By Lara Wise

Dear IGP,

I watched videos and I saw the pictures and I couldn’t be more proud. But before these media materials surfaced, I had driven into a few security checkpoints and I recall telling the person in the car with me that “our guys must have received a security alert and this proactiveness is highly commendable”.

I recall giving a fully kitted guy a thumbs up as I drove past. In my mind, I thought it might be a Boko Haram or Shiites threat. Maybe some evil people were planning to bomb somewhere, I thought to myself as I whispered a word of prayer for protection on family, friends and loved ones. Only for the social media to be abuzz a few hours later with the real reason why you sent out your armored tanks and men to the streets and I was so disappointed.

Oga IGP, While you were bursting a vein and hyperventilating to kill an ant with a bulldozer, the ‘real Dinos’ were out there in Benue, Borno and other states in the country, killing innocent and unarmed citizens unhindered. As a matter of fact, Oga IGP, some of your boys were massacred as well.

The pictures from those attacks are sickening they made some of us cry and disturbed our well-deserved night sleep.

Oga IGP, your professionalism, your tenacity,  your insistence,  the fact that your boys did not give a rat’s piss that they caused such a public nuisance on the streets by obstructing traffic and harassing passers-by who wanted to catch a glimpse of the ‘free circus show on the street’, all go to show that the Nigeria Police Force is not docile as we have been made to believe.  The force is truly not about 5 Naira or 20 Naira and corruption (the corruption indicator just buzzed as I typed its name. Let’s ignore it for now, sir, shall we) as we have come to know it. Yesterday we saw that the Force can deliver.

The Force has equipment. The Force can stay on a case. The Force can pursue and overtake and run over and run down and retake and insist on wiping off. We saw all that yesterday, and, bravo, sir.

Would you then be kind enough sir to extend this same hand of professionalism to our brothers and sisters in the areas overrun by herdsmen and terrorists (who by my estimation are THE REAL DINOS AND YOUR REAL ENEMIES) who have built kingdoms on other people’s land?

Could you please pursue them, overtake them, insist they be caught and taken to (not Lokoja) where justice will be served?

My brothers and sisters in these states are killed, women are raped and butchered, children are slaughtered like chickens and the strength of the young has failed.

These vampires are the Dinos you are looking for. They are the ones you should embarrass, pursue, overtake, overrun, re-arrest and put in handcuffs.

Rolling out a whole armoury against one unarmed man at the expense of protecting many unarmed people smacks of something and it is anything but professionalism.

Now that Dino is in your custody (let me state here that i have never been his fan) can you now please pay attention to the people who truly and genuinely need your attention?

Dino’s arrest is not a feat. Defeating killer herdsmen and Boko Haram is the feat we are waiting for you to achieve.

Clear our towns of armed robbers. Rid our cities of social miscreants. Protect the innocent and vulnerable. Maintain law and order and esteem the right of Nigerians everywhere irrespective of tribe, religion or social ranking.

While you get down to work, we pray for you. We wait, sir….

Humbly submitted by a true and law abiding citizen of Nigeria.

My name is Lara Wise.