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OPINION: ‘I am Here to Plunder’ [Monday Lines]

Published

1 year ago

September 16, 2024

By Lasisi Olagunju

I always wonder why it appears difficult for President Bola Tinubu to defeat banditry in Nigeria. The president’s most popular chieftaincy title is Jagaban Borgu. Jagaba means chief warrior in Hausa – one of the two dominant languages in Borgu of Niger State. It would translate to either Balogun or Aare Ona Kakanfo in Yoruba. There was a time in the 19th century when plundering was ‘trade’ where the president got his Jagaba title. They called banditry ‘swadibu’ and the bandits themselves ‘swadio’, a psychedelic term which means “somebody who eats on the road.” Olayemi Akinwumi’s ‘Princes as Highway Men’ digs deep into this. I take my title from Ray Kea’s 1986 work on banditry in 19th century Gold Coast. His title is: ‘I am here to Plunder on the General Road.’

Mid last week, respected journalist, Jaafar Jaafar, wrote and had this posted online: “A friend from a prominent northern family yesterday narrated a painful story of how his family paid through the nose to secure the release of a relative from bandits. Apart from payment of N35m cash as ransom, they also delivered – as demanded – the following: six brand new motorcyles; four cartons of whiskey; 10 packets of Tramadol; 1(one) bag of Indian Hemp; 1(one) carton of Aspen cigarette; 12 bags of rice (50kg); 10 bags of maize (100kg); 5 bags of beans (100kg); 1(one) 25-litre jerry can of groundnut oil; 1(one) 25-litre jerry can of palm oil; 1 (one) carton of seasoning; 10 packets of paracetamol; 10 packets of chloroquine. While preparing to deliver the foregoing items, the bandits called and ordered them to service the motorcycles and fill up the tanks. Allah Ya kawo ƙarshen wannan masifa.”

Do governments sometimes lose control at night and regain it during the day? The late Professor of History, Ali Mazrui, asked that question twenty-nine years ago. I asked the question again after reading Jaafar. Where did those bandits get the courage to ask for so much without the fear of being followed and busted by the state? A super-thief craved the king’s flute but told his gang that he just couldn’t go for it. Surprised, petty thieves around him asked the boss why. He told them that stealing the king’s bugle is not the problem; the problem is finding where to blow it. I have always thought that saying to be wisdom unimpeachable, time-tested. But, I am no longer sure after reading the post above and the items demanded by the bandits. You need, at least, a trailer to carry those offerings of ransom, yet, the abductors felt unthreatened by the risk in their demands. And, if what the journalist posted is true, the bandits got everything they demanded without consequences. Where was the government when all this was happening?

In a myth of the Greek, Alcestis “appears to die in winter and to come back to life again in the spring.” On Saturday, the president praised the military for achieving what he described as strings of successes in the war against banditry in the North-West. He mentioned the killing of a wanted bandit leader, Halilu Sububu, “who had been unleashing terror on citizens in Zamfara, Sokoto, and other parts of north-western Nigeria.” The president danced and danced while noting further that “troops also killed another terrorist, Sani Wala Burki, in a joint operation in Katsina and busted a terrorist enclave in Kaduna where 13 kidnapped students were freed.” I also clap and stand at attention for our gallant forces. Commendable feats. But they must be tired of killing the killers who come in inexhaustible numbers. Every day, the security forces announce the ‘neutralization’ of bandits and terrorists. Yet, the forest remains infested from one end to the other. Could it be that the neutralized have also mastered the art of neutralizing death? For, the more killed of the bandits by our troops, the more the bandits troop back to abduct and kill. Or, has death been cosseting bad men who hunt men, women and children, while claiming their liquidation? Where a load rejects the rafters and won’t sit on the floor, our elders will always find a place to sit it. What else should we do? The innocent are tired of life.

