by Ranti Joseph

Former Vice President Atiku Abubakar on Sunday has charged the Nigeria Police to provide reasonable explanations on the circumstances that led to the murder of Prof. Ahmed Falaki of the Ahmad Bello University, Zaria, Kaduna State.

Abubakar who disclosed this in a statement by his media office in Abuja said that the explanation given thus far about how the leading Professor of Agriculture died under police custody falls short of logical assimilation. He said the account given by the police on the circumstances that led to the death of Falaki, a scholar and Africa’s leading authority in Agriculture, is an embarrassment to the Nigeria Police.

“It is particularly distasteful and confounding that the police would confuse the identity of a personality such as Professor Falaki as a member of the Boko Haram sect. In the manner that Professor Falaki was killed, it is not in doubt that he had believed that the police station was a sanctuary of safety for him from the jungle justice that he was receiving in the hands of locals who had mistaken him for a member of the dreaded Boko Haram sect. That men of the Nigeria Police will stand and become witnesses to murder, and even allow the police station to become the theatre of jungle justice, is a very disturbing narrative about the circumstance that Professor Falaki was killed. Such a narrative is a complete embarrassment to the professional integrity of the Nigeria Police and it is wholesomely unacceptable. The leadership of the Nigeria Police must commission a very thorough investigation into the circumstances that Professor Falaki was killed,” he said.

Atiku, who eulogized the virtues of the late Africa’s leading professor of Agriculture, described his death as a huge loss to the intellectual community in Africa. He prayed for the family and friends of the late professor to have the fortitude to bear the loss.

Janeth J