Auwal Musa Muhammad, the new Commissioner of Police for Bauchi State, last week, tasked journalists working in the state to expose corrupt police personnel to help sanitise the system.
“As our partners, you are encouraged to be bold in exposing the bad eggs in the force,” he had said. “If you see any personnel of the Force engaging in any nefarious act, please, get in touch with me or any officer of the Command. There is a way you can do that without dragging the image of the Force in the mud.”
“Be our agent in your respective areas, have your ears to the ground, open your eyes and give us useful information that will lead to effective policing. We are working together to make society crime-free,” the commissioner declared while interacting with reporters in his office,” he added.
WIKKITIMES HAS BEEN DOING THAT
However, WikkiTimes has carved a niche in exposing shady deals within the command but the police oftentimes abhors hard-proven facts and evidence-based reporting about nefarious happenings among its personnel.
For instance, in August 2022, WikkiTimes documented how over 100 firearms got missing at the command, but the then commissioner of police, Umar Mamman Sanda wanted the matter to be solved internally.
The personnel allegedly responsible for the missing arms were detained in six local government areas where they serve pending the outcome of the internal investigation. Barely a year after, nothing was heard of the outcome of the internal investigation.
An inside source told WikkiTimes that the commissioner of police advised that the command not release a press statement about the issue.
WikkiTimes’ report was further corroborated when Yakubu Dogara, a lawmaker who represented Bogoro/Dass/Tafawa Balewa Federal Constituency, alleged that some officers of the command were involved in gunrunning business with some individuals who were threatening his life.
A day after the report, the command via Twitter responded that it was investigating the matter. Three months after, the outcome of the investigation has not been communicated.
Meanwhile, the command recovered a total number of 46,366 arms and ammunition from various non-state actors between January 2020 and September 2022, but it could not give further explanations when contacted last year.
In November 2022, WikkiTimes uncovered how the same police commissioner abetted a former commissioner of Information in the state, Muhammed Damina to alter an alleged murder case into a road traffic offence to avert justice.
Damina was accused of killing one of his friends, Adamu Babanta who challenged him [Damina] for wanting to have an affair with his teenage daughter, Khadija.
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Instead of culpable homicide, the police boss alongside his officers Ahmad Buba and Livinus Emmanuel filed a road offence case against the ex-commissioner.
The deceased’s family lawyer, Alkassim Muhammad disagreed. He believes the police were trying to lessen the suspect’s crime to cheat justice. He would later petition the Police Service Commission (PSC) for proper handling of the matter.
Following our report, the police boss was transferred to Lagos and the ex-commissioner was remanded at the Bauchi correctional service centre pending the outcomes of an investigation by the Department of State Service (DSS). The deceased family’s lawyer later told WikkiTimes that the former commissioner had been imprisoned.
