There is a local axiom that when a man excreting in the bush squats too long in the act, he gets harassed by different species of flies. We also have the common saying that justice delayed oftentimes translates to justice denied. There’s a sense in which these axioms apply to the recent jailbreak at Kuje prison in Abuja in which suspected kidnap kingpin Hamisu Wadume reportedly sprung lose along with about 400 other inmates of the facility.
Following insurgents’ attack on the prison last Tuesday, about half of the inmate population, including suspected Boko Haramists, broke out from custody. Reports yet to be controverted listed Wadume, who has been in custody at Kuje prison since 2019, among escaped inmates who had neither been recaptured nor returned voluntarily to custody. Wadume was hunted down in Takum, Taraba State, for criminal activities by which he allegedly terrorised people of the area. His arrest by police Intelligence Response Team (IRT) personnel in an operation led by then unit head, DCP Abba Kyari, resulted in the killing of three IRT operatives in circumstances that reeked of conflicting purposes among security services, if not outright sabotage of one agency by the other.
Agents of IRT who arrested Wadume following painstaking track-down operation came under heavy fire by soldiers of 93 Battalion in Takum, which resulted in the killing of three police officers and one civilian, with five other operatives getting injured. That incident opened up bitter acrimony between the two security services. The military assault squad claimed the IRT officers were not properly identified and that their vehicle had nothing to show they were policemen. The soldiers, who also liberated Wadume from IRT operatives’ captivity, reportedly acted on superior orders. On the heels of the encounter, Wadume went on the run again, with his escape eliciting public outrage; he was however rearrested by IRT operatives in Kano, brought to Abuja and charged to court, which ordered his remand in prison custody. Against the backdrop of his daring exploits in evading arrest until then, the suspect was reported squealing on corrupt underbelly of the security services. Among others, he alleged that an army Captain and some other officers were on his payroll, and that he often paid his way with generous ‘tolls’ at checkpoints en route to his hideout.
The wheel of justice that grinds slowly saw to it that Wadume was yet to be convicted as at when he broke lose from custody last week. Now that he has to be recaptured, we must hope this would not be at high costs in lives and service morality like his previous arrest entailed.