BY BILESANMI OLALEKAN

Olayinka Babatunde Balogun, until recently, was Principal Staff Officer, PSO, to the Inspector-General of Police, IGP, Hafiz Ringim. He was one of the few changes the Ringim-led police made late last year. Balogun is the Commissioner of Police, Ekiti State.
In this interview, Balogun warns that whoever is caught particularly during the April general elections for malpractices, irrespective of his status in the society, would be made to face the law even as he said the IGP would sanction any police officer caught abetting electoral fraud.

How has it been, particularly on this new assignment?
Whatever experiences one must have had must be a way of building one into what the current assignment is.  When you put all these together, you then become a complete policeman. We have a nomenclature in the police called general duty, that is a policeman that is a general duty officer, he is supposed to know something about operations, administration; investigation and so many other areas, so when you put all these together, you become a complete police officer.

How were you able to handle all the fraud cases as head of Special Fraud Unit, SFU, Alagbon, for which you were popular?

I was in Panti before I went to Alagbon. As I said earlier, a policeman is equipped to face all challenges of policing. Fighting crime is a general duty of a policeman but, as time goes on, you may tend to specialise in real crime like murder, arson and so on. Then, you veer into investigating fraud cases. While I was in Panti, which was the potpourri of criminal activities as you have all sections there, from fraud to general investigation, murder, arson, SFU, as the name connotes means special fraud unit which is meant for special fraud cases.

What were the high moments of that office at that time?
All the different departments were challenging in the sense that you cannot overlook or underestimate any case, however, small. For example, there was a case of a chap who was in the habit of going into his master’s bedroom and stealing his boss’s currency notes. In a bundle of N10,000, he could remove two notes, take one in another bundle,.  For months and years, the master never knew.

The only thing was that after paying somebody, the person would return and say ‘the money you gave me yesterday was not complete, it was short by three pieces.’ The man would say the money was in order because that was how he brought it home. It took us a while to detect. It was an in-house fraud but it still tasked us until we were able to do some technical things with the money before we got to the root of it. The man was already suspecting his own wife until we discovered that it was the housemaid that was doing it.

When you get to bank, there are also similar cases. There were also cases of 419, though it is difficult to mention names now because some of the cases are still in court, and even, as a lawyer myself, I will not pronounce anybody guilty until the court says so.

But, what we were doing, no matter how big we are, bank managers, chairmen of corporations, learned people, professors, public servants, if you were ever found to be involved in any crime, we were never afraid to treat them on their merit. Some of them were former governors but I will not mention their names as you want me to, neither would I pronounce them guilty as they are still in court.

Were you ever threatened by some of the accused at that time?
The only threat ever were, ‘I will report you to the I-G’ or ‘I get my lawyers.’ The difference between Panti and SFU then was that while Panti was the potpourri of human activities on all manner of criminal activities, and was a section under the Lagos Police Command, SFU was under the Federal Government and specialises on anti-fraud matters, bank, property, cyber, fraud and the like.

Talking about cyber crime, it does appears that the crime is on the increase?
I don’t think it is on the increase, I think we have to talk on ratio now. Many Nigerians were on Lagos roads; say 25 years ago and how many are on the road now? How many vehicles did we have in Nigeria 30years ago, how many  do we have today? It is about ratio.

If the population is on the increase as it is now, it then means that the requirements of the population will be on the increase, there would be more roads, houses, more vehicles.  It is the same way that vices will be going along with development; the more vehicles you have on the road, the more likely you will have more accidents. If you go to Oshodi Market, or Iwo Road in Ibadan, you think everybody in Nigeria is there.  So, there are some areas where crime is bound to be up, even among age bracket.

There are some age bracket that are more active than the others, you can hardly see a 50-year- old man going to the cyber-café,  it is very likely it is the younger ones that you will find there because they are active, they want to experiment and, in the process, one or two crimes are committed. So, it is not that it is increasing, it is about the ratio. If you look at the ratio of university graduates being churned out every year, it is more than the graduates of all the universities during my time 25 years ago. Once a society is growing, every thing around it grows as well.

Transferring you to Ekiti State is like coming to rest because the volume of crime here is obviously low compared to Lagos.

I don’t think so.  It only shows there are more jobs to be done. I will tell you, every commissioner of police wants to head a state in his life time. He wants to have a command where he would be the absolute boss, where he would carry all the responsibilities of a command, without doing any buck-passing. Whether in Adamawa, Sokoto, Lagos or Ekiti, he wants it to be part of his C.V. That is the way I see my promotion, that I should go to the field and put into practice all that I have learnt,  administrative wise.

