“Unless the Inspector General of Police (IGP), Mr. Kayode Egbetokun, gives his policemen a stern order to stop the purported invasion of the private residence of the late General Christopher Jemitola, and the intimidation of Mrs. Safiya Jemitola, his widow, it could generate the bad blood and rekindle the incessant rivalry and bodily skirmishes between policemen and soldiers of Abuja, the federal capital city.”
The reaction and cautionary statements were made few days ago, by a serving Major General of the Nigerian Army, who opted that his name must not be mentioned with the comments.
The statement was made, when reporters visited the Army Defence Headquarters located in the Garki District of the city, in the fruitless bid to get official responses from the Director of Army Public Relations, Colonel Appolonia Anele, over the intense news-reports, that police officers from the Force Intelligence Department (FID) of the IGP office, with another outfit, aided by thugs, had invaded the Abuja residence of the late army general, allegedly, in violent manners that defied civil conducts, and breached the rights of the Jemitola widow.
General Jemitola, a former Aide-de-Camp (ADC) to ex-President Olusegun Obasanjo, had held critical army positions such as Defence Spokesman and Chief of Policy and Plans (COPP) before he passed on after retirement.
Mentioning further that the actions of the policemen had contravened the laudable goals that established the Nigerian Police Force and the Nigerian Army, he also queried why the police failed to utilise the mutual channels of conflict resolution and mutual respect, which exist between it and the army, instead of the needless show of force, which tended to portray the police force in a bad light, and reduce the integrity of the army.
I felt ashamed reading the news and watching video clips of the alleged sudden invasion of the house of a late army general and the harassment of his surviving widow, by men in police uniform and others in mufti. He added.
The news media have been inundated that policemen from the IGP office, aided by thugs, made desperate attempts to get to Mrs. Safiya Jemitola, in a guise to serve her a court order, whilst destroying the house entrance gate and some other iron barriers, an exercise that had annoyed the public, following her disputes with her stepchildren, on the inheritances of the late general.
The Jemitola-widow, through her post of 28th December, 2025 on X (formerly Twitter) showed damaging video clips on the various attacks, including an earlier search warrant, carried on the same matrimonial home by the FID, that allegedly detained her for over eight hours. Her alleged frame-up of possessing firearms and threats to use it on Caleb Jemitola, her stepson, tended to have been corroborated by what the news reports said that nameless sources within the Monitoring Unit of the IGP, had confirmed from the FID that there were no records of the search warrant and other records.
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