We will continue to support our security forces and their troops. But for them, the present darkness would have been total. Terror roams everywhere. A very senior former editor of a national newspaper who hails from, and lives in Oyo State sent me his own local experience some time ago: “They are taking over our towns and villages in Oke-Ogun. I’m afraid to go to Igbeti as it is. They’re in every nook and cranny of the town. This was not so a few years ago. And they walk about armed with swords and daggers. The last time I was at the mosque for Juma’ah prayers, they all came to the mosque with their swords which they laid down in front of them while praying. And it was like that in the three major mosques in the town. Imagine how they will massacre the indigenous people in case of any altercation. I have not been able to get the issue out of my mind since then and I can’t roam our mountains again when next I go home as I had done for decades. I called the attention of a few stakeholders to the issue even though I knew there’s little they could do. Nigeria is such a mess.” The former editor was a great supporter of President Bola Tinubu. He was. But in the message, he sounded utterly disappointed and despondent. “I thought he would make a difference. It is a shame,” he said, while asking how we could “have back our country.”

Nigeria is an interesting country of many ‘presidents’. I pity President Tinubu who rules from the Villa in Abuja – or from abroad. He daily contends with forest felons who contest the cockpit with him. But what has he done with his implements as chief warrior? You cannot be made a kite and be afraid of chickens. There are hard men everywhere who do not answer to any title but who wield powers that degrade the state and cancel the powers that inhere in the real president. One of them is a felon fellow called Bello Turji who reigns in Nigeria’s primary zone of terror. He rules the forests, controls the villages, and commands the towns of Nigeria’s north-west. A report last week reconfirmed this bandit leader’s worth as the classic antinomian. The report said Turji imposed a N50 million levy on a Zamfara village called Moriki. “Yes, you are right. We imposed a N50 million levy on Moriki,” Turji owned the heist in a video posted online. He gave reasons which further delegitimized a broken sovereign.

To be helpless is to be “lacking in protection or support; defenseless.” That is what my dictionary says it is. The Nigerian state is at this moment helpless – even, hopeless. Before you ask why, ask first why anyone would expect awkward crab to teach its children how to walk straight. Why should bandits act freely dictating who lives and who dies; who is free and who is held? And there is a government. “Successful bandits inspire fear and respect” …they are hard men “who make themselves respected.” That is from the late Dutch anthropologist, Anton Blok, author of ‘The Peasant and the Brigand: Social Banditry Reconsidered.’ Blok explored the “varieties and complexities” of banditry. He hypothesised that “the more successful a man is as a bandit, the more extensive the protection granted him.” I am tempted to say that Nigeria is a country of successful banditry.

MORE FROM THE AUTHOR: OPINION: In Defence Of Our President [Monday Lines]

Nigeria validates Blok’s proposition. Turji, for instance, inspires fear more than the law. He commands greater ‘respect’ in his spheres of influence than those we elected there. He receives obeisance from big and small men in the terrorized zone and gets propitiated. Like devotees of Shango, the people prostrate before the small god of banditry with one lone prayer: Do not fight fight me, I do not have money for offerings at home. The law wisely cowers where he reigns. The result is anomie writ large. Because of bandit lords, big men in the North-West have learnt the wisdom of detaining themselves in Abuja and in their state capitals. The poor who could afford the swiftness of the eagle have dragged their tired bodies and souls across the boarder into Niger Republic. The flightless ones, in their millions, work the fields for protection from the bandit leaders. The situation shames the law, ridicules the constitution and all its creations, including our executive presidency.

The horror we saw last week in the collapsed dam of Maiduguri perfectly illustrates the criminal cisterns of Nigeria bursting at the seams. In the South-West are showy, shadowy felons whose terrorism is in shrines of the occult. They inflict an epidemic of ritual killings on the land, abducting the young and the old. There is a migration from, or a convergence of, Yahoo Yahoo and money ritual. They abduct, murder and pound the very promising into pulps of nonsense. Parents are breathless at noon, and sleepless at night. For many, safety of their children from marauding priests and occult clerics dominate prayers at family talks. We no longer know who truly worships God and whom to trust.

