Days earlier, Katsina's governor, Dikko Radda, said something that should have shaken the nation more than it did. He told Channels Television that, five minutes after a high-level security meeting in Government House, a notorious bandit already knew what had been decided. "There are moles among us," he said, among officials, among the security services, among the communities. Read plainly, that is a confession that the state's own decision cycle has been captured by the enemy. The bandits do not merely resist the state. In part, they sit inside it.
On Saturday, armed men intercepted Major General Rabe Abubakar, a former Director of Defense Information, on the Matazu road in Katsina, shot his driver, and took the retired general and his wife into the forest. The man who once spoke for the Nigerian military is now a hostage of the disorder he spent his career describing. If the country's own former defense spokesman is not safe on a Katsina road, then no one is.
Days earlier, Katsina's governor, Dikko Radda, said something that should have shaken the nation more than it did. He told Channels Television that, five minutes after a high-level security meeting in Government House, a notorious bandit already knew what had been decided. "There are moles among us," he said, among officials, among the security services, among the communities. Read plainly, that is a confession that the state's own decision cycle has been captured by the enemy. The bandits do not merely resist the state. In part, they sit inside it.
