Point One

He could well have been Nigeria’s equivalent of the notorious Mexican drug lord, ‘El Chapo’ Guzman, who now is cooling his heels on a life term in United States incarceration. Only he isn’t at odds with the law for drug dealing, but rather for suspicion of lucrative exploits in the trendy crime of kidnapping. However, Bala Hamisu, also known as Wadume, had a reputation for eelish manoeuvre through the Nigerian security setup as Guzman had in his country until his third re-arrest in January 2016, which ended his slippery duel with the Mexican law and got him delivered to the clenching jaws of American legal system. Wadume, a millionaire kidnap suspect, was recaptured early last week after being sprung free from an arrest on 6 th of August by police personnel, who subsequently ran into a hail of gunfire by soldiers suspected to be working in the suspect’s interest while he was being conveyed from Ibi where he was arrested to Jalingo, Taraba State. Three police offic...

Nigeria’s security architecture is at the moment in lethal disarray that leaves casualties across the societal spectrum. Nothing symptomises this more than the crisis of confidence lately raging between the police and the army on security operations purportedly aimed at protecting the polity, but which have left citizens’ collective safety rather more hazarded. Those operations, in which the agencies ideally should be collaborating, have pitched them at odds in a messy credibility face-off. It must be acknowledged upfront that most personnel of the country’s security agencies are rendering heroic services to keep citizens safe from the hands of malefactors, like insurgents and kidnappers who ubiquitously threaten their safety. The military, by statutory delineation of role, ought to be confined to preserving the country’s territorial integrity against external aggression; but owing to the enormity of internal security challenges, they have been co-opted with the pol...