Less than 24 hours to the conduct of the April general polls in the country, the Action Congress of Nigeria, ACN, yesterday asked for  immediate sack of the Inspector General of Police, IGP, Mr. Hafiz Ringim, over what it termed alleged partisan role in the ongoing trial for treason of the ACN’s gubernatorial candidate in Akwa Ibom State, Mr. John Akpan Udoedehe and others.

Addressing a world press conference in Lagos, National Chairman of ACN, Chief Bisi Akande, said his removal has become necessary following worrisome involvement and inefficiencies of the police in maintaining law and order in the run up to elections.

Akande alleged that the development showed that the country was gradually sliding back to the dark days of military dictatorship, saying civilian dictatorship is worse than military autocracy.

Akande, who also demanded the immediate and unconditional release of Udoedehe, threatened that ACN would organise its members to embark on mass action across the country to effect immediate release.

He said: “The lesson from Algeria, Tunisia, Egypt, Libya and other parts of the world is that no other force on earth is strong enough to stop the power of a free and determined people to liberate themselves. A word should be sufficient for the wise.”

An unholy alliance

Akande who alleged further that both the police and the ruling Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, have entered into what he described as an unholy alliance said the “alliance” has offered members of the PDP the opportunity to unleash violence on the opposition, adding that members of the PDP, as the case may be, had never been made to face the full wrath of the law in any case of violence.

Akande who said the case was not surprising, bearing in mind that cases of assassinations of high profile citizens since 1999 have never been resolved, said the situation implies that the hands of the PDP is not clean in the various murder cases.

He described as insincere the instruction from President Goodluck Jonathan to security agents that trouble makers should be arrested and prosecuted, saying: “We reach this painful conclusion due to the antecedents of a president who has looked on, in immoral and culpable silence as PDP governors across the country terrorise and intimidate political opponents while the worst forms of violence are unleashed on innocent citizens. The president cannot claim that he is not implicated in this ongoing exhibition of gross intolerance and arrogant misuse of power by his party.