The murder of Colonel Inusa brings a macabre new dimension to abduction
Then news broke the previous weekend that a colonel in the Nigerian Army had been kidnapped, it registered in most minds only as a departure from the kind of abduction that has become a staple of the news, different only in the identity of the victim.
News of the abduction of schoolgirls, influential persons and their spouses and children, political officials, journalists, entertainers, even police officers, punctuate almost every news cycle, in a trajectory that has become painfully familiar.
First comes the stark report of the abduction. Then follows a period, sometimes stretching into several days, during which nothing is heard about the victim or from the kidnappers.
For the victims’ families, this is a time of excruciating agony. What has become of their loved ones? Why were they seized in the first place? Under what conditions are they being held? Will they be released unharmed? Are they even still alive? The beleaguered families have no clues.
Nor do the law enforcement agencies. They announce the kidnapping matter-of-factly, assure the public they are investigating, and solicit information that could lead to the rescue of the abductee or to the apprehension of the abductors.
The kidnappers use the lull to weigh the balance of forces and to perfect their strategy for maximum extortion with minimum risk of capture. That settled, they stake their demands.
Discreet negotiations begin; a ransom is agreed, the terms of which are sealed. The prisoner is released to lick his or her wounds, and the kidnappers vanish to enjoy their pernicious wages and to plot the next abduction.
The reported kidnapping of Colonel Samaila Inusa, chief instructor at the Nigerian Army School of Infantry, Jaji, near Kaduna, was brazen, to be sure. He was plucked from his car at gunpoint between his base and Kaduna. The abductors dropped off his wife who was riding with him, and reportedly drove off with him as if heading to Abuja.
The expectation was that the kidnapping would follow the same trajectory and end on a happy note as most kidnappings in Nigeria have ended, and that at the very least, those who live by kidnapping would learn that they cannot assail members of the armed forces with impunity.
Tragically, this one has turned out to be a different kind of kidnapping. Col Inusa’s captors had murder on their minds, not ransom. The condition in which his body was found four days after he was seized suggests that he was killed moments after he was plucked from his car.
This does not appear to be a random murder.
There is reason for suspecting that Col Inusa was targeted; that this was an inside job; that his killers or their proxies had trailed him from his base, and that they knew he would not have the kind of protection usually available to an officer of his rank even off duty.
Why did he not avail himself of that facility? Was he privy to some secrets that his killers wanted to suppress? Why did it take four crucial days to locate his body after he went missing not far from his base, along a busy highway linking some of the nation’s most strategic military formations?
Nearly one week after Col Inusa’s body was found, no arrests have been reported. This raises questions about the vigour and expertise with which the investigation is being pursued. The Nigeria Army needs to reassure its own rank and file that it is capable of protecting them and bringing to swift justice those who would seek to inflict gratuitous harm on them.
The on-going menace of Boko Haram suicide-bombers and “Fulani cattle herders” and persons engaged in ritual killings has rendered the average Nigerian jumpy, despite appearances to the contrary. With the murder of Col Inusa, the public might well be asking: If a senior military officer who in a remarkable career had the distinction of serving as aide-de-camp to the Vice President of Sierra Leone can be seized not far from his military base and murdered just like that, who is safe?
The military authorities must apprehend the perpetrators of this heinous crime quickly and bring them to justice.
