Abba Kyari: How the North Abandoned Its Best Minds on the Altar of Negligence

Abba Kyari: How the North Abandoned Its Best Minds on the Altar of Negligence

There are moments in a nation’s life when silence becomes a statement. Not the silence of restraint or wisdom, but the silence of fear, convenience and elite abandonment. Nigeria is living through one such moment, and the name at the centre of it is Abba Alhaji Kyari.

Once celebrated, decorated and entrusted with Nigeria’s most sensitive security assignments, Kyari today stands before the law largely alone. Not convicted. Not vindicated. Simply abandoned. And in that abandonment lies a deeper Northern tragedy that must be confronted honestly and urgently. This is not a plea for impunity. It is a lamentation over selective courage, unequal solidarity, and a regional habit of clapping at the peak and disappearing at the fall.

A record that cannot be erased Between 2016 and 2019, Abba Kyari served as Deputy Commissioner of Police and head of the Nigeria Police Force’s elite Intelligence Response Team (IRT), headquartered in Abuja.

At the time, the IRT was the country’s most visible and aggressive crime-fighting unit, deployed against kidnapping syndicates, armed robbery networks and terror cells across Nigeria. In June 2017, after months of intelligence tracking, Kyari’s team was part of the multi-agency operation that led to the arrest of Chukwudumeme Onwuamadike, popularly known as Evans, in Lagos State.

Evans was then Nigeria’s most notorious kidnap kingpin, accused of orchestrating high-value abductions across Lagos and the South-East. His arrest was hailed nationwide as a major breakthrough against the kidnapping epidemic.

In 2018, the IRT announced the arrest of Umar Abdulmalik, identified as a Boko Haram commander, alongside several associates in operations conducted in the North-East. That same year, Kyari’s unit also tracked and arrested suspects linked to the December 2018 killing of former Chief of Defence Staff, Air Marshal Alex Badeh, in Abuja—a case that shook Nigeria’s security establishment.

Arrested the boko Haram terrorist behind the Suicide bombings in the North East and ended 90 percent of all Suicide bombings, Arrested boko Haram terrorist that kidnapped the Chibok School Girls. Arrested the Boko Haram terrorist that Bombed Abuja in 2015 and dismantled 2 bomb making factories in Gaulaka niger state, Arrested Vampire the deadliest kidnapper, arrested several school children kidnappers and other kidnappers all over the country plus thausands of other deadly criminals and Terrorists.

Is it to the National security interest to keep Prosecuting such an outstanding officer because of a Set Up by an organization who has already shielded her officers seriously indicted in this same case by the drug suspects arrested by the Police IRT and transferred to NDLEA? These were not obscure operations.

They were widely reported, officially credited, and publicly celebrated. Kyari became a symbol—fairly or not—of intelligence-led policing in an era of rampant insecurity. He was decorated, promoted, and praised by successive police leaderships.

He was not operating in the shadows; he was operating with the full authority of the Nigerian state. From national asset to convenient silence Then came the fall.

Allegations. Suspension, Prosecution. Today, Kyari is standing trial in cases arising from allegations brought by the National Drug Law Enforcement Agency (NDLEA). Relating to Drug traffickers his own Police IRT arrested in Enugu Airport and after 6 days of preliminary investigation by the Police IRT, Police IRT officially transferred the Drugs and drug suspects to NDLEA.

The NDLEA officers indicted by thesame drug suspects were neither arrested or prosecuted upto today, Its only the Police officers that arrested the drug criminals and transferred to NDLEA that are detained for 4 years without bail for alleged tempering with drugs they recovered by themselves, refused to compromise with the drug criminals and transferred to NDLEA. the matters are before the Federal High Court in Abuja. As at today, no final conviction has been delivered.

The law is still speaking. Due process is still unfolding although unjust as No bail granted on a matter that is completely bailable in Nigerian law. Yet long before the courts conclude, something else has already happened: the North went quiet. No coordinated call for transparency.

No principled demand for fair trial. No sustained advocacy insisting that the law be followed to the letter.

Just distance. Just discomfort. Just silence. The hypocrisy of selective solidarity This silence becomes more disturbing when placed beside Nigeria’s other recent experiences. Across the South-East, Nnamdi Kanu, leader of the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB), continues to enjoy vocal backing from prominent Igbo leaders, lawyers, cultural organisations and influencers—despite documented violence, incendiary rhetoric and attacks linked to his movement.

His cause is framed as political, ethnic, even civilisational. In the Niger Delta, figures like Government Ekpemupolo (Tompolo)—once declared enemies of the state and accused of violent militancy—were defended, negotiated with, and ultimately reintegrated, backed strongly by regional elites who framed the struggle as resource justice.

In the South-West, Sunday Adeyemo (Sunday Igboho) received open support from Yoruba socio-cultural groups, lawyers and public figures, even while facing accusations of violence and separatist agitation. Again, the language was protection, resistance, identity.

Militants. Separatists. Armed agitators. Yet Abba Kyari, a state officer who fought criminals and terrorists under government orders, attracts no such organised empathy. Why? Why does rebellion inspire loyalty while service invites abandonment?

Why do regions mobilise to defend those who confront the Nigerian state, but retreat when one of their own served it too effectively—and then fell into controversy? We have been here before This is not new. During the Abdulsami /Obasanjo years, the North watched silently as Hamza Al-Mustapha, former Chief Security Officer to General Sani Abacha, was detained for years, tried for years, and largely left to his fate.

No mass Northern advocacy. No sustained elite pressure. Just whispers and distance—until history forced a reckoning. The pattern is familiar: when power is useful, it is celebrated; when it becomes inconvenient, it is disowned.

The cost of cowardice The abandonment of Abba Kyari is not just about one man. It is about what it signals to an entire generation. It tells security officers that excellence comes without insurance. It tells public servants that loyalty flows upward, never back. It tells young Northerners that the system will use you, praise you, and discard you—quietly.

This silence weakens institutions. It breeds fear-driven conformity. It discourages initiative. And it deepens the culture of hypocrisy that allows injustice to thrive unchallenged. To be clear: calling for fairness is not the same as defending wrongdoing.

Demanding due process is not ethnic blackmail. Insisting on transparency is not denial of allegations. Other regions understand this distinction. Why does the North pretend not to? A call that can no longer wait This lamentation must end as a call to action.

Northern political leaders must rediscover the courage to speak without calculating convenience. Emirs and traditional institutions must remember that moral authority includes defending fairness, not just issuing prayers.

Northern youth must reject the culture of silence that has cost them opportunity after opportunity. And Northern social media influencers—many of whom have tasted harassment, intimidation and abuse of power—must recognise that today’s silence becomes tomorrow’s vulnerability.

This is not about Abba Kyari alone. It is about confronting a monster of selective justice, elite cowardice and institutional neglect that has consumed too many lives quietly. The courts must be allowed to decide Kyari’s fate. But the North must decide its own character.

History will not ask whether Abba Kyari was guilty or innocent. The courts will answer that. History will ask why a region that benefitted from a man’s courage could not summon the courage to demand fairness when he fell.

Silence is a choice. And the North has made it for too long. The time to speak—calmly, lawfully, courageously—is now.

Mohammed Bello Doka can be reached via bellodoka82@gmail.com Abuja Network News