Nigerians read with shock, the murder of Mr Abubakar AbudullahiBindawa, a secret service operative by kidnappers in Jigawa State. Until hisdeath, he was working for the undercover Department of State Services (DSS) inAbuja, the Federal Capital Territory. Citizen Abubakar was first kidnapped bythe bandits, taken to an unknown area as is the practice with kidnappers.Contacts were made with his family, negotiations went on, concluded, and ransomraised by the family was duly paid to the evil men but what did they receive?The corpse of their beloved Abubakar.
As is the “new-normal” with activities of rogue elements inNigeria today, the soul-wounding story of Citizen Abubakar would soon fade,forgotten first by those distant from him biologically, then by the NigerianState that he served, followed by his immediate office and finally by hiscommunity.
All the burden of his traumatic last days and his absence andthe concomitant crisis would be borne by his immediate family.
The story, trauma, tragedy and death of citizen Abubakar onceagain raised the stakes on the diminishing potency of the State and the Sovereignas far as Nigeria is concerned.
Late DSS operative MrBindawa 35, was reported to have been kidnapped on Saturday from hisresidence located behind Federal Secretariat in Katsina, Katsina State. Heworked in the Intelligence department of the DSS in Abuja.
He was said to have gone to Katsina to spend the weekend with one of his sonsin the city and that he arrived the Town last Friday, according to familysources. While in his residence, the kidnappers entered his compound. They tookhold of the gate man in the compounded, inflicted severe wounds on him todemobilize. After that, they gained entry into the house and took him hostageat around 10:30pm.
TheDaily Trust Newspaper quoted a family source as saying, “We have beennegotiating with them since the time they contacted us through his phone and wefinally stopped at N8m, and that is exactly what I took to them,” said thefamily member who didn’t want to be named.
“They warned me to come alone and they told me to come with a car because theysaid they have injured his leg and thus he could not walk. They told me whereto meet them and hand over the money to them. After that, they told me to goback to a place where I would meet him, but when I went to the place I did notsee him there. It was later we recovered him with fractured leg and three gunshotsin his body”, the family source stated.
Every family that hashad the misfortune of having one or more of its members kidnapped at one timeor the other had a similar story as the Bindawa Family’s. It is everywhere inNigeria. It is so rampant that kidnapping is fast becoming family affairs andthe rest of the people carry on with their lives until it becomes their own individualturn to be kidnapped.
So many families likethe Bindawas have been in mourning and, many more families would likely becomevictims of kidnapping unless the scourge is stopped.
But Citizen Abubakar’skidnap goes beyond family matter. It is interwoven in the very existence ofthis country as a state. The security of a State is at the core of theexistence of that State.
No one head is moreimportant than another but the security men who guard the nation, Nigeriarepresent the strength of this country and the safety of the State and itssubjects.
It was in order that citizensshould enjoy this comfort that Nigerians, like nationals of other organizedsocieties of the world surrendered their natural unrestrained freedom andliberty to the Nigerian state so that the State could in turn, defend them andguarantee them their safety.
If the kidnappers hadgone to another family near that of the Bindawas, the family would have run tolate Abubakar Bindawa, a ‘powerful’ neighbour to save them being a securityman.
To humiliate theNigerian State, the kidnappers went to the Bindawa family straight, picked himup and ended up killing him. They have sent a dangerous signal to the immediatevicinity of the Bindawas and the country at large that the might of theNigerian State could be easily be broken by criminal elements.
For long, thesecriminal elements have killing our soldiers, police officers, and other officersof various security agencies.
A number of times,they make a show of the execution and that in turn makes a mockery of theState. How do unarmed ordinary citizens feel about their safety in Nigeria iftheir bulwark is being easily pulled down by bandits?
We do not understand whythe GSM numbers that were supposed to have been registered are being easilyused by kidnappers with little or no success at intercepting the kidnappers.
The AUTHORITY Newspaper urgesthe Nigerian Government to do everything possible to reverse this uglysituation. The insurgents, the kidnappers, the bandits and other criminalelements must be stopped from these unending killings of law enforcement agentsand law abiding, defenceless, unarmed citizens.
