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AIG
M. J. Mbu, who was retired by the Police Service Commission on July 2nd, had
his pulling out ceremony at the Police Staff College Jos, Plateau state yesterday
July 9th (Image credit: Owai Obo, Image source: lindaikejiblog.com)
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Perhaps Nigeria’s most
controversial police officer of the modern era, Joseph Mbu, on Saturday
formally bowed out of the force after 31 years in service, with an appeal to
the Nigerian media not to exaggerate his “sins” and those of his colleagues.
News
Agency of Nigeria report continues:
Officers
and men of the police bid Mr. Mbu goodbye at a stepping-down ceremony at the
Police Staff College, Jos.
The
assistant inspector-general of police, who enrolled into the force in 1985, was
commandant of the college until he was suddenly retired along with 20 other
colleagues on July 1.
At
the ceremony, Mr. Mbu described his service years as fulfilling and urged men
and officers still in service to always eschew ‘eye service’ in the discharge
of their duties.
Mr.
Mbu himself is believed to have engaged in excessive ‘eye service’ to please
the Goodluck Jonathan administration during his tenures as police commissioner
in Rivers and Abuja, and assistant inspector-general in charge of Zone 2,
Lagos.
“I
am privileged as a police officer to head various formations and commands,
including the political capital, Abuja, and the economic capital, Lagos,” he
said.
“Other
formations and commands I headed as commissioner of police include the
Directorate of Police Education, Mobile Force, Oyo, Rivers and the FCT.
“I
was also the Assistant Inspector General of Police Zone 7, Abuja, Zone 2, Lagos
and also the Elite College, the highest Police institution in Nigeria.”
He
then called on the media not to overflog the alleged “sins” of officers and men
of the police in the course of duty, but rather to seek and understand their
peculiar circumstances and work as partners with them to ensure peace and
sanity in the country.
Mr.
Mbu, who once described himself as a “radical rebel” and a “lion”, left the
force without achieving his ambition of becoming Nigeria’s inspector-general of
police, having told officers and men of the Ogun State Police Command on
February 12, 2015 that he was working hard to get to the top of the police
hierarchy.
At
the Jos event, he was sober, and perhaps remorseful. He did not roar like a
lion or sound boastful, violent or dictatorial. Rather, he spoke gently, and
penitently.
In
the past three years, Mr. Mbu had gained notoriety as a brutal, partisan and
medieval police officer who had no regard for professionalism and human rights.
The
retired AIG bounced to national prominence in 2013 shortly after he was posted
to Rivers as police commissioner. Rotimi Amaechi, the governor of the state at
the time, soon accused him of partisanship, saying he had taken sides with
Patience Jonathan and her husband, who were fighting him.
At
a point, Mr. Amaechi petitioned the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC),
accusing Mr. Mbu of orchestrating a “grave and deteriorating human rights situation”
in the state, and requesting the commission to use its “legal power and
competencies” to salvage the strategic security formation infrastructures and
networks in the state allegedly compromised by Mr. Mbu through his “pattern of
actions and utterances.”
Mr.
Mbu, however denied victimizing the governor. He described Mr. Amaechi as a
power-hungry dictator who hated him because he refused to be subservient to
him.
Mr.
Mbu and Mr. Amaechi remained estranged until he (Mbu) was moved to Abuja as
commissioner.
While
in the nation’s capital, the police officer recalled his time in Rivers with
relish, describing himself as a lion who succeeded in taming Mr. Amaechi, a
leopard.
The
then Rivers governor shot back describing the cop as “a puppet who completely
lacked the steel and strength of character of a lion, and is rather a
shameless, corrupt puppet and toothless attack dog of a woman.”
In
Abuja, controversies continued to swirl around the police officer.
In
June 2014, the #BringBackOurGirls campaign group sued him after he announced a
ban on their protests in the Nigerian capital.
The
group has been holding daily sit-ins since May 2014 to demand that government
does more to free the over 250 girls kidnapped by Boko Haram from the
Government Secondary School, Chibok, Borno State, in April 2014. But Mr. Mbu
moved to halt the daily peaceful gathering.
In
October that year, Justice S.E Aladetoyinbo of an Abuja High Court ruled that
the police did not have the right to ban protests, saying while citizens were
mandated to notify security agencies before protesting, they were not obliged
to obtain permission from the police to stage protests.
But
shortly after that case was resolved, Mr. Mbu courted controversy again. He
ordered that a journalist with the African Independent Television, Amaechi
Anaekwe, be detained for describing him as controversial on a TV programme. The
journalist was only released after the police headquarters compelled Mr. Mbu to
do so.
