Osun APC calls for transfer of police commissioner, says he is partisan
By Deborah Oladejo, Osogbo
All Progressives Congress (APC), Osun State chapter has called on the Inspector General of Police, Baba Alkali to remove the state Police Commissioner, Kehinde Longe.
Acting Chairman of APC in the state, Sooko Tajudeen Lawal at a press conference in Osogbo on Wednesday said the party has lost confidence in the Mr. Longe.
Lawal pointed out that the police are always looking away when APC members are being attacked by the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) thugs.
This, according to him, is prove that the police have not been maintaining neutrality in the discharge of their official responsibility.
Represented by the party’s spokesperson, Chief Kola Olabisi, Lawal said scores of APC members have been attacked in Osogbo, Ede, Ilesa, Ijebu-Jesa, Ila-Orangun, Ikire, Iwo, Ikirun, Okuku, Ifetedo and other towns in the state with property worth millions of naira destroyed in the process.
He said: “Gentlemen of the press, the kernel of our press conference is that the PDP, Governor Ademola Adeleke and Osun State Police Command, under CP Longe, should be held responsible for any break-down of law and order as the general elections approach in a few days’ time.
“The main source of our concern about the pitiable security situation of our state since the inauguration of the Adeleke’s administration is that the police which is the statutory security agency in the state have not been doing enough to dispassionately maintain peace and order.
“The funniest aspect of the unsavoury development is that the political hoodlums who were arrested and brought down to the police command in Osogbo from Ifetedo few days ago were not even allowed to alight from the vehicle that brought them before they were surprisingly left off the hook based on the directive from the top.
“It is based on the totality of the insensitive attitude of the leadership of the Nigeria Police to the plight of members of our party that we are making a clarion call for the transfer of the state commissioner of police, Mr Patrick Kehinde Longe, from our state.
“We are calling on the Inspector-General of Police to intervene in our plight by urgently effecting the transfer of the Osun State Commissioner of Police, Longe, as his best is found out not to be in the best interest of any genuine democratic setting.”
Lawal also disclosed that Adeleke and the PDP leadership in the state have concluded a coordinated arrangement to use the police to embark on the arrest of some of the leaders of the party in order to disenfranchise them and create fears in the minds of members ahead of the presidential and other remaining elections in the state.
“It was gathered that Adeleke and the PDP had skillfully designed the indiscriminate arrest of our members to be carried out by the pliable Divisional Police Officers (DPOs) who were transferred to their different duty posts amidst criticisms by us shortly after the current state Commissioner of Police, Mr Patrick Kehinde Longe, assumed office, recently.
“Information also has it that the Osun State chapter of the PDP has a discreet committee whose duty is to compile the names and addresses of the targeted APC members to be arrested and possibly attacked and killed,” he added.
