The Task Before The New CDS, General Chris Musa -By Prof Abdussamad Umar Jibia

Southern Kaduna (popularly known as Southern Zaria because of its history of being part of the Zaria emirate) is a place I feel connected to whenever it is mentioned. At the age of 12 when I went to a boarding secondary school, a large percentage of those who became my classmates were from that area. Although GSS Musawa was located in the heart of what is now Katsina state, one can say without any fear of contradiction that nearly half of its students were from Southern Kaduna.

With this background, I can accurately claim to have grown up together with people from Southern Kaduna, many of whom remain my friends to date. Religious and communal crises that set us against one another are unfortunate. With those many crises, it would be a lie to claim that there are no mutual suspicions between the people of that area who are mainly Christians and the Northern part of Kaduna state made of mostly Muslims and the greater old Kaduna/North-central state to which I belong.

Of course, like any other people, there are good and bad people in Southern Kaduna. To verify to which category a particular person belongs, you have to find out. Since the announcement of Major-General Chris Musa as the new CDS I set out to investigate the kind of person he is. After contacting my sources, I was left thankful to President Tinubu for choosing such a detribalized professional soldier to head our military, especially at this time when professionalism is what is required to deal with the many security challenges across the country.

The choice of Chris Musa is timely not just because he is a thoroughbred Genaral but also because he is a victim of the banditry scourge that has bedeviled the North western part of Nigeria. To be a Nigerian, one has to first belong to one of the 774 local governments located in one of the 36 states or FCT. Like the case with many other places in the North West, the state and local government area General Musa comes from are on fire.

But, contrary to what the southern press would want us to believe, although Southern Kaduna is having its own share of banditry, it is not the worst hit. Killing, kidnapping and other heinous crimes committed by bandits are daily occurrences in Zamfara, parts of Sokoto, Katsina, Kebbi and Niger in addition to both Northern and Southern Kaduna state.

To succeed in his task, General Musa has to dispel the incorrect notion that bandits are coming from outside Nigeria. I believe the security reports are at his disposal, but there are things that we, the victims, expect from him that his predecessors failed to achieve.

Most of the operations hitherto carried out have to do with bandits at the bottom of bandits’ hierarchy. The most dreadful bandits’ leaders are lurking safely in the North West. Only recently one of them released the last batch of students of FGC Yauri whom he kidnapped and kept on the Nigerian soil for more than two years during which he extorted their parents through the nose. He is still living unscathed despite the billions of Naira Government is spending on security.

He is not alone. In a widely condemned show of irresponsibility, another criminal who killed more than 100 villagers in Katsina state and declared wanted by the Nigerian Police was given a traditional title in Zamfara state last year. He is living peacefully while the orphans and widows his crime generated are left on their own.

Another criminal who burned a passenger bus with the 30 people in it days after opening fire on a village market that claimed 60 lives is also enjoying himself in Zamfara state. He is said to be moving around like a king in his locality.

Yet, another criminal who publicly claimed to have killed many Nigerian and Nigerien soldiers and abducted 40 Nigerian children days after he killed 53 farmers in Zamfara state is living there like a king. He also moves around unscathed.

A bandits’ kingpin who ambushed Nigerian soldiers and killed many of them in 2020 is now enslaving villagers in Katsina state. Villagers under his jurisdiction go and work on his farm whenever he invites them to do so.

These are some of the most well-known bandits’ Generals with base in the North West. The list is not exhaustive. That they were accessed by international and local media to which they gave video interviews leaves our security forces with no room to claim that the criminals are at large.

Of course the task of arresting/killing the above-mentioned bandits’ ring leaders and others in their category is not as easy as mentioned. In addition to sophisticated weapons and trained fighters they have powerful sympathizers. We cannot rule out mischievous claims of genocide when the military goes all out to deal with them. Expectations of ordinary people like me is that General Musa and indeed Mr. President should ignore any such noise resulting from the task of securing the NorthWest and North Central geopolitical regions of Nigeria. May Allah help them. Amin.

The question begging for an answer is whether General Musa and his team are willing to take up the challenge, uproot banditry by attacking its leadership, or they will just scratch the surface, make their money and go into partisan politics like we saw some of their colleagues did.

Prof Abdussamad Umar Jibia