While
several Nigerians, who considered him barbaric and an embarrassment to the police,
continued to call for his retirement from the police, the Goodluck Jonathan
government rewarded him with promotion to the rank of AIG and deployed him to
Lagos as AIG in charge of Zone 2.
While
in Lagos, Mr. Mbu continued to attract controversy to himself like bee to
honey.
On
January 15, 2015, Mr. Mbu threatened to bring down any community where the
killing of a police officer takes place.
“Honestly,
any policeman who is killed by any community in my zone, I will bring that
village down, we have to rise against the killing of policemen,” he said.
About
a month later, on February 12, 2015, the AIG said he would order the killing of
20 civilians for any police officer killed during the 2015 elections.
That
threat sparked anger across the land, with the Afenifere Renewal Group
demanding his redeployment from Lagos, and a lawyer, Tope Alabi, asking a
Federal High Court in Lagos to strip Mr. Mbu of his police rank and declare his
office vacant.
Months
before then, Nigeria’s main labour union, the Nigerian Labour Congress, had
described Mr. Mbu as a serial embarrassment to the police.
“He
does not seem to represent the mainstream 21st century police if his routine
primitive, partisan and primordial outbursts are anything to go by,” the NLC
had said in a statement by its General Secretary, Peter Ozo-Eson.
“He
is a serial embarrassment to the Police Force we need. The Police Force we need
is the one that is concerned with public good, law, order and justice. We doubt
Mr Mbu is in the right company.”
All
however went quiet at Mr. Mbu’s end after his major backer, Mr. Jonathan, lost
the 2015 presidential election and he (the AIG) was redeployed to the police
college in Jos.
Nigeria Police Training Institutions
Decayed, Can’t Produce Effective Officers – Mbu
On Sunday November 22, 2015,
the then Commandant, Police Staff College, Joseph Mbu, stated granted an
interview to the News Agency of Nigeria in Jos
In that interview, Mbu said the
institutions being used to train Nigerian police officers are decayed and
cannot produce the best police officers the country needs to get better.
To
begin addressing the decay, Mr. Mbu, an Assistant Inspector General of Police,
urged the Federal Government to set up a special committee to visit police
formations in the country.
“There
is decay; there is neglect; what we have on ground is not conducive for the
reform programme we all yearn for,” the controversial police boss said. “Many
projects in the training institutions have been abandoned.”
He
stressed that the nation must invest more in the police force so as to get the
best service from it and effect the change crucial for a better Nigeria.
“Nigerians
want an improved police force in line with the change mantra, but the
institutions that train the personnel are in a state of utter decay,” he said.
He
held that management and personnel of the police were doing a lot, and that
officers on strategic courses in the college would feel more encouraged, for
instance, if they were fed by the force.
“That
gesture would give them the time to fully concentrate without distractions.
“The police profile is rising, but there is no
need for course participants here to feed themselves; government should feed
them to make them feel cared for and that will in turn ginger them to make more
sacrifices for the nation.”
On
the officers recently trained on strategic leadership and command by the
college, he said that they must be courageous and lead their teams like lions.
“I
have often told the officers that a team of lions led by a sheep will behave
like a sheep, while a team of sheep led by a lion will behave like a lion”, he
said.
He
challenged officers to be hardworking and exemplary, saying he had always
emphasised an “iron handling of the personnel” as the best strategy toward
maximum output.
Mr.
Mbu cautioned trainees, usually of the commissionership cadre, against greed
and lust for material things, and insisted that they must stand up for truth
and tell leaders the implications of crude tactics they may want to pursue.
“You
could be posted as a police commissioner to a state where the governor, as
chief security officer, may want to lord it over you, but you must assert the
fact that you will be responsible for controlling any trouble whenever it
starts,” said the police chief whose tenure as Rivers’ Police Commissioner
witnessed a lot of violence and confrontation between him and the then
governor, Rotimi Amaechi.
“So,
you must insist on doing only what is right and say no when asked to do the
wrong thing.
“You
should not disrespect the governor, but you must insist that respect must be
mutual.
“It
is also important to know that your name, status and integrity will be in the
mud immediately you start compromising your roles just to get some reward; it
takes nothing less than 27 years to become a police commissioner, so do not
play with your dignity.”
He
advised police officers to assess their personnel based on hard work instead of
asking for “any returns”, and promised that the force would stoutly defend any
officer who made genuine mistakes in the course of his duties.
Mr. Mbu also advised them against abusing their powers, stressing that all obligations must be within regulation.
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