Alleged IGP’s Plot To Implicate Saraki: Kwara Gov Finally Speaks

Kwara State Governor, Abdulfatah Ahmed, has finally spoken on the allegation by Senate President, Bukola Saraki that the Police Inspector General, Ibrahim Idris, is plotting to build a criminal case around him.

Ahmed’s reaction comes less than 24 hours after Saraki alleged on the floor of the Senate that IGP Idris has ordered the transfer of some criminal suspects from Ilorin to Abuja in order to have their submissions to the police altered so as to incriminate him.

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The Senate President claimed that Governor Ahmed informed him that the Police Chief had ordered the Commissioner of Police in Kwara, Aminu Pai Saleh, to transfer the suspects to Abuja so that ‘‘they would find how to alter their statement already made in Ilorin and try and implicate the state government and particularly myself. I felt that as we speak now, these suspects are already here in Abuja.”

Reacting to the matter through his media aide, Muideen Akorede, Governor Ahmed warned the police not to make any further advancement in their alleged plot to implicate him and the Senate President.

According to Akorede, the governor denied as “false and misleading, insinuations linking” him and the Senate President “with the suspected cultists arrested in Ilorin, the state capital and transferred by the Nigeria Police to Abuja.”

He said the governor “also denied any knowledge of or any intention to harm any individual as the political leadership in the state has never used violence as a political tool.”

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Akorede quoted the governor as recalling how the suspects were paraded by the Commissioner of Police in Ilorin, “during which he announced that the suspects were arrested for alleged murder and membership of cult groups but made no mention of any confessional statement linking their activities to any sponsors.”

“Governor Ahmed emphasised that the growing problem of cultism and cult-related criminalities formed the basis of his charge to the new Kwara State Commissioner of Police, Mr. Saleh to focus on ending the menace on his resumption last month.

“According to him, the state government sees cultism as a serious security issue requiring urgent attention and has accordingly amended the State Cultism Law to prescribe stiffer penalties for convicts and those who aid and abet them, besides providing operational support to all security agencies in the state in their fight against all forms of criminalities, including cultism.

“Governor Ahmed warned that cultism is a serious security challenge which should neither be trivialised and turned into a political tool nor be treated with levity.

“He therefore urged well-meaning Nigerians to disregard any attempt to politicise the menace of cultism but focus instead on joining hands with the government and security agencies to bring the menace to an end in the interest of public safety while allowing the rule of law and justice to prevail in the matter,” read the statement.

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