Police, NDLEA on Abba Kyari: How not to joke with serious issues

By Ifeanyi Izeze

Ordinarily it would have been best to stay comments from 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’s 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 21^st of January 2022. The man missed the call and returned it.

Also read: Court turns down DCP Abba Kyari’s bail application

Abba wanted a private meeting in Abuja after Jumat that day which the drug law officer honoured at a secret rendezvous. Abba 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 takeover of the suspects, the NDLEA will 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 arrangeesampling. 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 secret rendezvous. Officer insisted on picking it in his car unknown to Kyari that the car was already wired.

Also read: More troubles for Kyari 

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Drug business entails a lot of networking therefore; there is no how the foot soldiers on ground including the major baron not raising 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 attempt 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 the Enugu State Police command knowing?

Could it be that they were detained in a holding facility not known to law 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.

Also read: Former presidential aspirant Adamu Garba to Abba Kyari, “Stop blaming IPOB for your ordeals” 

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 to be culminated in a sting operation.

During that period Abba Kyari was still walking 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?

Pathetically, 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?

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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 Indigenous People Of Biafra (IPOB)/Eastern Security Network (ESN) who moved to destroy him due to his onslaught against them in the South-East.”

How do you reconcile that a police report says embattled Deputy Commissioner of Police, Abba Kyari, told a panel that his current travail is because the southeast secessionist groups, the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) and the Eastern Security Network (ESN) are on a campaign to smear his reputation.

Kyari, who was suspended by the police last year for his alleged link to international fraudster, Ramon Abass aka Hushpuppi, allegedly said this before a panel set up by the police to probe him following the NDLEA bursting of his link with drug cartels.

What has IPOB/ESN got to do with Kyari’s misdemeanours as established by the American Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI)? Is Hushpuppy a member of IPOB? Is NDLEA headed by IPOB or ESN member?

What has IPOB/ESN got to do with the billions of naira found in Kyari’s brother’s bank account? It is foolhardy to believe that anyone particularly and Igbo man is funnelling money to both him and his brother in order to destroy him? That’s not the Igbo thinking! If you know the monies funnelled to you were set ups, so why accept the monies then?

It is better not to accept the statement as coming from the embattled cop because if he truly said so, then the nation may just merely be scratching on the surface of very deep criminal and evil-induced misdemeanours of the erstwhile super-cop.

Kyari should just not deliberately compound his problem rather in quietness clear himself of all the allegations against him and stop carrying on as if he is tribal warlord. Who knows what next is going to be revealed about the erstwhile super-cop. As long as he has been entangled with the FBI, it will be difficult to free him with kuli kuli-induced tribal or ethnocentric propaganda because as it is today Nigeria does not even know the extent of what the American authourities have against him. God bless Nigeria!!

• Ifeanyi Izeze is a Columnist with National Daily and can be reached on: [email protected]; +234-8033043009