The Arewa Consultative Forum (ACF) held “a special meeting of elders and top-level leaders” from all parts of Northern Nigeria on Wednesday, 4 September, 2024. A very thoughtful communique came out of the gathering. The ACF said the north was ready “for a review of Nigeria’s 1999 Constitution as well as the restructuring of the administrative structure of Nigeria.” It said it was not afraid of both. I read that part and clapped for them. But can I say the same of the hypocritical Yoruba who have dropped the ball of restructuring and are busy protecting a pot of soup that is really not theirs? The ACF said in the communique that it reviewed the state of the nation and expressed deep concerns on Nigeria’s intractable problems – economic and security. It proffered solutions: “The current approaches to fighting the insurgents and bandits are not yielding the desired results. Other measures, even unconventional ones, need to be considered and tried.” The northern leaders counseled government and suggested to it “community-driven models of defence, such as the Civilian JTF.” Thoughtful north did not make that case for itself alone. It suggested that “similar or modified models” of that security management “be authorized in other parts of the country.” I agree with them. I wish the president and his government listen to the ACF.

In the days before the white man came with his peace, law and order, my part of this country had security structures that must either ship in or ship out. There was Aare Ona Kakanfo whose existence was tied to fighting and defeating the enemy. “You do not become the Aare and lament that there is no war to fight. If the enemy refuses to charge at you, go out and take the war to his doorstep. Or you provoke a rebellion at home and crush it without mercy. That is the raw meaning of Kakanfo — patriotic (sometimes), rebellious, courageous, heady, merciless, merciful, tough, warlike, bloody, unyielding.”

The quoted clauses above belong to me. It was the introductory paragraph to my piece published on January 15, 2018 – two days after Gani Adams was installed as the Aare Ona Kakanfo of Yorubaland. I went back to read the piece again after I read Adams’ open letter to President Tinubu last week. Adams, in the letter, was frontal in his choice of language and in the allusions he drew. He said the nation had failed and the president a big disappointment. He said (without saying it) that the circumciser who was employed to beautify the Nigerian baby had allowed it to die right in his hands. I found it quite daring. His suggestions on the economy and security appeared to be on all fours with the ACF’s. But, the Kakanfo missed out on one key point that would have made his letter truly revolutionary. His missive miserably lacked the front teeth- which is his people’s demand for a reexamination of the structure of the Nigerian nation. Adams himself had been consistent in asking for restructuring of Nigeria from all predecessors of Tinubu. But in his letter of 1,258 words, spread across 52 paragraphs, Adams’ mantra was not there. Was it a genuine error of omission or an abdication of a cause he had consistently pursued before now? Or what? His subsequent newspaper interviews filled that void.

My Kakanfo offering of 2018 was a steamboat; it rowed us through the dark, treacherous canals of the imperiled existence of the past, and their various (un)predictable harbours of turbulence. Gani Adams’ skull took 201 incisions stuffed with 201 unknown stuffs. I don’t think he made his head available for that ordeal because he enjoyed it. Adams was in the news last week. He wrote about bandits ravaging Nigeria “from the north to the south, east to the west.” He then queried the competence of the commander-in-chief and the commitment of his commanders. I think Tinubu should read Adams’s letter, pick whatever is good in it and implement. Perching precariously on the head of my 2018 article is the title: ‘Eni Ogun in Times of War.’ ‘Eni ogun’ means man of war; if you add another letter ‘o’ to the ‘ogun’, the salutation becomes problematic. He will then be called ‘eni oògùn’ – man of magical powers, or, ‘eni òógùn’, man of perspiration. Whichever mark you put on the ‘ogun’ or ‘oogun’ will be right and applicable to the man who took a 19th century title in the 21st century and is demanding to act the antiquated status in a republic. I thought Adams would deny the authorship of the letter. He didn’t. Indeed, his subsequent press interviews were even more damning. The incisions are truly working.

How many ‘presidents’ can a nation have at a point in time? Has Nigeria failed? Or has it not failed? In 1995, Ali Mazrui assessed state failure. He cited a country that had “lost sovereign control over a large proportion of the country, with the result that it has also lost control of resources, infrastructure, revenue, social services, and governance.” He wrote about another country in which the cities were “under the control of the authorities during the day and under the control of militants at night.”

