The Inspector General of Police (IGP), Kayode Egbetokun, on Monday, said the police are on the trail of a man who was actively involved in the Sudan crisis but now in Nigeria.
Egbetokun, although he did not disclose his name, said the suspect was mobilising to destabilise the country.
The IG stated that the suspect was traced to a shop he was using as a decoy, which is located within the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) building.
He denied that the raid was targeted at the NLC leadership.
Egbetokun spoke while responding to a question on why the police were against the hardship protest at the Youth Summit organised by the police.
He said, “My response to this will be in three parts. Number one is that, of course, our responsibility is not to protest but to manage protest. Two is that the intelligence at the disposal of the police, anyone who knows what we know about this protest, will not come out to protest.
“We had intelligence at our disposal that some agents of destabilisation are ready to use the hardship protest to destabilise our country.
“I won’t be able to share the details yet because we are still on the trail of these individuals. Some of them are already out of the country, and they immediately escape.
“Some of them are even foreigners. One of them was traced to the labour house the other day, and I was just wondering why the noise about the raid on the labour house when the police raided the labour house. We raided only a shop that the individual was using as a front and we have been monitoring his activities.
“He was very active in the Sudan crisis and he’s in Nigeria mobilizing people to destabilize our country. We traced him to that shop and our detectives raided his shop. We recovered valuable documents, so there was no need for the noise about the raid of the labour house.“
He also explained that the police were against the protest because of the ENDSARS experience.
Egbetokun noted that the mobilization for the hunger protests was carried out via social media, adding that such protests had the propensity of being violent.
He said, “I always refer to the ENDSARS protest which turned violent. It started initially as peaceful, but any protest that is mobilized on social media has the potential to be violent because when you are mobilizing on social media, you are mobilizing the whole population, including the criminals. So the idea of the protest being hijacked, I don’t believe that a protest that is mobilized on social media is hijacked.
“Hijacked by who? By the same people that were mobilized for the protest. So our experience in the past in previous protests would not make the police want to take part in any protest that we know is going to be violent. “
Responding to a question asked about what the police were doing to protect farmers, Egbetokun said the police had commenced farm patrols to give farmers confidence.
He said, “ We are doing a lot. In the North East, we have started farm patrol to give confidence back to farmers to return to the farm. Mr. President is very, very concerned about it, and we are doing our best.
“But let me also add that the security landscape in Nigeria is complex and diverse. Marked with a range of challenges requiring multi-dimensional responses. We have challenges in security.
“There are also economic challenges. There are political challenges. We have environmental challenges. All these challenges are interconnected. To solve these challenges we need to understand their interconnectedness. You can’t solve one challenge and leave the others. “
Responding to what the police were doing to get rid of bad eggs in the force, Egbetokun said he was doing a lot to flush them out of the system.
He said, “You said that a lot of bad eggs are in the police. That we have bad eggs. But the bad eggs are everywhere. They are not only in the police.
“Whatever you see in the police today is a reflection of what Nigeria is. It is called the Nigeria Police Force, not the Ghana Police Force. Members of the force are Nigerians. So a society gets the kind of police it deserves. That notwithstanding, we are fishing out the bad eggs because we are responsible leaders.”
