A SHOULDER OF COMFORT FOR THE POLICE IG – BY OLAYIWOLA NURUDEEN DEINDE

Inspector General of the Nigeria Police, Ibrahim Idris.

I have been trying to get the confirmation of an incident that occurred prior to the emergence of Babatunde Raji Fashola as the governor of Lagos state. He was said to have collapsed during a rally. This I feel was due largely to the limited rest he was having then!  

BRF, as he’s popularly called, was and remains a workaholic! One of the traits that endeared him to Asiwaju, his political benefactor, was his diligence on the job, coupled with quality delivery of every task he lays hands on. I strongly feel the same trait was key to his emergence as a super minister!

President Mohammed Buhari was down in Calabar during the build up to 2015 electioneering campaigns too; it is not unlikely to have been caused by exhaustion too, considering the busy schedule and the rigours of going all over Nigeria, seeking the mandate of the electorate.

George W Bush, a one-time American President, about twenty-six years ago (in 1992 precisely), was reported to have vomited during a dinner in far away Japan. There were reports that he acted in defiance to medical counsel to relax, having spent twelve days traversing Asia at the time.

In essence, everyone has a bad day! The Inspector General of the Nigeria Police, Ibrahim Idris, just had his own, though with no correlation to his competence! A quick checkp0 of his profile shows he measures up to the position he currently occupies, having even served at international peace keeping mission of the United Nations (in Liberia to be precise). A diplomat he worked with in the peace mission attested to his soundness. A mediocre hardly can find his way into sensitive UN responsibility!

The unwarranted mockery of his not too impressive showing in Kano is not a good way Nigerians should motivate our chief crime buster! We ought to be more concerned about what went wrong and why also. Rather than vilify him, we should attempt to figure out too, a way of forestalling a future occurrence to other people. He is most likely to be suffering from lack of quality resting/sleeping time, going by the pressure of ensuring safety of the nation, which seems to be getting out of hand in recent times, and the attendant call to question of activities of security agencies by both the executive and the legislature. What I find hard to understand is the manner the media arm of the command is handling the situation. The police media personnel should do more, by my estimation.

On a personal note, I feel the Inspector General of Police, should be interested in why such an incident should happen. The details and technicalities of address preparation and presentation matter less here, as it should meet the standard of having to be done using large fonts, so as to prevent a future occurrence.