The Commissioner of Police in Bauchi State, Umar Mamman Sanda, on Sunday responded to the petition by former House of Representatives Speaker, Yakubu Dogara, over an alleged threat to his life.
In a written petition to the Inspector General of Police (IGP), Dogara had claimed that some police personnel were plotting to kill him, and asked the IGP to immediately carry out a thorough probe of the gun-running allegation involving the police personnel.
In his response to the allegation, the Bauchi State police commissioner denied parts of the allegation but said a full-scale investigation had been ordered to unravel the truth in the matter.
He said, “It is not true and there is no iota of truth in the allegations. What happened is that, we received discreet information that one of our police officers was attempting to sell a rifle, so we went after him. Initially, we had received prior information that he was carrying the rifles inside his car, we went after him and searched the car and we discovered the guns.
“When we asked who gave him the guns, he confessed he wanted to sell them. We asked him if it was our own rifles that he wanted to sell and he said yes. We arrested him and started investigating him. In the cause of our investigation, he implicated one person with whom they live in the same house.
“In continuation of our investigations of the first person, he said it was someone in Tafawa Balewa who approached him that he is looking for a rifle to buy and that was what prompted him to carry that gun. When he gave us the name of the person, we went and arrested him too.
“When we arrested him, he confessed to us that it is true that he is looking for a rifle to buy because something terrible happened to him, that his house alongside those of others burned during the last December 2021 incident that occurred following the Baba Peter Gonto memorial anniversary.
“He mentioned names of some people, including that of the former Speaker in connection to the incident, saying that is the reason why he is looking for a rifle to kill him (Dogara), and so, we launched an investigation to that regard
“One thing with human beings is, if he is guilty, he would not want to admit until you use wisdom, so we have intensified our investigations.
“And on the missing rifle in our armoury, I directed that our armoury be audited and in the course of the audit, we discovered that apart from the two rifles we intercepted, some were not in the armoury and so we have expanded our investigations.”
He further said, “Now that I am talking to you, our armoury officer who retired two years ago has been arrested the day before yesterday because we have been looking for him and now he is in our custody.
“We were still investigating and we saw that he (Dogara) has written to the IGP and is alleging that we didn’t call to inform him. I can tell you, if not because of what that man said, he would not discover any statement from another person that his life is at stake.”
“Even before now, we have informed the Force Headquarters about the matter and this issue that I am telling you about, if not because of the situation on the ground I am not supposed to tell the press until after we completed our investigations, the letter indicated that we have not done anything seeing that his life has been exposed to danger, that’s not how it is,” he added.