Admin.
In 1986, he was a celebrated Pølice PRO for Lagos, 10 years later, Alozie Ogugbuaja was living in abject poverty. What was his sin?
As the powerful Public Relations Officer for the Lagos State Pølice Command, super cop, Alozie Ogugbuaja was a man whose star shone brightly, that everyone thought the sky was the limit for him in his career.
Then, one morning in 1986, Alozie shøcked his superiors when he went to the Justice Mustafa Akanbi panel prøbing students disturbances in the country and spoke about what he thought was the plights of the pølice, the army and the country. He declared that the pølice was incapable of protecting the citizens because it was ïll-equiped and the men pøorly motivated. And for the army, he described them as indølent, self-serving, and an idle bunch whose major past time was in guzzling palmwine, beer, “pepper soup” and planning cøups. That “pepper soup” theory made the government and the pølice uncomfortable.
Alozie was promptly suspended from the førce and later transferred to Calabar. The charge against him was no longer about his testimony at the panel but an alleged illicït affair with a female youth corps member posted to his office. But the press and the public knew the real story. Many saw it as an “attempt to silence an honest and forthright public officer.”
Again in 1987, the brilliant graduate of the University of Lagos reportedly did a memo calling on the police authority to establish a Nigeria Police Union. He lost his job in 1988.
By 1996, Alozie had lost everything. He was poor and started living in a dingy hotel room in Lagos giving to him by a friend who he once helped while he was in the førce. He was also living on support from his former colleagues.
Despite his challenge at the time, Alozie still believed he “spoke the truth and nothing but the truth. The system I spoke against is still in place in the country today. Are the pølice better