The office of Nigeria’s Inspector General of Police finally succeeded in forcing out controversial Lagos Commissioner of Police, Fatai Owoseni, from his post in Lagos State police command.
Imohinmi Edgal, a recently decorated Commissioner of Police, had been nominated to replace Mr. Owoseni but the CP refused to step down and hand over power to his replacement for more than 24 hours.
Mr. Owoseni, whose first redeployment in February was blocked by the Oba of Lagos, himself a former top police officer, has been assigned to head the administrative division of the Force Criminal Investigation Division (CID) at the police headquarters in Abuja but Owoseni resisted his redeployment and embarked on efforts to reverse the process.
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Last February, Mr. Owoseni attempted to frame SaharaReporters’ publisher, Omoyele Sowore, after the online publisher was attacked in Lagos.
A police source in Abuja told a correspondent of SaharaReporters that Mr. Edgal had been in Lagos since yesterday to take over from Mr. Owoseni but the top cop refused to meet with him for handing over claiming that he was in Ibadan earlier in the day. Yesterday, Owoseni audaciously granted an interview to the media in Lagos yesterday denying he had been transferred even though he had received a police signal to that effect.
Mr. Owoseni reportedly reached out to his godfathers to intervene with President Muhammadu Buhari to reverse his redeployment but unknown to them the Inspector General of Police, Ibrahim Kpotun Idris had specifically asked permission from the president to replace Owoseni and complained that he was having a hard time doing so. President Buhari told him that since he is IG of Police, he is empowered to run the police force without interference. Edgal is now going through handover procedures in Lagos according to a terse police statement issued today in Lagos acknowledging that Edgal is now to resume duties as Commissioner of Police in the state.
Lagos is the cash cow of corrupt senior police officers, Owoseni it was learnt made a huge profit from policing Lagos as shown by a lavish wedding held for his daughter in the US earlier this year where A-list comedians and musicians were flown to Ohio for the wedding.
