A former Inspector-General of Police, Solomon Arase on Monday in Abuja
described the allegation by his successor, Ibrahim Idris that he
took away 24 police vehicles as big lies.
According to him, Idris should cross check his handover notes which
contains every information needed by his successor on vehicles bought by
the police.
The ex-IGP in a statement issued from London, United
Kingdom, United Kingdom, where he went for his son’s graduation. also
denied getting any letter from Idris since he has been out of the
country.
According to him, all vehicles bought by the police under him were
distributed to the state commands and other appropriate units of the
Nigeria Police Force. The statement reads:
“I suspect there must be a disconnect somewhere because every
information needed by my successor are provided in my hand-over notes.
I’m also not aware that any letter was written to me because if there
was any dropped in my house, someone would have alerted me. “It’s
unfortunate that this matter is being made a media issue because my
successor has my telephone number and could have called me for any
clarification or even sent me a text message rather than addressing the
media on an issue well documented in my hand-over notes.”
Idris had claimed that Arase went away with 24 police vehicles while the
seven Deputy Inspectors-General of Police, who retired alongside him,
also carted away between seven and eight cars each.
Idris said that he had written Arase to return the cars, which included
two official bullet-proof BMW 7 series cars, adding that the retired
police chief and his DIGs had yet to return the vehicles.
He had explained that a special investigation team was already looking
at the records of police vehicle purchases in the last three years as
well as how they were distributed. Idris had said, “If you look through
the windows of my former office and from the report from my (Force)
transport officer, you would see cars but a week to the day I would
resume, all these cars disappeared.