The Inspector-General of Police, Kayode Egbetokun, on Monday said a man, who was one of the masterminds of the crisis that ravaged Sudan, was among the organisers of just-concluded #EndBadGovernance nationwide protest.
Egbetokun, clarified that the operatives of the force did not raid headquarters of the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC), but an office in the building being used by the foreigner.
The police chief, who stated this in Abuja during a Youth Summit organised by the force, specifically said the raid was not targeted at the labour leaders but the foreigner hiding in one of the offices at the popular Labour House in Abuja.
The top cop, while fielding questions after the summit, said the foreigner who was traced to the Labour House later escaped, saying valuable documents in connection with his “activities” were recovered.
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.
“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 mobilising people to destabilise 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.”
Egbetokun said the police would always be against any protest in the country because of the experience police had during #EndSARS riots in 2020, arguing that any protest that started on social media has tendencies of being violent.
He stated, “I always refer to the #EndSARS protest which turned violent. It started initially as peaceful, but any protest that is mobilised on social media has the potential to be violent because when you are mobilising on social media, you are mobilising the whole population, including the criminals.
“So, the idea of the protest being hijacked, I don’t believe that a protest that is mobilised on social media is hijacked. Hijacked by who? By the same people that were mobilised 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.”
