President of the Senate, Bukola Saraki, has been invited to report to the Police Force Headquarters, Louis Edet House, Abuja, for questioning, over the recent bank robbery attack and killings at Offa, Kwara State.
Force Public Relations Officer, Jimoh Moshood who made this known at a media briefing, said the invitation followed confessional statements by arrested suspects who named Saraki and the Kwara State Governor, Abdulfatah Ahmed, as their sponsors. He, however, did not state when the senate president would appear.
Jimoh, while parading 13 suspects who allegedly carried out the robbery, said Saraki is expected to report to the Force Intelligence Response Team office at Guzape, Abuja, to answer to allegations levelled against him by the confessions of five leaders of the gang.
He gave their names as Ayoade Akinnibosun, Ibukunle Ogunleye, Adeola Abraham, Salawudeen Azeez, Niyi Ogundiran and 17 others.
According to the police, during interrogation, the five gang leaders confessed and volunteered statements that they carried out the attack on the Divisional Police Headquarters in Offa, killings of 33 persons during the robbery of First Bank, Guarantee Trust Bank, ECO Bank Offa, Zenith Bnk, Union Bank and Ibolo Micro Finance Bank all in Offa, on April 5, 2018.
Jimoh, who gave account of the investigation that led to the arrest of the suspect said:
“The investigation into the Offa bank robbery and gruesome killings of more than 33 innocent persons in Offa, Kwara State on the 5th April, 2018 directed by the Inspector General of Police, IGP Ibrahim K. Idris, has made significant progress, successes and more revelations have been recorded. The gang leaders and some of the principal suspects arrested for their active participation in the robbery and the killing of innocent persons have made confessional statements admitting to the various criminal roles they and their sponsors played in this dastardly and heinous crime.”
Jimoh added: “The Five gang leaders namely, Ayoade Akinnibosun, Ibukunle Ogunleye, Adeola Abraham, Salawudeen Azeez, Niyi Ogundiran and some of the other 17 suspects arrested for direct involvement and active participation in the Offa bank robbery and the gruesome killing of 33 innocent persons which include some pregnant women and nine Police personnel admitted, confessed and volunteered statements that they were political thugs of the Senate President, Federal Republic of Nigeria, Senator Bukola Saraki and the Governor of Kwara State, Alhaji Abdulfatah Ahmed.”
Saraki who had on Wednesday, May 16, raised the alarm over an alleged plot by IGP Idris to implicate him and Governor Ahmed, said he would honour police invitation when served by the Force.
In a statement signed by his media adviser, Yusuf Olaniyonu, Saraki, however, described as an “abuse of the criminal investigation process aimed at intimidating and over-overawing the legislature, thereby obstructing it from doing its work, is a big threat to our democracy.”
The statement read: “The attention of the Senate President, Dr. Abubakar Bukola Saraki, has been drawn to a story circulating online and apparently derived from a press conference addressed by the Police Public Relations Officer (PPRO), Moshood Jimoh, linking him (Saraki) to the Offa robbery.
“Dr. Saraki will want the entire public to disregard this claim as a baseless allegation and another ploy by the Police to implicate him by all means.
“Let it be known that there is no way I could have been associated with armed robbery against my people. When the Offa robbery incident happened, I was the first top public official to pay a visit to the place and right there in the palace of the traditional ruler, I put a call through to this same Mr. Ibrahim Idris, the IGP, requesting him to make certain specific security arrangements as demanded by the people.
“Members of the public will remember that on May 16, 2018, I alerted the Senate about the information passed on to me by my State Governor, Dr. Abdulfatah Ahmed, over a plot by the Inspector General of Police, Mr. Ibrahim Idris, to frame me up by getting some suspected cultists arrested in Ilorin to implicate me. It is believed that the timely leakage of the plot in that case aborted the use of the suspected cultists to implicate me. Now, it is the Offa bank robbery suspects that are about to be used.
“This plot is concocted to embarrass me and, in the mind of the IGP, it is his own response after his refusal to honour the invitation by the National Assembly, headed me, for him to come and offer explanations on the rampant killings and violence across the country.
“Like the earlier one, this frame-up will also fail as I hereby state categorically that I have no link with any band of criminals.
“As a person who has utmost respect for the rule of law and all constitutional institutions, when the invitation from the Police is formally extended to me, I will be ready to honour it without any delay.”
However, a team of lawyers working for the senate president are planning to approach a Federal High Court to secure an injunction to stop the police from summoning him.
Daily Sun gathered that the lawyers met, yesterday, evening in Abuja, following the invitation.
The move, it was learnt, is to also prevent the Force from declaring Saraki wanted in the event that he failed to appear before the investigative panel on Offa robbery.
Saraki is the third senator to be summoned by the Police since the Eight Senate was inaugurated in June, 2015. Dino Melaye and Shehu Sani, recently had their date with the Police.
Meanwhile, Human Rights Writers Association of Nigeria (HURIWA) has condemned what it called the emerging dangerous scenario of deployment of the office of the IGP after leading independent political voices.
The group stated that the just issued statement from the Police confirms the alarm the Saraki Governor Ahmed had raised that the Force headquarters was plotting to frame up the duo of the senate president and the governor who is a political follower of the senate president.
HURIWA in the statement by its National Coordinator Comrade Emmanuel Onwubiko and the National Media Affairs Director Miss Zainab Miss Zainab Yusuf stated that the “current politically tainted police hierarchy has fully metamorphosed into the political armed wing of the Executive arm of government which has evolved a wholly illiterate and unsophisticated method of roping in high profile opponents of the President even those of them belonging to the same political party of All Progressives Congress. There is also a plot to go after leaders of the organised civil rights community seen as loud independent voices.”
HURIWA called for the immediate dismissal of IGP Idris to save the Nigeria Police from totally losing credibility and becoming a full blown fascist wing of a dangerously blossoming totalitarianism, which if not resisted and defeated, would make the Sani Abacha years a child’s play.
The group said the Inspector General of Police is grave threat to democracy and constitutionalism just as it asked Nigerians to rescue their Country from the impending implosion.
“We in the organised civil rights community are hereby asking Nigerians not to sit back idly and laugh over the sinister scenarios that are being weaved dangerously together with the absolutely and ruthlessly anarchic hierarchy of the Nigeria Police force under the current dictatorship. The slow but steady choreographed
-Sun
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