Nigeria of 1995 was bad, but it was not among those so agonized over by Mazrui. If he were alive today, Mazrui would, with very heavy heart, not hesitate to put Nigeria of 2024 at the top of his list of the failed. Under the roof of their present husband, Nigerians are losing on all fronts: they are broke, they are hungry, they are terribly terrorized. Kidnappers are breaking their doors and dragging them into captivity. The supreme commander of our own troops would rather move from one world capital to the other fulfilling childhood dreams of shaking stockinged hands of imperial kings and queens. They are here to plunder.

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Police Warn Against Protest In Aso Rock, Environs

Published

2 hours ago

October 19, 2025

Editor

The Nigeria Police Force has warned intending protesters, agitating for the release of Mazi Nnamdi Kalu, against any form of protest around the Aso Rock and its environs.

A statement by the Force Public Relations Officer, CSP Benjamin Hundeyin, in Abuja, said the warning followed an order of a Federal High Court, Abuja.

He said the court, in a suit between the Federal Republic of Nigeria v. Omoyele Sowore & 4 others, on Oct. 17, restrained any form of protest around the Aso Rock and its environs.

“The order restrains the respondents and any other persons or groups acting under their instruction from staging protests within and around Aso Rock Villa and its environs.

“Other areas are the National Assembly Complex, Force Headquarters, the Court of Appeal, Eagle Square and Shehu Shagari Way.

“Accordingly, all intending protesters and counter-protest groups are strongly advised to avoid restricted areas and to refrain from any act capable of provoking confrontation or disturbing public order,” he said.

The police spokesman said the force would ensure the free flow of traffic, protection of lives and property, and security of all law-abiding citizens.

According to him, any person or group that uses protests as cover to incite violence, carry or use offensive weapons, vandalise public or private property, kidnap, or engage in acts likely to cause loss of life or serious injury will be dealt with decisively.

He said offenders would be arrested, subjected to full investigation, and prosecuted under relevant criminal laws, including laws relating to public order, violent conduct and terrorism where applicable.

Hundeyin said those who incite others via social media or other platforms would be investigated and prosecuted, using digital evidence.

He said the Inspector-General of Police (I-G), Mr Kayode Egbetokun, had directed the Commissioner of Police (CP) in charge of the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) and relevant operational commands to ensure strict enforcement of the court’s order.

Hundeyin said the I-G had directed the CP to maintain visible and strategic deployments across vulnerable locations, and ensure the safety of residents and lawful activities in the FCT.

He urged organisers of the protest and participants to avoid the restricted areas specified by the court and refrain from carrying weapons, engaging in provocative conduct, or encouraging others to breach the law.

Hundeyin also urged the protesters to channel their grievances through the courts and other lawful avenues rather than the streets.

The police spokesman said adequate security arrangements had been made to protect lives and property of law-abiding Nigerians.

He enjoined those, not engaging in the protest to go about their lawful businesses without fear as anyone found to be in breach of the court’s order or in contempt of the law and be arrested and prosecuted.

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OPINION: Amupitan’s Magical Marriage To A Buffalo

Published

3 hours ago

October 19, 2025

Editor

By Festus Adedayo

While growing up, I went on hunting expedition with elderly men. From it, I found out that the forest, as an ecosystem, is diametrically opposed to the human world. In the forest, the hunter exists with “other beings”- animals of different shades and character, plants – whose existences bear similarity with man’s. One of such beings is an unseen spirit whose existence the hunter can take for granted only at his own peril. In the forest, the hunter is in a continuous struggle with these beings but is seen as an interloper. In this forest community, every member of the ecosystem contests for primacy, sometimes in a mortal and fatal manner.

