Ordinarily it would have been best not to comment on the national tragedy of the pathetic demystification of our well-celebrated and highly esteemed super cop, DCP Abba Kyari, but for the ongoing altercation between the two government agencies at the centre of the latest scandal. Is it not tragic that on the same issue, we are having different and conflicting narratives from the two government agencies?
Let us even deconstruct the sad tale: The spokesperson of the Nigerian Drug Law Enforcement Agency (NDLEA), Femi Babafemi, in a statement issued in Abuja said, “With the intelligence at our disposal, the agency (NDLEA) believes strongly that DCP Abbah Kyari is a member of a drug cartel that operates the Brazil-Ethiopia-Nigeria illicit drug pipeline and he needs to answer questions that crop up in an ongoing drug case in which he is the principal actor.”
As said, Abba Kyari called an officer of the Nigerian Drug Law Enforcement Agency (NDLEA) on January 21, 2022. The man missed the call and returned it.
Abba wanted a private meeting in Abuja after Jumat that day, which the drug law officer honoured at a secret rendezvous. He told the officer that his ‘boys’ had arrested a drug dealer who came in from Brazil with 25kg cocaine and that his boys went from Abuja to Enugu to pick the man.
The suspects are with Abba’s boys in the Intelligence Response Team (IRT) cell.
Now this is the deal: Abba proposed, as alleged, to handover 5kg of the real cocaine to the NDLEA and 20kg of dummy as the seizure.
Upon the takeover of the suspects, the NDLEA would carry out an arranged testing of some of the packages in front of the suspects. Abba’s boys had marked the real cocaine packages. So the random sampling will be an arranged sampling. That way the arrested drug dealers won’t know about the deal. The drug law officer briefed his bosses and they asked him to play along.
Abba proposed to send his brother to drop the N35 million cash equivalent in dollars. The officer refused. Abba turned up with cash at a secret rendezvous. The officer insisted on picking it in his car. Unknown to Kyari, the car was already wired.
Drug business entails a lot of networking, therefore there is no way the foot soldiers on ground, including the major baron, will not raise issues with either the police authority or NDLEA over the arrest of the couriers after they have scaled the airport protocols. How come it took a suspended DCP Abba Kyari, who should be off duty, to make contact with Abuja on such crime?
The NDLEA would also do more to tell us how the drug couriers and their dangerous wares were cleared at the Enugu Airport only to be nabbed by the Kyari boys.
Is it possible the NDLEA command in Enugu knew nothing about the arrest of the couriers by the police within the airport premises?
Except it was a deliberate mischief, the Nigerian Police version of the saga revealed what NDLEA avoided telling us in their version of the story: That the agency’s staff at its Enugu operations and probably elsewhere are deeply involved with drug cartels despite deliberate attempts to present the agency as clean.
First, it was Abba Kyari who initiated a phone call to the NDLEA High Command in Abuja on the interception. So, could the drug dealers had been arrested and detained in a police facility without anybody in a Nigeria Police command in Enugu State knowing about it? Could it be that they were detained in a holding facility not known to law enforcement agencies and does the IG IRT team have the blanket powers to operate in any state without the knowledge of the state police command?
Unless answers are found to the above posers, it is not likely anything will come out of the case.
The NDLEA storyline is clear that the lead to their action was provided by Abba Kyari in his first phone contact with their personnel. That one phone call triggered the chain of events that culminated in a sting operation.
During that period, Abba Kyari was still walking as a freeman. He was even away in Lagos on a private business trip, according to what he told the NDLEA.
Abba Kyari reports directly to the Inspector-General of Police. Therefore, the IGP must explain to Nigerians how an officer on suspension remained loose and super active on duty. Do the Police have procedures guiding the conduct of any of their officer or personnel awaiting jurisdiction and why senior police officers who should know the law connived with a suspended officer to execute an illegal duty?
Sadly, whenever a problem of outright criminality or misconduct arises in this country, there is now an established tendency for certain people to look away from the crime/offence and turn it to ethnic war with the aim of mustering regional or religious mass support. How can Nigeria make progress this way?
Now, there is another slant to the alleged involvement of the super-cop with drug cartels. This was introduced few days ago by the police authourity.
The police report as widely carried in the media said, “The officer stated that ‘It is a campaign to smear his reputation by members of the Indigenous People Of Biafra (IPOB)/Eastern Security Network (ESN) who moved to destroy him due to his onslaught against them in the South-East.”
•Ifeanyi Izeze can be reached at iizeze@yahoo.com
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