The Inspector General of Police, Kayode Egbetokun, has revealed that several individuals suspected of sponsoring and inciting rioters to hijack a peaceful protest against bad governance and hunger left Nigeria just before the protest started.
According to Egbetokun, these sponsors managed to leave the country before the police could take any action against them.
“Before the protest, we had intelligence that some agents of destabilization were bent on using the protest to destabilize the country. Some of them were already out of the country. Some of them moved out that very day the protest kicked off,” Egbetokun stated.
Speaking at the Nigerian Police Youth Summit held at the Police Resource Centre in Abuja, Egbetokun addressed the concerns raised by the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) regarding a police raid on a shop located at Labour House.
He dismissed these concerns, emphasizing that the operation was not a raid but a targeted search for a prime suspect connected to the protest.
The police recovered sensitive documents during the search, which reportedly implicated the suspect in the planning and funding of the protests.
Egbetokun also criticized the naming of the protest as “10 days of rage,” asserting that it indicated the protest was never intended to be peaceful. “When you tag the protest 10 days of rage, you know it is not going to be peaceful, and you all saw it for yourself,” he remarked.
He further mentioned that if the protest organizers were genuinely concerned about safety and following the rules, they would have taken the necessary precautions by coordinating with state police commissioners to prevent the protest from being hijacked.
