1) Abba Kyari is a seasoned cop. He and his team are high rollers in the detective branch of the police. He gets high profile cases to solve and he has cracked many of them.
2) As a superior police officer, he cannot be excused when it comes to breach of ethics. More than many other professions, ethical prescriptions in the Police are very high. It’s only that Nigeria police personnel do a lot of ethical breaches, not that the prescriptions are not there.
3) One critical ethic is to know where to draw the line in personal relationships with civilians lest they make your job difficult when you have to do your duties in relation to them. Yes, you can have friends and associates but it is expected that, on face value at least, they are above board.
4) Hushpuppi is someone we had talked about in hush tones to be less-than-sterling. He was a suspected fraudster given his lack of antecedent as a honest citizen coupled with a lavishly ostentatious lifestyle. I used “was” and “suspected” to underline the lack of proof of our suspicions until the FBI nabbed him in American and confirmed what we all thought we knew. We were spot on.
5) Was Abba Kyari, the super cop, oblivious of such suspicions? I believe it is impossible he did not have reasonable hunch or even proof of Hushpuppi’s criminal enterprise. It was all too glaring to us let alone professionals in crime detection and prevention.
6) According to Hushpuppi, singing like a cannery to the FBI, Abba Kyari fleeced him of a humongous amount of money.
7) Trying to refute the allegation, Abba Kyari has not said he is not familiar with Hushpuppi. They know each other quite well. Not in the police-suspect interaction but in a police-complainant relationship. Abba Kyari never investigated any complaint or suspicion against Hushpuppi. The fraudster was a complainant before the super cop. It is not uncommon that police-complainant relationship can go beyond the resolution of a case. It’s like lawyer and police. Once an acquaintance, always an acquaintance.
(8) According to Kyari, Hushpuppi was surfing the net one day and saw Kyari in some native outfits and caps. He was so wowed that he contacted Kyari to inquire about the outfits. Abba, according to him, connected him with the supplier and Hushpuppi paid for fabrics through the supplier’s account details. However, the pick-up point for the outfits and caps was Abba Kyari’s office.
9) A simple test of reasonableness will lead to the irresistible inference that the office of a police czar should NEVER have been the pick-up point for someone of questionable character.
10) The FBI is interested in Abba Kyari’s suspected dalliance with Hushpuppi. That’s the best and most popular law enforcement outfit in the world. They mind their business if there’s no smoke or fire somewhere.
11) This may not be the normal Nigerian way of treating cases concerning the top dogs. Hushpuppi stole money belonging to Americans. If the money passed on to anyone in the world, the FBI will look to investigate and throw the books at the person.
12) Except Hushpuppi is trying to falsely implicate our super cop, the FBI will spill all the beans soon. I’m sure the Nigerian government will take sides with the American big brother rather than protect our poster boy of law enforcement. We always rely on America for many aspects of the business of law enforcement. We won’t like to touch their raw nerves.
Whether true or false, this is sad!
Muideen Olagunju, writes from Ibadan
