Meet the new Acting IGP
There was no designated rank for the selection of IGP, according to the Police Act. The President can appoint any policeman as IGP, even junior officers who have some outstanding leadership qualities. Ringim became more well-liked in 2005 when he served as Commissioner of Police in Bayelsa State, the home state of President Goodluck Jonathan […]
There was no designated rank for the selection of IGP, according to the Police Act. The President can appoint any policeman as IGP, even junior officers who have some outstanding leadership qualities. Ringim became more well-liked in 2005 when he served as Commissioner of Police in Bayelsa State, the home state of President Goodluck Jonathan at a time when he (Jonathan) was a Deputy to Governor Diepreye Alamieyeseigha.
During that period, the activities of the Niger Delta militants was well pronounced in the form of kidnap of officials of multinational companies and assassinations. Ringim worked to check the activities of the miscreants in the state, in conjunction with the state government, under Alamieyeseigha.
The then governor was accused by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission under Ruhu Ribadu of money laundering. He was said to have laundered £1.8m ($3.2m) found in cash and bank accounts. The governor, who enjoyed immunity from arrest, was impeached by the state legislators and was subsequently arrested. It was Ringim who personally arrested the governor and detained him. “He doesn’t appear very concerned to me,” Ringim told the BBC’s Focus on Africa programme. Later, the governor was handcuffed and flown to the Force Headquarters in Abuja in a police helicopter by Ringim.
When Goodluck Jonathan became the governor of the state, Ringim worked with him closely and that was when his leadership ability became known to the President. And when in 2007 the then IGP Okiro, notified the late President Umaru Musa Yar’adua of his intention to retire from the job, candidates including Ringim were shortlisted and screened to replace Okiro by the presidency. Outgoing IGP Onovo, DIG’s Uba Ringim, John Hamza Amadu and AIG M.D Abubakar were said to be among the candidates.
Ringim was said to have met all the requirements needed for the job but was not picked.Instead, Onovo was appointed. However, when Jonathan decided to appoint a new IGP, he was said to have picked the best out of the remaining candidates hitherto interviewed alongside Onovo.
Ringim was said to have fought robbery in Adamawa State when he was CP, almost to a standstill, and arrested vast numbers of robbers, arms dealers and other mischief makers before he was redeployed. He was posted to Osun as CP from Adamawa State and later to Bayelsa.
In 1978, after graduation from the police college as an inspector, he was posted to Kano where he worked until 1979. He was then posted to the investigative arm of the Force, the Force Criminal Investigation Department (FCID), Alagbon Close, Ikoyi, Lagos. From the FCID, he was deployed to head the Criminal Intelligence Bureau (CIB) in Plateau State, with the rank of a Deputy Superintendent of Police.
Ringim served as Commander of the 9th Police Mobile Force (PMF) Squadron, in Kano. In 1991 he served as recruitment officer with the defunct National Guard and was later given command of the North-West Zone. At the termination of the National Guard, he was deployed as Commandant of the Police Mobile Force Training College in Maiduguri at the rank of Assistant Commissioner of Police between 1994 and 1997.
When he became Deputy Commissioner, he was posted to the Force CID, Alagbon Close, Ikoyi, Lagos for the second time but as Second-in-Command at the Interpol section. He was later appointed head of the Interpol Section as Commissioner of Police.
After becoming a member of the National Institute, he was promoted to the rank of AIG in 2006 and posted as Commandant of the Police Staff College, Jos, and later as the AIG in-charge of Border Patrol. On August 28, 2009, he was posted as AIG in-charge of Zone 9 Police Command, the post he held until September 8 when he became the acting IGP.