution by way of under-funding, lack of barracks, operational vehicles and logistics just as recruitments into the force was bastardized.
"But today, I with my team, we are prepared to reposition the Nigerian police so that it can become people friendly, people oriented and service effective".
"We cannot do this alone. We are now trying to resort to community policing. We have approached traditional rulers, Civil Liberty Organisation (CLO). We have approached youth leaders, market women and all the governors of the federation to join us to reposition the Nigerian Police because security is total and everybody is involved", he said.