Taking a Second Look at Jumbo Major House Crisis: Is the Police Complicit?

With the reinvigorated drive by the incumbent Inspector General of Police, Kayode Egbetokun, PhD, to stamp out corruption and indiscipline in the Nigeria Police Force, it raises grave concern when officers serving under him frontally scoff at his efforts.  

This appears to be the case with respect to the Jumbo Major House of Bonny Kingdom in Rivers State where a divisional police officer is being accused of displaying complicit conduct in stoking crisis that may snowball into an unmanageable situation.

In recent times, strenuous efforts geared at restoring peace and stability in the beleaguered chieftaincy house which for a decade has been up against itself with frivolous petitions, court cases and all what not stunting any attempt at peace.

With the whereabouts of the last chief of the House, Horace Herbert Oko-Jumbo uncertain for about four years, the Jumbo Major House Elders Council, which statutorily according to Bonny tradition and custom, administers the House in the absence of a chief, has made frantic efforts at uniting members of the House.

A very recent effort was to have the youths of the House have an election to usher in a new executive for themselves. But somehow some dissidents among the youths decided to take laws into their hands with active encouragement of an impostor named Tamunoala Chapp-Jumbo.

Surprisingly, instead of the Police to rein in the situation and ensure the law is enforced and the crisis mongers contained, the current divisional police officer, Dawn Eremie, a chief superintendent of police, is seen to be taking sides and acting as an enabler to the crisis.

Attempts by the leadership of the House to get him to see reason is said to have fallen on deaf ears with him said to be scoffing at even indications to him that the situation is currently under review by the IGP Egbetokun. Sources say he asserts that he is fully in charge and cannot be told what to do.

Attempts by Kristina Reports to interface with him and cross-check the issues being raised against him met with conduct unbecoming of one holding such office. Eremie thoroughly embarrassed and harassed the journalist, walked him out of his office with threats of shooting on him on site should he show his face again around his office again to ask him stupid questions.

In the wake of Eremie’s appalling conduct, questions are currently being asked as to the quality of training officers undergo in the Nigeria Police Force before being entrusted with law enforcement and security governance roles at the grassroots level.

A security analyst x-rayed the situation and expressed worry over the mental health, competency profile and background of the said DPO.

In his words, “are these guys trained at all? Why was the holster of his weapon the first consideration in that state of anger? Why the jactitating reaction to an ordinary conversation between him and a journalist?”   

As per the issues under review, Justice Tamunoigoni Susan Oji of the Rivers State High Court sitting in Port Harcourt, delivering judgment in suit number: PHC/I917/CS/2021 on Friday, September 29, 2022, held that Tamunoala Chapp-Jumbo violated a court order on maintaining the status quo with regards to the leadership of the Jumbo Major House.

Chapp-Jumbo, who is actually, Chikadibia Godspower, a native of Arochukwu in Imo State and maternally from Omoku in Rivers State, had through the instrumentality of some individuals pretending to be elders of Jumbo House purportedly installed himself as chief of the House, which is an impossible situation.  

In the said suit, Tamunoala Chapp-Jumbo, a pretender to the chieftaincy stool of Jumbo Major House, is the claimant while Jasper Jumbo, Ihua Maduenyi, a chief magistrate in Rivers State, and the State Commissioner of Police were the respondents.

Chap-Jumbo’s lawyers in the case were O. O. Osaoola and T.M. West while A.C. Agumagu appeared for Jasper Jumbo. Maduenyi and the Commissioner of Police had no representations.

In her judgment, the judge stated that “the purported installation of applicant (Tamunoala Chapp-Jumbo) when the substantive suit was still pending is an affront on the court and is in bad faith and is accordingly declared null, void, and of no effect”.

“Applicant by getting installed tampered with the Res in my view and now wants this court to rubber stamp his act of illegality.

“The order restraining him from parading himself as paramount chief or chief elect by Minakiri J., in my view, was a surplusage, as truth be told, applicant jumped the gun and acted in contempt of court when he allowed himself to be so installed.

“Indeed, this is one case of abuse of court process where an applicant is using the judicial process to rubber stamp his contemptuous actions.”

A copy of this judgment was made available to CSP Eremie but curiously, he waved it aside and continued taking orders from the impostor to stall efforts at uniting the youths of the chieftaincy house.

In fact, within a space of three weeks, Eremie had through his subordinates issued several invitations to the Electoral Committee of the Jumbo Major House Youth Association, which were more harassments than interventions.

He ordered that the JMHYA should not use the Opuwari (community hall) even with the approval of the Elders Council of the House. He threatened to arrest any of them who flouts his orders.

These and several other actions clearly show him as biased, unprofessional and an errand boy to someone who a competent court of law had declared as an impostor and pretender to the stool of Jumbo Major House. This may not be surprising as sources close to him hint that Chapp-Jumbo’s wife share kinship with Eremie, as both are said from Okrika LGA of Rivers State and that he may have been acting more as an in-law rather than as a law enforcement officer.  

Even the assault on the journalist that went to seek his side of the story to the bedeviling issues clearly cast him in bad light as one determined to drag the Nigeria Police Force down the path of opprobrium. In all his actions, there has been a gaping want of the candour and finesse a senior police officer in the rank of chief superintendent of police should exude.

It is pertinent that the IGP Egbetokun ensures that the little gains achieved through his definite stand on discipline and proper conduct in the police force are not eroded by just one officer masquerading as a bull in a china shop in Bonny Island of all places.  

It is imperative that he sustains his exercise of vicarious responsibility over his officers and men to avoid situations where the police now constitute itself as the bane of peace in the society. It is also imperative that the mental health and competence of his officers are ascertained before saddling them with responsibilities of high office.