By Austen Young
It is popularly said that “Silence is the best answer for a fool”. Silence is also said to be golden. But for Mr. Jiti Ogunye, regarded by one of Nigeria’s leading national newspapers as a “popular legal practitioner”, silence is a crime that should be pelted with unprovoked attacks.
The newspaper recently quoted Mr. Ogunye thus, “One is tempted to conclude that Mbu has left the Force because of his penchant for unguarded public utterances. It is not like him to keep quiet for so long. He is known to speak even more than the spokesperson of the Force. This made us to wonder if he is still in the service.”
The “us” alluded to by Mr. Ogunye, meaning his types, is quite instructive. But I dare say quickly that lawyers should know that you do not attack a man who has done nothing to you. This certainly is not one of those instances where you can plead or hide behind justification to defame an Assistant Inspector General of Police of the Federal Republic of Nigeria.
My concern, however, is on the true intent of the newspaper’s story. It appears to me like an arrangee stuff, with equally arrangee online responses, some of which bear no relevance to the story’s embers of hatred. AIG Joseph Mbu is the immediate past Assistance Inspector General of Police, Zone 2, covering Lagos and Ogun states.
Six out of eleven paragraphs tried to demonize Mbu. The following were meant to revisit the past:
“Mbu was at loggerheads with the then Governor of Rivers State, Rotimi Amaechi, when he was serving as CP in the state”; “Upon his redeployment to the Federal Capital Territory as CP in 2014, Mbu described himself as the lion who tamed the Leopard of Port Harcourt, apparently referring to Amaechi”; “While serving as CP in the FCT, he banned the #BringBackOurGirls group from holding street protests but the then IG, Mohammed Abubakar overruled him”; and “While he was redeployed to Lagos to oversee the 2015 general elections, he threatened to kill 10 persons for every policeman killed in the line of duty.”
Inasmuch as I do not want to be seen as a police or Mbu’s apologist, it would amount to a disservice to the nation for those who are privy to the truth to allow anybody or organisation to mislead the public through deliberate falsehood.
The issues
Mbu was not redeployed to Lagos to oversee the 2015 elections. He addressed the press on assumption of duty that he was on routine posting as AIG Zone 2, covering Lagos and Ogun states. The election was coincidental.
He never at any time threatened to kill 10 persons for every police man killed in the line of duty. The full text of what AIG Mbu said was transcribed from a video footage and published as full page advertorial in a national newspaper. Even those who invented that story could not controvert the true account.
Some lawyers and civil society groups who swallowed the lies and jumped to court asking for Mbu’s dismissal from the police have since kept quiet after the court ruling. But wait a minute, was the election in Lagos supervised by AIG Mbu not adjudged as the most credible and violent-free election ever witnessed in Lagos since 1999, for which Mbu was inducted into the CRAN Hall of Fame by the Crime Reporters Association of Nigeria (CRAN)? The governors of Lagos and Ogun states were represented at the award ceremony and they spoke highly of the AIG.
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On the #BringBackOurGirls group, one wonders if the street protest is still going on. Have the 209 girls been brought back? Perhaps, one day, those who remember Mbu saying he was the lion that tamed the Leopard of Port Harcourt will also tell us what provoked that reaction.
And finally, Mbu being at loggerheads with Amaechi was on principle; someone had to draw the line between a governor’s powers over a state commissioner of police and that of a civil commissioner appointed by the governor.
Knowledge governs ignorance
According to Madison (1968): “Knowledge will forever govern ignorance, and a people who mean to be their own governors, must arm themselves with the power that knowledge gives.”
The public, including journalists were ignorant of what truly transpired in Rivers State when Mbu was CP. Government business is most times shrouded in secrecy and there is no way government would have revealed the behind-the-scene causative factors of the face-off between the governor and CP. The police, being part of government would be the last to volunteer such information no matter the circumstance.
Principal actors from Rivers have followed the media hunt long after Mbu was transferred from Rivers State. Why are we not surprised that every negative media report against Mbu must trace its roots to Rivers State!
Media tyranny
This latest act of media tyranny against Mbu is evidently contrived, not only to provoke the top flight cop, but to evoke negative sentiments against him in the public domain. The mischievous report reminds one of the outburst of John Swinton in a New York Press Club in 1953. Swinton was the Chief of Staff of the New York Times and he was considered the dean of the journalism profession. He made this bold confession: “…The business of the journalist is to destroy the truth, to lie outrightly, to pervert, to vilify, to fawn at the feet of mammon, and to sell his country and his race for his daily bread… We are tools and vassals of rich men behind the scenes. We are the jumping Jacks; they pull the string and we dance. Our talents, our possibilities and our lives are all the property of other men. We are intellectual prostitutes.” (Bill Hughes – The Secret Terrorist, pg. 126.)
The question is, who is after Mbu behind the scene? His records of performance are daring and intimidating as DPO, Area Commander, CP Force Education Directorate, CP Police Mobile Force, CP Oyo State, CP Rivers, CP FCT, AIG Zone 7, Abuja and AIG Zone 2, Lagos.
Mbu’s performance has earned him awards such as Best Crime Bursting Chief in Africa (2013) by Security Watch Africa in Johannesburg South Africa; Ethical Policing and Professionalism (2014) by the Be-Great Security & Intelligence Academy, at the Ghana Armed Forces and Command College, Accra; and the CRAN Hall of Fame (2015) by the Crime Reporters Association of Nigeria (CRAN), Lagos, Nigeria. The Rivers State Police Command under him also received an award as Most Innovative Police Command (2013) by Security Watch Africa, in Johannesburg, South-Africa. He was recently honoured by Rotary International (2015) in Lagos.
His posting to the Police Staff College, Jos, Plateau State, is routine. An AIG cannot resign or retire quietly without the press knowing about it through the office of the Force PRO. Joseph Mbu is an officer of few words.
He certainly does not talk recklessly and the author of that newspaper story needs to dust up his lesson notes on media law.
As for Ogunye, license to practice law is not license to destroy others. The bible says there is time for everything. For those who are afraid of Mbu’s profile, the masquerade does not remain masked forever.
