CLAP FOR PRESIDENT BUHARI: ZAKARI BIU IS FREE!!!

CLAP FOR PRESIDENT BUHARI: ZAKARI BIU IS FREE!

 I still remember how some south-south cronies posted tantrums at me on my facebook wall 3 years ago for my criticisms of the appointment of Alh. Zakari Biu as commissioner of police - Anti terrorism by President Goodluck Ebele Jonathan (GEJ). Then some of my northern friends labeled me insensitive for reasons being that the man had lost his son in the Boko Haram October 1st bomb blast. But my concerns were simple. This Borno born cop had been dismissed by President Olusegun Obasanjo but about ten years later he was secretly reinstated when his boss Hafis Ringim became IGP and was unduly promoted twice within two years and made commissioner of police anti-terrorism. The contention then was that his loss would even put him in better position to fight the sects zealously. A question that nobody cared to answer being another simple concern of mine was that - what was his son doing there? Did he die as a suicide bomber or victim?

My position then was predicated on what I knew about Mr. Biu. Under the regime of the late Gen. Sani Abacha Zakari was terror personified. As head of the regime’s Presidential Task Force on Terrorism, he is reported to have terrorized journalists and human rights activists whom he labeled terrorists. Journalists on the stables of The News, TSM and Tell were the worse hit. The publisher of the now rested TSM, Chris Anyanwu, (who became senator) narrated how Biu physically assaulted her and practically got her eyes permanently impaired. Founder of the Oodua Peoples Congress (OPC) Dr. Frederick Fasehun, can never forget Biu, whom he told the Oputa Panel set up by former President Olusegun Obasanjo how the embattled cop assaulted him. Senator Babafemi Ojudu, who was Managing Editor of The News, said Biu put a gun to his head, threatening to blast his brain. He was also linked with the disappearance and brutal death of a journalist known as Bagauda Kaltho whom he claimed died in the process of trying to detonate a bomb in Durbar Hotel Kaduna in January 1996. Contradicting himself, He claimed a copy of Wole Soyinka’s book, The Man Died, was found at the scene where Kaltho was supposedly consumed by a bomb he was trying to detonate. Yet the book was not defaced by the explosion which killed Kaltho! His remains were never released to his family. However, James Danbaba, a colleague of Biu,  said Kaltho was “summarily executed on the orders of the Inspector-General of Police, because  Kaltho was said to have seen  IGP Ibrahim  Coomasie suddenly collapse and was foaming in the mouth.” Yes, the Coomasie who testified during the presidential campaign to being Buhari's class mate.

Danbaba added: “ The journalist was ordered to be arrested and executed because of a disclosure that he (Coomasie) is suffering from epilepsy which may jeopardize the IGP’s well preserved and seriously guarded position and ultimately lead to his untimely retirement from the police force.” In January 2012, Daily Post described Mr. Zakari Biu as"... an officer who represented the most grotesque face of the Nigeria Police. He saw the force as a repressive organ of an unaccountable power. And with the official bigotry that not only sustained him to the heights of the force, anything that looked like ethnocidal project excited him.” His other victims include President Olusegun Obasanjo, Prof. Wole Soyinka, etc.

But, my criticasters were silenced when barely a month after his appointment as CP Anti-terrorism a principal terrorism suspect - one Kabiru Sokoto who was linked to the Xmas day bomb blast in Madalla escaped from custody under his watch. Alas, surely these fellows tried to defend his negligent complicity until I again confronted them with more facts. Sokoto was arrested under a secret sting operation led by the DSS in collaboration with JTF, Mobile Squad and a team of police investigators summing to about 50 operatives. After the suspect was handed over to Biu he ordered the suspect to be taken under the company of two armed police men for house search only for the men to be ambushed and Sokoto escaped in Abaji while those police officers are no where to be found till date.

Again, our harlequinade of a president - GEJ and his warped “Ahithophels” swung into their usual fire service scrambles by re-sacking Biu.

So now, how come this same Biu is being exonerated? And why is it three years after his sack? Who is calling the favours and who is calling the shots? After all, the Police Service Commission answers directly to the president only and it is disturbing how Biu's exoneration should be their priority so early in an administration that so earnestly seeks to make right a whole world of wrongs in a nation with one of the most spavined police force in the universe.

How come some people are losing their jobs despite their patriotic service and loyalty to the nation while some are regaining their honour despite their treasonable disservice albeit rebuttable? Prof. Wole Soyinka had warned when Biu was just appointed CP that he "could be likened to Charles Taylor of Liberia. He is brute and has no concern for humanity. For his past history, he should not be trusted with any national responsibility as he is capable of causing terrorism, which could destroy the image of Nigeria." It is here of a corollary difficulty to see how his performance afterwards would make a lollapalooza of him.

Apropos, it is hoped that with this exoneration comes not another elevation. His honourable retirement is enough misfortune to our nationhood. I will never support any travesty of any portion of chapter four of the Nigeria constitution when it comes to human welfare even if it is to be meted on my enemy but then let the gander swim in the same pool as the goose! We cannot justiciably point fingers at some people as thieves and embrace others for deaths that have their finger prints all over! One would think that with the way insurgency and insecurity was the bane of the change movement alongside corruption that those linked with it would not be treated with kid gloves as the former president was so excoriated. One would surmise that the zeal in the alleged anti-corruption crusade would extend in proportional aggression to the fight against terrorism.

In all of these, I sincerely hope the former IGP, Mr. Ibrahim Coomasie did not call in a favour from his classmate and "kinsman" now His Excellency for his former boy and enforcer...

Okpo Ewa. Esq.

LLB, BL, DRS, C.Th.

Humanity Chambers.

Nigeria.

See also THE INK NEWSPAPER.