At the weekend, I was relishing a statement issued by Defence Headquarters, saying its troops confirmed the killing of "four notorious terrorist commanders in airstrikes within the week." It named them as Machika, Haro, Dan Muhammadu and Ali Alhaji Alheri, popularly called Kachalla Ali Kawaje. Director of Defence Media Operations, Major General Edward Buba, described Machika as "a top terrorist bomb expert and younger brother of notorious terrorist Dogo Gide, while Haro and Dan Muhammadu were specialists in kidnapping and assault operations." Buba said a synchronised strike between air and ground forces in Munya Local Government Area of Niger State on Monday last week, December 11, killed Kachalla Kawaje, "a renowned terrorist leader responsible for the abduction of Federal University, Gusau" students.
I think the word General Buba wanted to use was "notorious," not "renowned." He also said "the military is fast closing in on other [terrorist and bandit] leaders" and "assured them that they will equally suffer the same fate." I was in the middle of relishing this military statement when a fifteen-year-old boy spoiled my reverie by asking when Nigeria will be totally rid of criminals. He said he often reads online stories about the military and police killing bandit and terrorist leaders and he is surprised that they have not finished up until now. I forgive him because he is only 15 years old. His remark however set me thinking about the notorious criminals that this country's security agencies have caught or otherwise eliminated in the last 50 years, only for new, even more deadly ones to replace them.
This young lad does not know that in this country, we used to execute by firing squad armed robbers who were convicted under the Robbery and Firearms [Special Tribunals] Decree first promulgated by General Yakubu Gowon in 1970. There was one such execution in 1985 in Sokoto, where I then lived. The three condemned men were serving policemen. It was more a case of police corruption gone awry because the three of them, while on night sentry duty, accosted a bus passenger arriving from Kano at midnight, discovered that he had N8,000 in a bag [a lot of money in 1985] and in the ensuing scuffle, hit him with the butt of a gun and left him unconscious on the pavement. The victim was able to identify all three of them in a parade of 30 policemen. They were sentenced to death and subsequently executed at the Old Airport tarmac.
Due to a rising crime wave then, military governors were under pressure from their Federal bosses to set examples by publicly executing condemned robbers. In 1984, a few months after the Buhari/Idiagbon military government took over power, the no-nonsense Chief of Staff, Supreme Headquarters, Brigadier [later Major General] Tunde Idiagbon visited Kirikiri prison in Lagos, which was overflowing with men on death row. Idiagbon asked why, and the prison service boss told him that throughout the four years of the Second Republic, 1979-1983, no civilian state governor anywhere in Nigeria signed the warrant to execute a condemned prisoner, even when all the judicial processes were exhausted. Nor, apparently, did they take the trouble to commute the death sentences to prison terms, which would at least have enabled the prisoners' movement out of death row.
Idiagbon asked how many condemned men there were, and he was told there were about 800 of them all over the country. He then ordered military governors all over the country to sign the death warrants for their immediate execution. The following day, newspapers came out with screaming headlines, "Idiagbon orders execution of 800 prisoners." The story caused shock all over the country, so on NTA Network News that night, Supreme Military Headquarters [SHQ] issued a statement "warning newspapers to stop portraying the Chief of Staff as a sadist."
Around the same time as the Sokoto execution in 1985, there was a tragically comical execution episode in Ogidi LGA of Anambra State. The military governor had signed a warrant to execute nearly a dozen condemned armed robbers. In order to drive home his point, Admiral Allison Madueke ordered each one of them to be taken to his hometown and executed there. Soldiers then took one condemned man to a village in Ogidi Local Government and tied him to the stake. Before they could open fire, the village head and all the elders came out, stood between the man tied to the stake and the firing squad, and said he will not be executed there because he was not from that village. They asked the condemned man to show his father's house in that village. After two hours of argument, the soldiers untied the man, took him to Enugu and executed him there.
In the days before kidnapping of oil workers, Boko Haram and banditry took center stage as the criminal in-things in Nigeria, probably no criminal captured the public's imagination and dread quite like Ishola Oyenusi, the secondary school drop-out better known as "Dr. Oyenusi," who was captured in March 1971. At the time, DRUM magazine reported extensively, with a lot of salt and spice, of Oyenusi's capture by crack police detective Sunday Adewusi, who rose to become Inspector General in the Second Republic. Oyenusi was subsequently executed at the Lagos Bar Beach, watched by thousands of people.
