We need the masters, not the minions, to eliminate the crime

If criminals in the country are trying to fly without perching, to paraphrase Chinua Achebe, it would seem the police and other security agencies too are fast learning to shoot without missing, given the rate at which all manner of criminals are being caught in spite of their various ingenious tactics to beat security operatives. Drug peddlers, arms smugglers and sundry criminals are not only getting increasingly desperate, they are also becoming increasingly sophisticated.

The latest of such suspected criminals is one Nuhu Aminu, a 32-year-old man from Katsina, Katsina State, who was allegedly intercepted by policemen in the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), in collaboration with officials of the National Union of Road Transport Workers (NURTW), at the Nyanya Bus Terminal in Abuja. Aminu was arrested with a large cache of live ammunition that he cleverly hid in jerry cans filled with palm oil.

The command spokesman, Josephine Adeh, said in a statement last week Monday that , “The FCT Police Command, in its unwavering commitment to public safety and proactive crime prevention, has intercepted a major illegal ammunition shipment and apprehended a suspect in connection with the crime.

“Acting in synergy with officials of the National Union of Road Transport Workers, police operatives from the Nyanya Division, FCT Command, tracked and arrested Nuhu Aminu, a 32-year-old man from Katsina State, at the Nyanya bus terminal, on March 24, 2025.

“The suspect was caught in possession of 488 AK-47 live rounds of ammunition, ingeniously concealed in two 25-litre jerry cans filled with palm oil, to evade detection.”

Adeh said Aminu confessed that he was recruited for N100,000 by one Yakubu Kachalla, a resident of Funtua, in the state, to collect the illegal cargo from an unidentified contact in Nasarawa State and deliver it to Katsina.

We commend the police for this significant effort to make the FCT unsafe for criminals, especially with regard to proliferation of illegal arms that fuel violent crimes. It is gratifying that the suspect is already in police custody, even as investigations continue, with a view to arresting Aminu’s accomplices and ‘’uncover the full extent of this arms-smuggling operation,” as Adeh promised.

We urge the security agencies to sustain, and even raise their level of vigilance. Crime wave in the country is getting increasingly unbearable. Hardly would a day pass without all manner of crimes being perpetrated in different parts of the country, from kidnapping for ransom to rape, ritual killings and, to some extent, armed robbery. All of these require arms and it is almost certain that it is through sources like the one under investigation that the criminals source the weapons with which they terrorise their victims. If only for this reason, we must all be sufficiently alarmed at the rate such illegal arms are smuggled into the country, before ending up in the hands of criminals.

Equally commendable is the role of the NURTW officials whose collaboration with the police led to the interception of the suspect and the arms cache. Security men cannot be all over the place at the same time. They need information from members of the public. So, when we see something, we should say something. We never can tell. Maybe if the NURTW officials had not done their bit, the suspect would have escaped with the arms, thereby posing danger to innocent members of the public.

Gratifying as it is though that this time around, the suspect was caught with the arms, we do not know how many other such arms escaped the eagle eyes of our security agencies. This is a major reason why the security agencies need not go after the minions involved in these illegal operations since they lack the resources to embark on such crimes. They would do well to trace the arms to their masters. That is one sure way of reducing to the barest minimum, if not eliminating, outright, such criminal activities. (The Nation Editorial)