THE Inspector General of Police (IGP), Dr. Kayode Egbetokun, on Monday, August 12, said the Police are on the trial of a man actively involved in the Sudan crisis, but has now relocated to Nigeria.

    But he declined to name the suspect, who he said was mobilising to destabilise Nigeria and was traced to a shop he was using as a decoy located within the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) building, otherwise known as Labour House, insisting that the raid was not targeted at the NLC leadership.

     Egbetokun, while responding to a question on why the police were against the hardship protest at the Youth Summit organised by the Police, stated: “My response to this will be in three parts.

“Number one is that, of course, our responsibility is not to protest, but to manage protest. Two is that we had intelligence at our disposal that some agents of destabilisation were ready to use the hardship protest to destabilise our country.

“I won’t be able to share the details yet, because we are still on the trail of these individuals. Some of them are already out of the country; they immediately escape. Some of them are even foreigners.

“One of them was traced to the Labour House the other day, and I was just wondering why the noise about the raid on the Labour House when the Police raided the labour House. We raided only a shop that the individual was using as a front and we have been monitoring his activities.

    “He was very active in the Sudan crisis and he’s in Nigeria mobilising people to destabilise our country. We traced him to that shop and our detectives raided his shop. We recovered valuable documents. So, there was no need for the noise about the raid of the Labour House.”

He further explained that the Police were against the protest because of the ENDSARS experience, adding that the mobilisation for the hunger protests was carried out via social media and such protests had the propensity of being violent.

“I always refer to the ENDSARS protest, which turned violent. It started initially as peaceful, but any protest that is mobilised on social media has the potential to be violent, because when you are mobilising on social media, you are mobilising the whole population, including the criminals.

“So, the idea of the protest being hijacked, I don’t believe that a protest that is mobilised on social media is hijacked. Hijacked by who? By the same people that were mobilised for the protest.

“So, our experience in the past in previous protests would not make the Police want to take part in any protest that we know is going to be violent.”

      When asked what the Police were doing to protect farmers, Egbetokun said the Force had commenced farm patrols to give farmers confidence, noting: “We are doing a lot. In the Northeast, we have started farm patrol to give confidence back to farmers to return to the farm. Mr. President is very concerned about it and we are doing our best.

     “But let me also add that the security landscape in Nigeria is complex and diverse. Marked with a range of challenges requiring multi-dimensional responses. We have challenges in security.

     “There are also economic, political and environmental challenges. All these challenges are interconnected. To solve these challenges, we need to understand their interconnectedness. You can’t solve one challenge and leave the others.”

     The IGP said he was doing a lot to flush out bad eggs in the Force, adding: “You said that a lot of bad eggs are in the Police, that we have bad eggs, but the bad eggs are everywhere; they are not only in the Police.

“Whatever you see in the Police today is a reflection of what Nigeria is. It is called the Nigeria Police Force and members of the Force are Nigerians. So, a society gets the kind of Police it deserves.

“That notwithstanding, we are fishing out the bad eggs, because we are responsible leaders.”

       In a related development, the NPF reiterated that it raided the second floor of the Labour House in search of some incriminating documents to establish a case against an international “subversive” element who is a threat to Nigeria’s democracy.

Force spokesman, Mr. Muyiwa Adejobi (ACP), speaking on a television programme on Monday, August 12, stressed that the NLC building was housing the suspect in the Second Floor at the time of the raid and not the 10th Floor housing the NLC headquarters.

“We recovered evidence to prove that the suspect is a threat to the nation; the man is a suspected subversive element,” Adejobi insisted.

Recall that on Wednesday, August 7, the NLC said heavily armed security personnel stormed and raided its national secretariat in Abuja office about 8:30 pm and carted away documents, an action condemned by local and international rights groups, including Amnesty International, lawyers and politicians.

But Adejobi said some landlord-tenant relationship was established between the NLC and the global suspect whose syndicate members have been arrested, restating that the raid was not connected to the recent #EndBadGovernance nationwide protests.

He said the Police have embarked on a forensic investigation and the NLC would be needed in the probe of the suspect, who claimed multiple foreign identities, including being a Russian and a Briton.

“The NLC is not the suspect here. We had a target and whatever it takes, we must get him at all means,” Adejobi said, even as he indicated that the suspect travels frequently out of Nigeria and the raid was not to get him, but to recover certain incriminating evidence, and “we have gotten what we want.”

“We have (uncovered) plans that people want to run down Nigeria. We have (uncovered) plans that people want to destroy our democracy, destroy our common heritage called Nigeria, and we cannot keep quiet…

“We are getting enough help and we will get this man,” the Force spokesman stated.