Don’t join APC to blackmail Omirin, Osun PDP warns Police
By Richard Akintade, Osogbo
The Nigerian Police authorities have been advised not to fall to the schemes of politicians trying to force hands of the security agency into desperate games of blackmail.
The advise came against the backdrop of comments credited to the Police Public Relations officer of the Osun State Police Command, SP Yemisi Opalola, which has provided a subtle ground for the rejected opposition APC in the state to wantonly discredit the good name of Hon Emmanuel Sanya Omirin, the lawmaker representing Ijesa South Federal Constituency in the National Assembly.
A statement by the Media Office of the ruling Peoples Democratic Party on Monday and signed by the State Chairman, Hon Sunday Bisi enjoined the Police to observe caution while carrying out APC scripted agenda as such could only lay credence to APC’s boastful stance of having the Police at its beck and call to back up its plans to destabilise the state with a view to rekindling its lost hope in Osun.
PDP noted with amazement, after going through the purported confessional statement by a suspect in Police custody, as to how on earth, the name of Hon Sanya Omirin was being linked to the crime on which the suspect was accused after the suspect verbally said he does not even have the mobile number of Hon. Omirin.
Unless the Police and the opposition APC are in possession of something else unknown to the public outside of the video clip and narratives of some objective media professionals about the suspect, there was nowhere the person of our hardworking lawmaker, Hon Sanya Omirin was mentioned as an enabler of any crime.
That a suspect identified with PDP in the past or within the catchment area of Hon Omirin does not make the lawmaker an automatic criminal except the state command of the Nigerian Police Force and the police have been commissioned to criminalize anyone who voted for PDP in Ijesaland in the last general elections.
It is pertinent to urge the Osun state command of the Nigerian Police Force to be courageous and apply similar energy to act on various petitions against APC and its hoodlums who have perpetrated heinous crimes in the state, ranging from daylight murders, maiming and arson, in various parts of the state in the runoff to the general elections that uprooted APC in Osun.
As the ruling party, we are always on the same page with genuine efforts of security agencies to get rid of criminals in the state but such efforts must not be selective or cherry picking, borne of job security fears. Doing so, to us, is unmitigated recipe for entrenched criminality.
Our party recalls vividly that the same Hon Sanya Omirin, the police is allowing APC discredit with coordinated blackmail,was a victim of vicious attack by APC thugs on the eve of the National Assembly elections where he only escaped with his life by the whiskers. His house was attacked including the ancestral home of his father in ilesa, which was burnt down by the same APC hoodlums.
Why and how can the same victim of assassination attempts by the same APC now become the target of the Police, is not only beyond us but calls for soul searching by Police operatives, who may have been pushed into such oddities.
