Former Inspector-General of police, Suleiman Abba, said the police under him forced former President Goodluck Jonathan to concede the 2015 election to President Muhammadu Buhari.
Jonathan had congratulated Buhari while the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) was still collating results of the election.
This earned him accolades from far and wide but Abba said, the police should be given credit for making that happen.
โThank God that in our own case, we forced those who lost elections to accept the results. The Nigeria police forced those who lost elections to accept the outcome,โ he said.
โI said the Nigeria Police, I didnโt say Suleiman Abba. It was the action of the police that made them to have a change of mind and accept the results. The heroes of that election should have been the police.โ
Abba also said he was under pressure from the stalwarts of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) to compromise the 2015 elections.
He said before then, a top member of the then ruling party had asked him to deliver the 2014 governorship election in Osun state to the PDP.
The election was between Iyiola Omisore of the PDP and Rauf Aregbesola of the All Progressives Congress (APC) who eventually won.
โBelieve me, I have always counted myself lucky. I think because of the little background I gave you about the strength of discipline in me, both personal and professional, I received my sack as a normal development,โ he said.
โI was not shocked for a reason that I knew it would happen. Right from the time I started work as inspector-general of police, I knew that I may not reach the date of my retirement, which would have been 2019, by which time I would have been 35 years in service and 60 years of age.
โI am saying this because the very first week I took over, we had the elections in Ekiti; that was August 2014. Arrangements had been made for the election by my predecessor and I think it was the same team that also did the Osun election, it was the same AIG.
โOne of the leading stalwarts in the PDP then said to me: โIG (you know I was acting then) deliver Osun to us and we will confirm you quickly.โ
โI was shocked! That was when I knew that I may not last long in the office. Immediately, I said to myself, โHow could I deliver when I am not an electorate? The voters are the ones to deliver, my own was to protect the whole process.โ Of course I said to myself that what happened to one of my predecessors (may his soul rest in peace), Adamu Suleiman, was going to happen to me, maybe I would never be confirmed. He was inspector-general of police and till he left office he was not confirmed.
