By Ishaya Ibrahim, News Editor
Lagos State Commissioner of Police, Hakeem Odumosu, loves the limelight, and loves the role of a super cop..
Only last week, the House of Representatives cautioned Odumosu against allowing further media access to Chidinma Ojukwu, the alleged killer of Super TV chief executive officer, Usifo Ataga, whom he hastily paraded less than 24 hours after her arrest.
Executive Director of Rule of Law Accountability and Advocacy Centre (RULAAC), Okechukwu Nwanguma, listed the many investigative missteps of Odumosu in a piece titled ‘The Lagos State Commissioner of Police Hakeem Odumosun and his many faux pas:’
He said: “First, he wakes up and declares a ban on peaceful assembly in Lagos State. Ban on a constitutionally guaranteed fundamental right?
“Then, he addresses a Press Conference claiming that he has intelligence that IPOB had perfected plans to attack Lagos and he gets an instant rebuke and embarrassing refutal from a coalition of Yoruba groups who dismissed his claims as imaginary, a non-starter, with an assurance that he can’t succeed in inciting the Igbo and Yoruba into a collision in Lagos
“Then he issues a Press Statement claiming that no single shot was fired at the Yoruba self determination rally in Lagos which the police needlessly disrupted resulting to the death of a girl in her mother’s shop. And video evidence proves him wrong.
“His handling of investigation into the case of murder of Ataga by Chidinma leaves much to be desired spurring suspicion that he’s on a mission to bungle investigation
“And now, he claims that nobody was killed at Ladipo. But the Air force PRO whose men were involved in the bloody encounter with the traders admits not only that one trader was shot dead but that the victim fell to the bullet of one of the soldiers. There are also viral video evidence of the firing of shots and the killing.”
Another Edo based Activist, Osazee Edigin, recalled that Odumosu, as Commissioner of Police in Edo State, hastily, without investigation, labelled a policeman cultist because he was killed during a cultists clash in the state.
He said: “Same way he (Odumosu) hurriedly labeled a police officer caught up in a crossfire between rival cultists a cultist when he was the CP in Edo state then. The said officer who was an orderly to a local government boss closed from work and on his way home, he ran into a shoot out between two rivalry cult groups at the junction leading to his home and was killed. Within few hours the CP held a press briefing, informing Edo people that the officer is a cultist. It took another press briefing by the slain police officer’s family to put the record straight. I am not surprised on this.”
For Odumosu, media blitz may be more important than diligent investigation.
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