By Uduma Kalu

Family of  the late DIG Haruna John is asking questions? They asked why the Nigerian police should have about two helicopters. But the late DIG’s widow dumbfounded, unable to respond to sympathisers’ questions.

However, Musa Haruna, Nigeria’s ambassador to Trinidad and Tobago, and brother to the late DIG who described his brother as an excellent police officer spoke when he received the Inspector General of Police, Mohammed Dikko Abubakar and the Minister of Police Affairs, retired Navy Captain Caleb Olubolade on a condolence visit to the family.

The envoy, speaking on behalf of the family, criticized the poor funding of the Nigerian police, saying,  “It is unacceptable for the police force in Nigeria to have only about two helicopters, instead of 15 or 20 as obtain in some smaller countries.”

He  went on to decry the poor equipping of policemen who are expected to fight insurgents in the country, saying it is appalling that police men carry inadequate firearms to face militant groups who carry much more sophisticated arms.

“The death of John Haruna was not just a loss to the family alone, but to the entire police force. John always gave a hundred percent dedication to his job and was always a stickler for discipline within the ranks he commanded. This may account for why he was given double promotion from commissioner of police to DIG,” he said.

Meanwhile, reports said widow of the late Deputy Inspector General of Police was too shocked to speak on her husband’s sudden death in a helicopter crash. Mrs. Haruna sat huddled between two women in the family’s living room.

It was said she could hardly respond to condolences from relations and neighbours who thronged the family’s Sigma Estate home in the Jabi District of the Federal Capital Territory, Abuja.

Clad in a skirt and an ankara blouse, the widow leaned on a pillow on her seat, with eyes reddened by tears. She stared vacantly as the reality of her husband’s death dawned on her, with people swarming the house to pay their condolences.

Also, sympathisers are besieging the Okota, Lagos home of the late DIG Haruna. Among those that went to the house were the Lagos State Commissioner of Police Umar Mano to condole with the widow but Mrs. Haruna was  obviously in Abuja when the CP and his team visited. The CP was accompanied by the Divisional Police Officers of Ago and Okota.

The helicopter had along with the one used by the Special Task Force (STF) hovered the town in the wake of the violence that greeted the blast.

Police Chopper

Residents said they noticed the police chopper hovering with an unusually loud sound and later saw it nosedive and crashed into the buildings following which they rushed to the scene.

The helicopter was said to have burst into flames as it crash-landed, giving the occupants little chance of survival. Youths, who rushed to the area were said to have made efforts to put out the fire with buckets of water before the arrival of fire fighters and other security agents.

According to an eye witness, Solomon Achus, “I noticed that the helicopter was unusually sluggish and making a strange sound and suddenly, I saw it coming down until it crashed into the buildings. Thank God there were no deaths on the ground as most people were not at home.”

A member of the Kabong community in Jos North local government area of Plateau State, where the crash occurred, Mr. Solomon Achis, said the helicopter, which came down around 11am, appeared to have developed a serious engine problem mid air.

Achis said, “We saw the helicopter going up and down as if it was being pursued by some forces. It made some unusual noise as it was struggling to gain stability but to no avail.”

Achis said that the cranky sounds emanating from the engine of the ill-fated helicopter aroused suspicion that all was not well with it and that they were not surprised when it suddenly crashed.

“It was making a noise and coming too close to the ground, then it fell into a building and caught fire in the process,” the witness said.

He noted that the helicopter would have landed on a mother and her baby, but the woman managed to run to safety just before the helicopter fell.

He said the crash destroyed three houses in the area and would have caused more havoc but for the timely intervention of the youths, who mobilized to extinguish the fire with detergent and sand.

DIG Haruna, who was patrolling the crisis-torn Jos, was returning to Abuja when the helicopter crashed and killed him along with chief superintendent Alexander Pwol-Ja, Sgt. Sonatiam Shirunam and Assistant Commissioner Garba Yalwa, the helicopter’s pilot.

A newspaper last Thursday reported that the helicopter that killed a Deputy Inspector General (DIG) of Police, Haruna John and three other senior police officers in Jos on Wednesday was a faulty one.

The report  noted a witness account as saying the chopper took off from the Jos Prison field with indications that something was wrong with it as it headed to Abuja. While flying away, the helicopter drastically lost altitude, and then smoke oozed out of it before it burst into flames and crashed in Kabong, a residential area at Gada Biyu, Jos North.

Resident Iliya John said, “We usually see helicopters going round the city almost every day, but this morning we saw this one flying in an abnormal way and we all became alert and we started heading for safety…it was going so low that whoever saw it could tell that something was amiss, in fact people first started coming out and pointing at the way it was flying so low, it was not as the normal ones that we see everyday.”

“People were even following the aircraft to see where it was going to land because they noticed that it had mechanical problem,” another witness, Joseph Audu added.

Senator Hadi Sirika, who served as pilot in the Nigeria Police Force, told journalists that “There are several possible causes, if there is no brief you can’t really fathom what happened.” But he insisted that the crashed chopper was new.

Questions trail DIG Haruna’s death
However, Haruna and other officers’ death has elicited questions within the security community in the country especially the Nigeria Police Force as it emerged  that the crashed BELL helicopter carrying the DIG and three other officers was one of the four new helicopters delivered to the Nigeria Police from the US between October and December last year.

In fact, the Inspector General of Police, Mohammed Dahiru Abubakar, was flown in the helicopter by the AIG in-charge Helicopters, Mr. Samuel Illesanmi to Ila Oragun, Osun State when he went to inspect facilities at the Mobile Police Training School for officers last Friday, March 10, 2012.

From ILA Oragun, the IGP was flown to Jos, where Assistant Commissioners of Police (ACP’s) who had been on Course at the Police Staff College, graduated the following day which was Saturday, 11th March 2012.

From Jos, after the graduation ceremonies he presided over, the same helicopter flew the IGP to Kano where he had some official engagements. The helicopter returned to Abuja the same weekend.

But following the Boko Haram attack on St. Finbars Catholic Church and another COCIN Church in Jos at the weekend, the Chief of Defence Staff, Air Chief Marshal Oluseyi Petirin in company of DIG Haruna John, paid an operational visit to Jos on Monday, 12th of March 2012, to assess the attacks on the churches and reassure the people of Jos that security agencies were putting strategies in place to checkmate further attacks from the terrorist sect.