Whenever human arguments begin to sound like claptrap to me, I bail out to avoid going mad. My refuge is always among animals, in the wild. It is a place Yoruba curiously call ìgbé. Ìgbé is, literally, excreta. I find greater logic in excrement than sweet-smelling human contraptions. To explain Professor Joash Amupitan’s recent appointment as the Chairman of the Independent Nigerian Electoral Commission (INEC) and the forebodings that line the sky, I had to go in search of animals whose lives could give explanations of the weird life of man. Whether in the sullen murmur of bees, the cruel humour of monkeys, the deafening roar of lions, the ugly beauty of hyenas or the artistry in the skin of zebras, the wild is a better place to find peace of mind. Or don’t you think so?

In Ayo Adeduntan’s seminal work, What the forest told me: Yoruba hunter, culture and narrative performance (2019), the author conducted an interview with Ògúnkúnlé Òjó of Agúnrege village in Oyo State. Adeduntan narrated how Òjó’s hunter master, Ògúnòṣun, married an efòn, the buffalo. In description, the African buffalo is one of Africa’s ‘big five’ safari animals, alongside rhinoceros, elephant, leopard and lion. Living only in Africa and Asia, the buffalo is reputed for its huge horns. Though a herbivore like cows, feeding only on plants, the animal often falls prey to predators like hunters, lions, leopards, hyenas and wild dogs. It can also be vicious; in order to defend herself, the buffalo strikes its prey with her horns.

According to Ògúnkúnlé Òjó, this particular day, he and another colleague on hunting expedition had shot the buffalo in the Agúnrege village forest. The animal immediately fell. Apparently frightened by the monstrosity of their kill, one of them had to run home to fetch their master, Ògúnòṣun. As they were about to get to the spot where the animal was felled, narrated Ògúnkúnlé, they suddenly saw a very pretty woman walking towards them. I remember Odolaye Aremu, Ilorin Dadakuada music lord, comparing the suddenness of the death of Western Region Premier, S. L. Akintola, to the instantaneous blow of a calamity when he sang, “…pèkílàá ko èèmò.” Said Ògúnkúnlé, “we ran into the animal, that is, the wife. She was a very beautiful woman” which in Yoruba is, “àfipẹ̀kí n l’abápàdéẹranl’ọ́nà, èyuùnìyàwó. Arẹwaobinrinni”. What Ògúnkúnlé implied was that the woman they met on the road to the buffalo’s remains was the same buffalo who had now transformed into a beautiful woman. It reminds one of Fagunwa’s Igbo Olódùmarè and how Olówóayé, swept off his feet by the sultry beauty of a woman named àjẹ́, was oblivious that he was making advances to a spirit woman.

What eventually transpired between Ògúnòṣun and the buffalo-turned-beautiful woman is instructive. “Our master exchanged greetings with her (the animal). She greeted our master, kneeling down in respect. This is no hearsay; I, Òjó the hunter, was present there that day. Our master wooed her and they both agreed to marry each other. She (however) warned: ‘Now that you have decided to marry me, be informed that the day you, out of anger, call me an animal, that day would be your last. It would not offend me as much if you hit me so much that I am wounded and bleeding.’

“So they got married. She became pregnant and had the first child, the second and the third child. There was a quarrel between her and my master one day. As they quarreled, my master angrily insulted her: ‘Àb’órí ì rẹ burúni, ìwọ ọmọ ẹrankoyìí’ – ‘You good-for-nothing unlucky daughter of an animal.’ ‘Oh!’ the woman said, ‘You are done for.’ That was where the trouble started.”

Ògúnkúnlé Òjó then ended the story, stating that the buffalo woman then turned into her pre-marital animal state. “Yes. It is no hearsay. She transformed into an animal by Ademọla’s father’s house beside Igbadi Hill. That was when the two of them started to fight. Our master tried all his power and failed. That was how the woman ran away forever. One of the children is dead. The remaining two are still in my master’s house,” Ògúnkúnlé said.

