The Upper Crust

Beef in Lagos, blood in Zamfara

 

With uche nnadozie

Call it blood money, you won’t be wrong. That is the reality coming from investigations expertly conducted by the police.  According to reports quoting police sources, the activities of the suspects whose actions or businesses, if you would exacerbated the crisis in Zamfara state and turned the once sleepy state into a killing field may have been exposed. Activities of these blood-men were detected based on intelligence report generated by operatives of Inspector General of Police, Intelligence Response Team, IRT, who were on the trail of suspected bandits who have been terrorising some local government areas of the state. As it were, the suspected heavily armed bandits have killed not only the police but also hundreds, if not thousands of residents and soldiers.
It’s interesting but curious that this kind of trade has been on-going without us detecting it. Large numbers of cattle left Zamfara to Lagos on a blood-trade-in-cattle cycle. The money from Lagos sustained the carnage going on in Zamfara state. Bandits steal cattle from original peasants then commandeer the heist to Lagos where a brisk business has ensured. The police have the chilling details, part of which was the discovery that the bandits who are mostly camped in the thick forest have been buying arms worth millions of naira suspected to have been smuggled through Niger Republic. Some of these weapons include rocket launchers which they have used to attack security operatives deployed to comb the area and arrest the bandits.
As it is , as soon as the IRT team got involved in solving that well-planned crime, suspects began to emerge. Top on the list of the most wanted bandits linked to this three way crime is Dankarami, a Hausa man from Rukudawa village in Zamfara state. He is described as a deadly man who is responsible for thousands of lives lost in the state. He is said to be controlling several groups scattered across the state. He commands not less than 400 armed men, which includes citizens of Niger Republic. The Dankarami groups are experts at cattle rustling and always kill their victims before carting away their cattle, wives or valuable.
Further more, in the course of investigation, detectives discovered that millions of naira are transported into the bush on weekly basis. They traced some of the monies and discovered that they emanated from Lagos State. This is incredible! They were able to establish that some of the cattle dealers were transferring millions of naira to some of the bandits that were recently arrested by the police.
The head of IRT, Abba Kyari, a Deputy Commissioner of Police, “deployed his team in Zamfara state to trace and arrest the receivers of those stolen cattle alleged to have been transported to Lagos. On realising the heat was on, Aliyu fled to Lagos and alerted some other major dealers that their suppliers (bandits) were already in police net. Luckily, the detectives who have bank details and addresses of some of the cattle dealers were able to trace and arrest five of them in Lagos”, according to media reports.
Also, quoting one of the reports, “the insecurity in Zamfara State is a conundrum that confounds the country’s law enforcement agencies. Within a few years, armed banditry, kidnapping and cattle rustling became entrenched in Zamfara and literally, turned the state into a hell on earth. As the ravagers grow stronger, they fearlessly, viciously and tenaciously fight back government’s response and frustrate every attempt to dislodge them. So far, cattle thieves are still on the rampage, their reign of terror still raging. And every week, they wreak havoc with impunity, leaving in their wake losses and casualties of the magnitude that portray security operatives, not only as toothless and clueless but fighting a lost cause”.
Eventually, things have shaped up for the police. They have successfully connected the puzzle and now have a rare insight into why the problem persisted. According to emerging facts, a filthy trade connects Lagos (where a market for stolen cattle has been established) to Zamfara, (the main domain of cattle thieves). The reverse flow, of money from the South West state to the arid northern heartland, enables bandits to arm themselves with sophisticated weapons to sustain their criminal activities.
Some of the suspects arrested in Lagos have confessed to the crime and described when and how they began the trade. It’s like the “blood diamond” ring of Sierra Leone. While citizens fought a war and killed themselves in that West African country, other citizens backed by militias were busy with the diamond mines of the country. They (militias) and government troops, who controlled the mines provided shield for the illegal trade while raking in money. The trade sustained the war. Like in Zamfara, the killings in that state were sustained by the money gotten from Lagos markets. These bandits raided villages, stole cattle and sold to Lagos merchants at give away prices. This is disgusting. The more cattle rustled meant more cash to buy arms and ammunition to sustain the raids and killings.
Our country has gone too far backwards. It has been my opinion, which is supported by many researches that corruption breeds insecurity just as it breeds under development. More poignantly, corruption kills societal values and community ethos. This is why one of the suspects said although he knew the cattle he was buying at give away prices were stolen and was aware of the killings in his state, yet was cool with being in business with the bandits. According to him, he was buying and selling! We need to begin to move away from evil. It does no one good as a safe person today can become a suspect tomorrow. Evil is evil no matter who is funding it.

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