Police vs. Ajaero: Enough of the circus!

The ding dong between the Police and the National President of the Nigeria Labour Congress(NLC), Joe Ajaero, is becoming bothersome and confusing. It is fast developing into a rigmarole, circus and a game of the absurd.

The Police had summoned the Labour leader to answer questions over allegations of “criminal conspiracy, terrorism financing, treasonable felony, subversion and cybercrime,” in which he was allegedly mentioned. Very weighty and grievous allegations indeed!

The summons, dated Monday, August 19 and signed by an Assistant Commissioner of Police in the Force Headquarters, Adamu Mu’azu, requested the NLC boss to appear the following day. But he demurred. He wrote back to the Police through his counsel, Samuel Oganla, Principal Partner at the Falana & Falana Chambers, that he would not be available immediately due to some other engagements.

The General Secretary of the NLC, Emmanuel Ugboaja, later explained that Ajaero is a current student in a local university, where he was writing an examination. The interview was then rescheduled for last Thursday, August 29.

When Ajaero eventually answered the summons, he did so in a melodrama. He not only appeared with a top notch lawyer in the mould of Femi Falana, a Senior Advocate of Nigeria(SAN) and a renowned human rights crusader, he, much like killing a fly with a sledgehammer, invaded the Force Headquarters with an intimidating miscellany of Labour chiefs! A major election campaign train could not have been so massive.

What for? To intimidate the Police? However, if Ajaero is effusive in his melodramatic and theatrical displays, the NLC as a body, will win an award for its unnecessarily excessive, fawning show of loyalty.

The moment the summons was received, the NLC began to breathe angst and threats . It characteristically vowed to shut down the entire country should Ajaero be detained.

Next, it mobilized the national officers of all the 54 affliate unions who are also members of the central Labour organization’s Central Working Committee(CWC), who literally chaperoned the Labour leader as he strode majestically to the Force Headquarters last Thursday.

Labour was not done yet in its cranky style of responding to anything Ajaero. It also wrote to all state chapters to mobilize, gather at their respective offices on the date their boss went to the Force Headquarters, march to the Police Heaquarters in their states and hold a peaceful prayer procession till Ajaero leaves the police office.

All because a man was merely invited by the Police? He had not even been detained! This is hardly surprising because Ajaero runs the NLC with the magisterial authority of an emperor, almost literally ‘customizing’ the central Labour as a personal fiefdom.

Hence, NLC’s proclivity for the servile and the wimpish under him and almost about every matter that concerns him is not surprising but ludicrous.

In November, last year, the Labour leader had an altercation in his home-state of Imo.

He was, according to the police, brutalized by members of a rival faction who were reportedly opposed to NLC’s plan to lockdown the Imo airport and other essential services in the state, as the union was preparing for a major strike at wake of the governorship election.

The NLC’s immediate response was the threat to shut down the entire country for an action committed in a constituent of the nation. It eventually backed down from the plan. Ordinarily, we do not support the bestial display of anger against the Labour leader. We condemn it in the strongest terms because it is most heinous.

However, it is totally uncalled for to attempt to punish the entire nation through an irresponsible strike for an act committed in just a state out of the 36 states. But that is the sort of incredulity that NLC breathes under Ajaero.

It is high time the central Labour union put paid to or attenuated its predilection for employing the awesome clout of the Labour behemoth to settle the personal scores of his leader.

Back to the Police summons. The Police too are not helping matters. It soon came to light that none of the grievous allegations listed in the Police letter of summons— criminal conspiracy, terrorism financing, treasonable felony, and others— featured in the interview session Ajaero had with the Inspector-General’s Intelligence Response Team last Thursday.

According to the Labour leader’s counsel, Ogala, the operatives merely made enquiries about a tenant of the Paschal Bafyau Labour House, the NLC building located in the Central Business District of Abuja. Why then was Ajaero summoned?

In the first place, the summons was said to be connected with the police raid of the NLC building. The central Labour union had said that the operatives “claimed that they were looking for seditious materials used for the #EndBadGovernance protest” last month.

The Inspector-General of Police, Kayode Egbekotun, was reported to have said consequently that one of the masterminds of Sudan conflict was traced to the NLC headquarters. The Police questioned Ajaero but released him without mentioning any of the weighty allegations for which he was summoned. They then released him.

However, less than 24 hours after he had his date with the Police, he has been summoned again! This time, he is requested to bring along the NLC scribe, Ogala. The Labour leaders were to appear for an interview session with the Deputy Inspector-General, Force Intelligence Department(FID) on Thursday this week in connection with the Police “investigations into the alleged case of criminal intimidation, conduct likely to cause breach of public peace and malicious damage to properties in which your(Ajaero’s) name featured”.

This is clearly befuddling. What are police authorities up to? Why were they mum on the first set of allegations for which Ajaero was summoned, only to invite him again along with the scribe

for a fresh set of allegations? Are the Police not unwittingly pandering towards the claims by Labour that the allegations contained in the initial summons were trumped-up charges?

They are fast turning the whole thing into a circus, a wink in the dark. Let the Police be serious about this matter. If Ajaero genuinely has a case to answer, let him be prosecuted accordingly, but let the whole thing be transparent. But if the Police have nothing against him, he should be let off the hook. This circus must stop.

Again, it is high time Ajaero and his co-travellers in the NLC took responsibility and stop acting theatrically or using the central Labour union to fight personal battles. Ajaero is not the first NLC president. Neither will he be the last. It is all a continuum. NLC is also not his personal estate. And let him and the union stop behaving as if he is above the law.