Misau vs IGP: Why I may appear before senate – Police boss

The Inspector General of Police, IGP, Ibrahim Idris, on Friday confirmed his readiness to appear before the Senate ad-hoc committee investigating him over allegations of corruption.
Addressing State House Correspondents after a closed-door meeting with President Muhammadu Buhari at the Presidential Villa, Abuja, Idris said his appearance at the National Assembly on Tuesday, would be subjected to approval from his legal team.

Idris said, “These are legal issues, we are discussing with our legal team, obviously if there is need we are going to appear. For the sake of having respect for the Senate, I will appear before them.
“Obviously, I am here as usual to discuss with the Commander-in-Chief on the security challenges we are having and how we will face these security challenges adequately.
“Some of these security challenges are obvious; you know we are having elections in Anambra state and we are having challenges in various parts of the country, especially some of these issues of kidnapping and these are things I discussed with the President and the measures taken to address it squarely.
“We are deploying a lot of police officers, almost 21,000 police officers to be able to provide adequate security in the Anambra election. We are deploying our water boats to take care of the water ways, we are deploring our helicopters to take care of the aerial surveillance and we are deploying our conventional police men and special police units to take care of situations on ground and by the grace of God we are going to have a successful and peaceful elections in Anambra state.

“Kaduna-Abuja road; as you observed we have deplored our special units there and we have arrested several of these kidnappers and I want to appreciate the effort of the National Assembly for providing sort of a death penalty for suspects arrested involved in some of these cases of kidnapping and I’m sure that in a few weeks time we are going to have drastic fall in the report of some of these incidences of kidnapping on those areas because of this punishment that has been made into law now by the National Assembly.
“We are taking them to court on everyday basis. Presently, we have almost over 3,000 suspects in the various police stations all over the country and we are taking them to court. Recently, I set up a task force to sort of streamline or scrutinize these cases so that we have speedy trials of some of these suspects.”
Senator Isa Misau had recently accused the IGP of misappropriating the sum of N7.2bn in the 2016 budget, nepotism and sexual alliances with female officers.
Against this backdrop, he was invited by the senate ad-hoc committee but he failed to honour the summon.