General Rabe Abubakar (rtd.)
The reported kidnapping of retired Major General Rabe Abubakar and his wife on 30th May 2026 in Katsina State might appear audacious and a dangerous angle to insecurity in Nigeria. But given the attack surface, the incident is hardly surprising. The attack scene – Katsina State is second to none in Nigeria in hobnobbing with terrorists either deliberately or naively.
For example, Alhaji Aminu Masari as the immediate past governor of the state for eight years, purportedly struck peace deals with terrorists who never surrendered their fire arms like it’s constitutional for the outlaws to go about with weapons of mass destruction. The situation is akin to sheep striking a peace deal with lions given terrorists relative position of strength over Nigeria that has lost her monopoly of violence as a sovereign state. Therefore, who would compel terrorists to abide by terms of any agreement?
Hence Alhaji Masari vowing never again to trust terrorists for swearing to the Koran thrice and breaking their oath thrice, cannot surprise.anybody. Except that the same folly is being repeated all over again in Borno State where Alhaja Zuwaira Gambo is the Commissioner for Women Affairs and Social Development. She disclosed during an interview on News Central Television that oath-taking forms the final phase of her government’s rehabilitation model and carries deep spiritual consequences for those involved.
According to Alhaja Gambo: “When they (terrorists) come to us through all the processes of the Borno model, the last thing they do is, they take an oath with the Quran. Once you swear by the Quran, you know the consequences.” Really? What is happening or happened to those who reneged thrice in Katsina State on their oaths? Above all, what’s happening to thieving public office holders in Nigeria who swore by one holy book or the other to live above board?
It’s ironical that Nigerian public officials continue to be religious fanatics about forty years after former President Olusegun Obasanjo counseled retired General Ibrahim Babangida as head of state in the 90s that Nigeria should be ruled by a constitution and not by a religious book.
Alhaji Masari cannot feign ignorance of that timeless reminder on how Nigeria should be governed by a constitution and not by a supposed holy book. Yet, he could be forgiven for learning the hard way on three separate occasions that truth is not only the first casualty in warfare, terrorists are pathological liars. Hence it’s unthinkable that Alhaji Masari’s hand-picked successor and a supposed PhD holder as Dikko Umar Radda could be repeating the same comedy of errors all over again.
Not long ago, Dr. Radda was defiant on releasing seventy supposedly repentant terrorists as part of a peace deal. At another time, he reportedly bragged that some communities in Katsina State are now enjoying peace after conceding to terrorists at his instance. Yet and right now, a high profile target as a Major General has been kidnapped. Invariably, release of the kidnap victim should be effected by Dr. Radda.
All this while, some governors have been naively or deliberately striking “peace deals” with terrorists under assumed constitutional autonomy of their constituencies from the federal government. But when such so-called peace deals backfire as a natural consequence, that becomes a national problem including a high violent crime mobility across Nigeria. .
Therefore, governors who stubbornly go into controversial peace deals with terrorists should be impeached and held to account – cooling off their heels in prison and not retiring to the Nigerian Senate. Or can those who can’t govern their people make laws for rule of law in Nigeria? What an irony?
_John Uwaya, former Representative of Texas Armoring Corporation, USA_
