By Our Reporter
On Monday, Solomon Arase, a former Inspector General of Police (IGP) of Nigeria, was sacked by the president as the chairman of the Police Service Commission (PSC).
This came days after the ICIR petitioned the president Bola Tinubu requesting that Arase be suspended and probed for his corrupt practices as the IGP and for abusing his office as the PSC chairman.
Arase, who was meant to serve for four years as the commission’s chair, was replaced after spending just two years in office.
Arase had been fingered in the police harassment and detention of Dayo Aiyetan, ICIR’s publisher, and Nurudeen Akewushola, a reporter at the organisation, over an investigative report that exposed his corrupt practices while serving as IGP.
The newspaper, in its investigation, revealed how Arase and Ibrahim Idris, another former IGP, were accused of receiving house allocations worth over N200 million each as incentives for awarding an estate development contract to Copran International Ltd. for land originally meant to be used as police barracks during their time in office.
That, however, was not the first time Arase would be enmeshed in a property-related scandal while in office as IGP.
On July 18, 2016, Ibrahim Idris, Arase’s successor as IGP, claimed his predecessor went away with 24 vehicles belonging to the police.
“If you look through the windows of my former office, and from the report from my (Force) transport officer, you would see cars, but a week to the day I would resume, all these cars disappeared,” said Idris.
“So, what I am telling you is that I have signed a directive to my SIP (I have a special investigation panel; I set it up). It is going to investigate all the vehicle purchases, contributions to the police and the distribution of those vehicles in the last three years; we are going to look into that.
“When I took over, there was no vehicle, even the vehicle I would use. I discovered the last IG went away with 24 vehicles; the DIGs, some of them eight, some of them seven. The IG’s vehicles included two BMW 7 series, one armoured, and he left me with an old car.
“The last time I followed the president with it, he was asking me, ‘what are you doing with this old car?’ Because if you see the headlight, the thing has changed colour, which means they parked it and rains and everything had fallen on it, but the new ones that were bought, he [Arase] went with all of them; they are part of the 24.”
The police later claimed 19 out of the 24 vehicles had been recovered from Arase.
“We are making progress in our investigations. We were able to trace 24 vehicles to the former IG, and we have recovered 19 already. He has yet to release the remaining five, but we won’t let up until we recover all the vehicles. We have pictures of the vehicles, and they have been documented, so he can’t deny it; the recovery is a fact,” a police source said.
Arase would, however, deny the claim, stating that some forces were bent on tarnishing his image.
“It is embarrassing for me to wake up on Monday morning to be inundated with calls and messages on purported 19 vehicles recovered from me,” Arase said in a statement.
“I wish to reassure the general public that there was nothing like that.
“Like I said in July, I did not take any police vehicle with me outside what I am entitled to, and so there couldn’t have been any vehicle recovered from me.
“If there was any such, those behind this campaign of calumny should please make the number plates of the vehicles public and where they were recovered from.”
Before releasing the statement, Arase described as unfortunate the fact that the matter had become a media issue when his successor had his telephone number and could have called or sent him a text message for clarification.
