The Okuama dead: Story behind the grief, By Azu Ishiekwene

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Three years ago, Ali’s younger brother, Jamilu, a captain, had been killed in action by bandits in Katsina State. As an officer in the North-East, Ali himself had escaped death a number of times in battles against Boko Haram insurgents.has been nursing her loss, in addition to coping with the death of her son in Katsina, and later, the deaths of her daughter and son-in-law in a road accident.

But politicians don’t mind. In their desperate search for solutions to the problem of oil theft and also to consolidate their political hold, they have indulged the private armies. Officers deployed in the area are left to invent their own ways of serving two masters – the state and the communities on the one hand, and the powerful private armies on the other.

Media reports suggested that leaders in Okuama broke kola nuts with the officer and his team when they arrived. At what point did murderous violence erupt? If people in the community were opposed to the officer taking their leader away for statements at the army base in Bomadi, as was reported, was murdering him and his team and seizing their weapons the answer?

Perhaps, out of a sense of holy rage, Ali took the plunge. He gathered his men and went to Okuama. Sadly, that was his last journey. He and his men were ambushed and brutally killed by people they had sworn to protect. Perhaps one thing common to the three, however, is the increasing mismanagement, if not weaponisation, of conflicts by politicians, a posture that has further damaged and compromised an undertrained, undermanned, underfunded and under-equipped military. Command and control is fuzzy.

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