I must admit though that this is a quieter posting compared to my last one. I was the PSO to the Inspector- General of Police with a bigger responsibility compared to this one but the two of them are different, no matter how hectic that one is, you cannot compare it with this one. This one has its own peculiarities, peculiarities that every police commissioner wants to look forward to. Coming from that place(Abuja) is like you have been armed and equipped  to go to the field and practice all that you have been taught, go and manage men, manage your men, governor, commissioners, civil servants and all that.

How do you want to bring about a violent- free election in April in Ekiti State?
We had what I will call baptism of fire here last December during the by-election in Moba. We went into it and we pulled through. But politicians need to be talked to, because I was recently quoted as saying that politicians should be blamed for whatever that is happening and some people didn’t like it. All I am saying is that it is the politicians that can make or mar anything that has to do with elections.

Politicians are the ones that will explain to their people what the policies are, they are the ones that will mobilise their people to come and vote, register and, if in the process of doing this, there are elements of brigandage or break down of law and order, the police will not fold their arms, we will come in and say no to such. Anytime we have the opportunity, we appeal to them, they should always be on the side of the law. For example, you can’t go to the polling booth with cutlass, if you are mobilising people, you are doing so towards voting for your party. For example, when it is time to register, mobilise them to go and register, tell them where to register and vote, but if you carry lorry load of people to the voting centre, to come and do what?

Definitely you are going to cause apprehension. It is that chaos arising from that apprehension that we are saying we should avoid. There is a smart advert on Radio Nigeria, a man was saying ‘I have got a new job now, somebody has given us N50,000 to snatch ballot boxes on the day of election,’ and someone  asked him, would his child be there? And everybody kept quiet.

The question is, would his own child be there? Let him send his own child to go snatch ballot boxes. Your position will not matter if you are caught because you are already a criminal. We must educate ourselves from both sides of the bridge. We must respect each other but if you want your party to win at all costs and, if that is the case, you are very likely to instil fear into the electorate, so if you are armed to the polling centre with the intention to force people to vote for you, then you are working against the law and the police will not take it likely.

Your men have been accused of being used to rig elections.  How do you respond?
Have you seen any of the policemen? It is not true. It is  not possible. It is the politicians that are the problem, not the policemen. If a politician wants to commit an offence, you will discover that he will not commit it if he is alone, there must be some thugs behind him before he can do such. We are saying it is the politician that is the problem, because he is the one that configured the crime, he won’t tell the policeman, ‘my orderly, we are going to snatch ballot boxes where we are going’.

The policeman knows that there would be danger  and there can only be danger if there is a threat to his life. But his life is not in danger with the ballot box far away; so, if he decides to snatch a ballot box and there is a problem, you cannot blame the policeman. I will tell you this, any policeman that aids crime, is not a policeman because he cannot point to any order, rule that asked him to do so. There is no police college that tells a policeman that if a vehicle does not stop, fire, it is most likely the background of the policeman that will determine how he behaves. Any policeman aiding crime is not one of us, we are to prevent crime, not create crime.

Any policeman creating crime, when caught, will be put along with the criminals he is aiding, that is why you see policemen being charged along with criminals. So, if a politician snatches a ballot box and a policeman who knows that it is wrong now helps him to take it away, if the politician is caught and he is going to be prosecuted, I  can’t see how the policeman would get out of it because the I.G would deny him because the I-G could not have given a policeman to somebody to protect his life only for the person to turn round and generate crime, the I-G would disown such policeman. As a police commissioner, I will disown him.

A policeman is not supposed to follow a politician on election day, it is part of the electoral law, nobody is supposed to go to the voting centre with anybody other than yourself. It is a one man business, one man, one vote because that day, you are not a judge, commissioner, minister but a citizen trying to do your normal civic duty.  We have been telling  politicians all this though ignorance of the law is not an excuse.

Are you fulfilled?
Yes, I am. I never knew I will get this far when I came into the force. In fact, I never knew I will be anybody on this job, even in life because we came from a family where nobody knew us and the only thing we succeeded in getting from our parents was education.

I have always loved disciplined job  though I did not plan to join the police. Though I was not surprised that I ended up in the police and I don’t regret it. There is a lot a policeman can do. He can influence lives and society, he restores dashed hopes. So, I like my job because it touches lives.