The immidiate past Inspector-General of Police, Solomon Arase, in Abuja on Monday, July 18, 2016, described as lies the allegation by his successor, Idris Ibrahim, that he took away 24 police vehicles.
He advised Idris to cross-check his handover notes which contains every information needed by his successor on vehicles.
Arase said that all the vehicles bought by the police under him were distributed to the state commands and other appropriate units of the Nigeria Police Force.
His words: “I suspect there must be a disconnect somewhere because every information needed by my successor is provided in my hand-over notes. I’m also not aware that any letter was written to me because if there was any dropped in my house, someone would have alerted me.
“It’s unfortunate that this matter is being made a media issue because my successor has my telephone number and could have called me for any clarification or even sent me a text message rather than addressing the media on an issue well documented in my hand-over notes.”
Idris had claimed that Arase went away with 24 police vehicles while the seven Deputy Inspectors-General of Police, who retired alongside him, also carted away between seven and eight cars each.
Idris said that he had written Arase to return the cars, which included two official bullet-proof BMW 7 series cars, adding that the retired police chief and his DIGs had yet to return the vehicles.
He had explained that a special investigation team was already looking at the records of police vehicle purchases in the last three years as well as how they were distributed.
Idris had said, “If you look through the windows of my former office and from the report from my (Force) transport officer, you would see cars but a week to the day I would resume, all these cars disappeared.