The forest is a realm that is implicitly uncertain. Those who claim that forest conversations between the hunter and other beings who live in the wild are purely African fantasy underrate our reality. The truth is that the hunter shares the forest cosmos with other beings. While the hunter believes he possesses some superiority over animals and other beings in the forest, the truth is that it is a shared world. Indeed, the Yoruba worldview does not approve of man’s superordinate status claim in relation to other earthly creations. He is thus in constant war against these forest antagonists whom he cannot pacify and who also see him as a usurper. This reminds me of a childhood fairy tale we were told about Segbe, a boy who veered into the wild on a festival day to hunt game. The animals descended on him and made a barbecue of his flesh. When the search party scoured the forest for him the second day, the birds sang, “Who is there searching for Segbe? Human beings were celebrating in their homes. We, animals, were having ours in the forest. We have made a meal of Segbe’s flesh.”

MORE FROM THE AUTHOR:OPINION: The Madman Sermon On Mapo Hill

In animals, there is no hypocrisy, no pretension. Victims and victimizers are aware of their naturally ordained roles and do not pull any shroud over this. In their wild habitat, these mammal forebears of man seem to explain better the contradictions of human life and the illogicality of the life of man. It prompted my disagreement with Fela Anikulapo’s concept of “animal talk”. While excoriating the Muhammadu Buhari military government’s War Against Indiscipline philosophy of openly beating offending Nigerians, Fela called that philosophy a talk of animals. My disagreement is that animals’ lives speak to man, but man is too deaf to listen.

In Yoruba hunters’ narratives, while there is always a hunter, animal and spirit relationship, this symbiosis often ends up in calamity. While D. O. Fagunwa’s narrative of the relationship between the trio of man, animal and spirits in the wild was fabulism, he took it out of the real-life man-animal forest ecosystem relations and encounters. Fagunwa’s books opened our eyes to the symbiosis of this relationship. You can see this relationship in the encounter between Olówóayé, Fagunwa’s hunter and protagonist, and the one-eyed elf called Èsù-kékeré-òde, in the book he entitled, The Forest of God, Igbó Olódùmarè. In another of his book, Ogbójúọdẹ Nínú Igbó Irúnmalè, this contest for supremacy between man and the spirit was illustrated by how a character called Tèmbèlẹ̀kun, a flesh-eating spirit, devoured Lamọrin, a hunter. Such is the nature of the dog-eat-dog relationship in the wild. ̣

So, last Thursday, as Professor Amupitan appeared in the Nigerian senate for screening, he suddenly pounced on my mind like a rampaging leopard. Whenever a hunter encounters an animal in the wild, his discerning mind tells him whether she is indeed an animal or an animal-turned-man. Putting on that same lens, what I saw last Thursday was an incestuous relationship between a hunter and a buffalo that would soon go awry. The hunter-buffalo’s love-turned-sour narrated above tells me I wasn’t mistaken. My reading is that of a tragic relationship that will soon come full throttle between Aso Rock, Amupitan and the Nigerian people.

History is Amupitan’s first nemesis. It holds that, like Ògúnòṣun, the hunter who got married to a buffalo-human, the new INEC boss is entering a graveyard of history where he would be so badly gored that he might emerge therefrom with a permanent scar. Since Sir Hugh Clifford’s Legislative Council election of 1920, Nigeria’s elections have been the graveyard of their electoral umpires. Since then, Nigeria has had electoral chiefs whose tenures ended in fiasco and, or ignominy.

Enters Amupitan. His first shot in the Senate last week was to confront the unpalatable graveyard image of electoral umpire bosses with comely semiotics. In semiotic theory, users deploy signs and symbols to create meanings. This they do through language, gestures and images. As he appeared at the senate screening exercise, the professor of law and Senior Advocate of Nigeria appeared with his family. Probably a student of linguist Ferdinand de Saussure and philosopher, Charles Sanders Pierce, who founded this study of symbols, Amupitan knew that a semiotic portrayal of the presence of his children on his first interface with Nigerians has the power of convincing the people that, as a family man, he would be humane. However, the reality of what he is about to begin far transcends the tender-heartedness of the family.

MORE FROM THE AUTHOR:OPINION: Fubara And The Witches

Amupitan spoke very well. Just like his predecessors. The professor from the sleepy town of Ayetoro Gbede said his life is influenced by a tripod of God, hard work and mentorship.

