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If you call it a new year resolution you won’t be wrong. On January 1st, I took a decision that will significantly impact my relationship with God and my friends: I resolved inwardly to always be thankful and express gratitude to friends whom I have over the years cultivated exhilarating relationship with in the course of my job as a security and crime journalist and security consultant in the last four decades.
As a crime and security reporter, I have covered the police, Military,Nigerian Customs service, Nigeria immigration service, EFCC and NDLEA.
In making the above new year decision, I drew inspiration and lesson from an incident in the Bible where ten leapers were healed by Jesus but only one later returned to express gratitude(Luke 17:11-18).I have therefore, singled out these security friends of mine for special appreciation and gratitude for their kind heartedness, selflessness, dexterity and excellence service to our fatherland over the years. I also salute them for personal favours to me at one time or another. According to a French novelist, Marcel Proust, “Let us be grateful to the people who make us happy; they are the charming gardeners who make our souls blossom.” Let me also add that these my friends who were and even still big names and resourceful stakeholders in the security sector played critical roles in helping to expand the scope of my understanding of security issues.They contributed inmessely to my growth in security journalism.
Among them is a former Customs Area Comptroller in-charge of Tin-Can Island port, Lagos Alhaji Atiku Abubakar. Atiku would later rise in the political ladder to become the elected Governor of Adamawa state in 1999 and but his swearing-in, was picked as a running mate to the then People’s Democratic Party, PDP presidential candidate, Olusegun Obasanjo. Upon Obasanjo’s victory in the 1999 presidential election, Atiku became the elected Vice President of the country. Our meeting in 1982 was sequel to an exclusive story I had written and was published in the front page of the now rested National Concord newspaper concerning bulgary activities in the Customs warehouse in Apapa. In the course of investigating the theft, I was arrest by Customs officers on patrol who dragged me to his( Atiku) office after the initial interrogation by the fair- skinned, heavily built and handsome Public Relations Officer, Mr Innocent Okoye. After the incident, Atiku and I eventually became friends and when I was posted to far away Cross River state as Chief Correspondent, we still maintained contact.When he ventured into politics during the President Ibrahim Babangida endless transition to civil programme in the 90s, he invited me to be part of his media team. With the approval of my employer, the late MKO Abiola, I was seconded to work for him(Atiku Abubakar) in far away Yola, the Adamawa state capital as he was contesting for governorship position in that state.
Atiku is a good friend; detrabalised, disciplined and an interesting personality. During my wedding, he sent his wife to fully represent him.
Unfortunately, Atiku’s gubernatorial ambition in the Babangida’s transition programme was to suffer a hiccup as the military administration annulled the ambition.
Another security officer who later became my friend was Commissioner of Police, Chief Johnson Odu (now late) who was incharge of the old Anambra state police Command. He had dispatched an officer, Marvel Akpoyibo, to arrest me over an exclusive news item published in the National Concord where I exposed an unfortunate incident involving a suspect detained in police dog kennel in Awkunanaw along Agbani Road in Enugu. That arrest followed an initial arrest by the same police command after another exclusive disclosure about armed robbers’ plan to invade Anambra state. I was arrested and dragged to the office of the then Governor, Chief Jim Nwobodo before I was handed to the Nigeria state security service then known as Nigeria Security Organization (NSO). My second arrest attracted the attention of the publisher, management and a team of Concord Editors among whom were the late Ben Onyechonam, Ray Ekpu and late Dele Giwa. Their attention were drawn to my ordeal and they flew into Enugu to intervene and get me out of the NSO/ Police gulag.
Akpoyibo would later rise to become Commissioner of Police in Lagos state and then attained the rank of Deputy Inspector- General of police. After the Enugu saga, Marvel and I became very close friends, dependable friends all throughout his subsequent years in the police.
As my journalism career took me to different states I encountered another fantastic police officer in the person of Mr Parry Osayande. It was in Makurdi, Benue state. Osayande who was the state’s Commissioner of Police had intervened when I unknowingly blocked the convoy of the military governor of the state, Group Captain Jonah Jang (as he then was). Jang’s convoy was moving without the usual siren and without knowing it, my Volkswagen caused an obstruction to the convoy. I was subsequently handed over to CP Parry Osayande who was instructed by Jang to detain me. However Osayande gave me a soft landing by asking me to go home and return to his office the next day. Coincidentally, both of us were later transferred at different time to Calabar.
When he became Cross River State Commissioner of Police, Osayande hosted me upon my arrived in the state from Markurdi in 1988.
Later I had a rough encounter when I exposed the activities of cross border armed robbers who were operating between Calabar and Cameroon. This exposure did not go down well with the robbers as they located my house and removed the four tyres of my car. It was CP Osayande again that came to my rescue by ensuring that the robbers were rounded up by an officer, Alozie Ogugbuaja who was then incharge of anti robbery operation in the state police command. Recall that Alozie Ogugbuaja was the controversial Lagos state Police Public Relation Officer who had altercations with the Babangida military junta which led to his immediate transfer out of Lagos to Calabar. We became good friends and brothers upon realizing he was also from Abia state like myself. He, it was, who suggested ideas to me leading to the creation of Crime Reporters Association of Nigeria (CRAN).
Back to Osayande.Years later, CP Osayande was re-deployed to the defunct Bendel state ( now comprising Edo and Delta states) to handle the operation for the arrest of notorious armed robber, Lawrence Anini. Osayande had invited me to the join the operation and I had the opportunity of being the first journalist to interview Anini after he was captured by DSP kayode Uaenroro who led the operation.
He (Osayande) rose to the rank of Deputy Inspector-General of police incharge of force criminal investigation department Alagbon (FCID) where he cracked so many hard criminal cases.My friendship with him and his family further blossomed. He was an energetic conscientious patriotic police officer until his retirement and death.
Other police officers of note with whom I maintained solid friendship are former Inspector-General of Police Muhammadu Gambo Jimeta who graced my wedding and also introduced me to top military officers.He equally assisted me with many exclusive informations and hosted me in his home town, Yola. IGP Jimeta was another detribalised officer that I met in the course of my career. Another officer was former Inspector-General of Police Ibrahim Coomassie. Though tough and known as a no nonsense officer, he was very accessible and friendly. He directed that I should be allowed to interview every arrested armed robber in the country, a privilege that culminated in my publication of the book “Dark Clouds: The Confession of Notorious Armed Robbers in Nigeria.
Another valuable and friendly IGP is Sir Mike Mbama Okiro.Our friendship started when he was Deputy Commissioner of police incharge of operation in the Lagos state police command.Our relationship extended to our various families. He was indeed a close and reliable brother. On the assumption of office in 2008 as IGP, he extended a goodwill offer by inviting me to work with him at the force headquarters as a media consultant. I accepted the offer and subsequentl established the police newspaper known as “The Dawn”. The newspaper won United Nation and European Union security newspaper award during the administration of late IGP Solomon Arase.
After I retired from active journalism, I delved into security consultancy and security writing and in this area, I also came across fantastic and unique officers like Lieutenant-General Tukur Buratai who was then the Chief of Army Staff.He later invited me to witness the operational activities of Nigerian troops operating under operation “Lafia dole” in the north east zone of the country where I spent weeks at the war front as the army battled Boko Haram terrorists.
(To be Continued)