Two years after Oyenusi's execution, another notorious armed robber, Isiaka Busari better known as Mighty Joe, was arrested in Lagos. He had succeeded Oyenusi as the gang's boss and was executed by firing squad in 1973. Mighty Joe has however been dwarfed in our criminal history by Lawrence Anini, who terrorized Benin City and environs in 1986. Anini and his gang were said to move around, robbing banks, in a white Volkswagen Santana. A newspaper reported at the time that policemen at a check point in Benin took to their heels when they saw a white Santana car approaching.
Military ruler General Ibrahim Babangida added to the drama one day when, emerging from a meeting of the Armed Forces Ruling Council, he suddenly turned in front of reporters to the Police Inspector General Etim Inyang and said, "My friend, where is Anini?" An embarrassed IG quickly promised that he will soon be apprehended. Indeed he was, not under Inyang but under his successor Gambo Jimeta, who immediately went on television and said, "The notorious armed robber Lawrence Anini has been captured in a special police operation in Benin..." Anini and his deputy Monday Osunbor, who turned out to be even more deadly, were executed by firing squad.
In terms of human death toll, property destruction and national angst, the armed robbers' deeds were dwarfed, first by the deadly Kano-based sect leader Muhammadu Marwa, alias Maitatsine, and his successor Musa Makanike of Yola. In 1980, from his base at Kano's Yan Awaki Quarters, Maitatsine unleashed mayhem that led to the death of thousands of people. After his men repelled several attacks by mobile policemen, a military force led by Major Haliru Akilu stormed Yan Awaki, dislodged the fanatics and killed Maitatsine. In February 1984, Maitatsine's followers led by Musa Makanike unleashed similar mayhem in Yola, which soldiers managed to put down after severe fighting.
In terms of human death toll and property destruction, after the Civil War of 1967-70, the champion episode is Boko Haram and its most notorious leader, Abubakar Shekau. Mamman Nur and Al-Barnawi follow him in historic notoriety. They killed tens if not hundreds of thousands, overran cities and towns, displaced millions, bombed markets, bus stations and other crowded places, snatched schoolgirls and boys, executed young men in captured towns and spread the greatest fear and dread in Nigerian hearts. Boko Haram's campaign of bombing churches, culminating in the Madallah church bombing on Christmas Day 2011, was meant to ignite an inter-religious war in Nigeria. Today, after 13 years, Boko Haram is a shadow of its former self but still potent enough to keep a million IDPs from returning to their homes.
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Then came the bandits, mostly in the North West and North Central regions, who introduced industrial scale kidnapping and made the highways utterly unsafe. Their trade was enabled by the coming of mobile phones, without which it would be impossible to kidnap a person on the highway, contact his or her family, negotiate for ransom and coordinate a drop-off zone. The military and security forces have succeeded in killing many of the bandit leaders, but many others are still at large, including Dogo Gide, Bello Turji and Dankarami. With the coming of the bandits, Nigerians suddenly wished for the old armed robbers. By the way, where are the apprehended terrorists Kabiru Sokoto, mastermind of the Madallah church bombing, and Kerim Ogwuche, said to have masterminded the Nyanya bus bombing of 2014, who was repatriated from Sudan? We should have left him in Khartoum; by now he would have been caught in the crossfire between Rapid Response Forces and the Sudanese Army. Please, where is Alhaji Hamisu Bala alias Wadumen, the kidnap kingpin of Taraba who managed to arrange for soldiers to kill policemen from the IG's Intelligence Response Squad?
No criminal roll call in Nigeria will be complete without the mention of Benue State's Terwase Akwaza, alias Gana. Before soldiers killed him in 2020, he terrorized yam markets in the country's Breadbasket and struck fear in all community hearts. Or of Chief Vincent Duru, alias Otokoto, the wealthy Owerri hotel proprietor who was subsequently hanged for ritual murders. Or without mention of Chukwudumeme Onwuamadike, alias Evans, the "Billionaire Kidnapper" who collected ransom from his victims' families in hard currency, unlike the analogue Northwest bandits who still collect pre-redesign naira notes. Unfortunately, we will still be hearing of criminals in Nigeria long after these ones are gone.