Soon, Amupitan will realize that he is in the same boat with persons for whom God exists only as a political slogan or refrain. Beyond their lips, there is no one so-called. In this God thing, he is alone. Again, more than ever before, Amupitan, whose literal rendition of his name means a history maker, will indeed make history. He will also tell a story. What story he will tell and the history he will make are part of the omen of a gathering cloud in the sky I see. Vultures are already hovering, signifying that the story the professor will tell will not only not be significantly different from his predecessors’, it could be worse. First is that, unlike many previous elections, Nigerians have the painful belief that the winner of the 2027 elections, especially the presidential election, is already known. This will leave Amupitan to contend with his own ambiguities.

Second is the gale of defections that has rocked Nigerian politics in the last few months. The defections render party politics no different from the petty business of market square transactions. They thus make Amupitan’s job a potential failure. The belief is that the Senators/House of Representatives members and governors changing parties like chameleon changes colour, are driven by the quest to have the party at the federal lip-frog them into victory. How would Amupitan deny the party of his appointor victory in 2027?

Already, Amupitan’s ambivalent heritage may also sound the death knell on his electoral umpire role. While the presidency gleefully flaunted him as having “hailed from the North Central,” everyone knows that putting Ayetoro Gbede as northern Nigeria is one of those geographical mis-ascriptions of today’s Nigeria. A town in Okunland, in Kogi West Senatorial District of Kogi State, Amupitan hails from this town, founded in 1927 by early Christian converts. The truth is, Ayetoro Gbede is Yorubaland. So, if northern Nigeria, which is today embroiled in a fight with the avatar of Nigeria, on allegation of under-developing the North, loses the 2027 election to Amupitan’s perceived brother, there cannot but be wahala.

Pardon my pessimism. What I see is Amupitan, with his lustering credentials, ending up brutally bruised. This liaison with a buffalo-turned-pretty woman will not likely end well.

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Remain Apolitical – NAF Warns Personnel

Published

16 hours ago

October 18, 2025

Editor

The Nigerian Air Force (NAF) has called on all personnel not to involve themselves in any political activities in the discharge of their professional responsibilities.

Air Vice Marshal (AVM) Usman Abdullahi, the Air Officer Commanding, Special Operations Command, Bauchi, made the call during the 2025 annual 10-kilometer walk and jog exercise organised by the Nigerian Air Force.

He also called on the personnel not to involve themselves in activity that is inimical to the calling of the military profession.

“You must remain apolitical. Don’t involve yourselves in any political activities and do not involve yourselves in activity that is inimical to the calling of our military profession.

“I urge you to remain loyal to the Federal Republic of Nigeria and the President and the Commander in-Chief of the Federal Republic of Nigeria,” he said.

Abdullahi, who emphasised that the NAF pays serious attention to physical fitness for all its personnel, said that the exercise was to increase their cohesion, keep their mental fitness as well as for them to be on the alert at all times.

He commended the Bauchi state government for their cooperation and synergy as well as the creation of an enabling environment.

Also speaking shortly after the 10-kilometer walk and jog, governor Mohammed said the participants’ outstanding performances were the result of discipline, consistency and determination to succeed.

These qualities, he said, were central not only to physical fitness but also to succeed in every area of life, adding that they had demonstrated team work, endurance and commitment to the values that made the Nigerian Air Force a model institution.

Represented by his Deputy, Alh. Auwal Jatau, the governor, said the exercise was more than just a fitness exercise but a celebration of unity and shared purpose.

“Seeing officers comprising airmen, airwomen, sister security services, paramilitary agencies, and NYSC members come together in such a lively atmosphere reminds us that sports and fitness can be powerful tools for strengthening peace and solidarity.

“Here in Bauchi State, we take pride in the harmonious relationship between the government, the Nigerian Air Force and all security agencies operating within the State.

“The Special Operations Command and other military and paramilitary formations have played a vital role in maintaining the relative peace and security that our people enjoy today,” he said.

Nothing less than 32 people received different prizes for their outstanding performances during the exercise which included Airmen, Airwomen, Nigeria Immigration Service, Customs Service and civilians among others.