Rekpene Bassey
For weeks, Amina, the wife of Rabe Abubakar, existed between hope and mourning. The beloved husband of her youth, a retired Major General of the Nigerian Army and a former Director of Defence Information, had died miserably in the hands of the same bandits who abducted both of them
In a country where kidnappings often end in tragedy and where captives can disappear into vast stretches of ungoverned territory, her fate had become another painful question mark. But on Sunday, the Nigerian military found the rescue wand and announced an answer.
Troops of Operation FASAN YAMMA, supported by the Nigerian Air Force, rescued Amina Abubakar during sustained offensive operations against bandits operating around Tunga Village in Katsina State.
According to military authorities, the kidnappers shot her before abandoning her and fleeing under mounting military pressure. She was evacuated to a military hospital and is reportedly responding to treatment.
That operation that resulted in her rescue was, by every measure, a victory. It was also a reminder of a deeper national tragedy.
The rescue comes at a moment when the Nigerian armed forces are attempting to regain strategic momentum against criminal gangs, terrorists and insurgent groups that have transformed large swaths of the country’s northwest and northeast into theatres of persistent violence.
The story of Amina Abubakar is not simply about one woman rescued from captivity. It is about how insecurity has become so pervasive that even families deeply connected to the nation’s security establishment are no longer insulated from its reach.
The symbolism is difficult to ignore. Major General Rabe Abubakar spent much of his professional life communicating military operations and explaining national security efforts to the public. Even so, his family and himself ultimately became victims of the very insecurity that generations of Nigerian soldiers have fought to contain.
That reality illustrates a central truth about modern Nigeria: violence has become remarkably democratic in its cruelty. Farmers, schoolchildren, traditional rulers, clerics, traders, civil servants, military officers and ordinary villagers have all found themselves as possible targets.
The distinctions that once separated the protected from the vulnerable have increasingly collapsed. Across much of Nigeria, kidnapping has evolved beyond criminality into a parallel economy.
What began as opportunistic banditry has matured into a sophisticated contraption of violence involving informants, logistics suppliers, arms traffickers, negotiators and financiers. Entire criminal enterprises now depend on ransom payments, cattle rustling, illegal mining and extortion.
In some areas, the state competes not merely against armed men but against alternative systems of authority. In many rural communities, criminal actors increasingly impose their own rules, taxes and punishments. Apparently where the state recedes, predatory actors advance.
Entire communities have adjusted their lives around the possibility of abduction.
Parents weigh the risks of sending children to school. Farmers calculate whether tending distant fields is worth the danger. Travellers carefully choose routes and travel times. Villages organise vigilante groups where state protection appears insufficient.
The result is not merely a security crisis but a gradual erosion of public confidence in the state’s most fundamental obligation: protecting lives.
Against this backdrop, the rescue of Amina Abubakar carries significance beyond the immediate operation.
Military officials describe the success as the outcome of sustained pressure rather than a single dramatic raid. That distinction matters. Security practitioners have long argued that criminal groups thrive when allowed freedom of movement, freedom of communication and freedom of concentration. Continuous pressure disrupts all three.
The military’s message is therefore clear: persistence works. But persistence alone is not a strategy.
The uncomfortable reality is that Nigeria has become exceptionally proficient at responding to insecurity while remaining less successful at preventing it.
Too often, the state arrives after villages have been attacked, after students have been abducted, after farmers have been displaced, after lives have been lost.
The strategic challenge facing Nigeria is therefore not merely operational; it is philosophical. Modern security doctrine increasingly emphasises prevention over reaction.
The old military adage that “the best battle is the one never fought” reflects a deeper truth. The ultimate objective of security is not the successful rescue operation. It is creating conditions where rescue operations become unnecessary.
The Latin maxim principiis obsta, resist the beginnings, offers a useful framework. Threats are easier to neutralise in infancy than after they mature.
This requires a shift from reactive security to predictive security. Nigeria must invest heavily in intelligence fusion centres capable of integrating military intelligence, police intelligence, community reporting, telecommunications analysis and aerial surveillance into a single operational picture.
Technology now allows governments to identify patterns of movement, detect emerging threats and disrupt criminal networks before attacks occur.
Bandits rarely materialise from nowhere. They recruit, communicate, procure weapons, move supplies and conduct reconnaissance. Every one of these activities creates indicators.
The challenge is recognising them early enough. Likewise, communities must become active partners in security rather than passive victims of insecurity. No security architecture can succeed without public trust.
Citizens often possess critical information regarding suspicious movements, criminal collaborators and impending attacks. However, intelligence-sharing flourishes only when communities believe authorities can protect them and act decisively upon information received. Trust, therefore, is not merely a social virtue. It is a strategic asset.
The state must also confront the socioeconomic conditions that sustain recruitment into criminal networks.
Security analysts frequently describe banditry as a law-enforcement problem. It is. But it is also a governance problem, a development problem and, increasingly, a demographic problem.
Millions of young people face unemployment, weak educational opportunities and limited economic mobility. Criminal groups exploit these conditions with ruthless efficiency.
Military force can destroy camps. It cannot eliminate despair. That task belongs to governance.
Nigeria’s experience over the past decade demonstrates that tactical victories, while important, do not automatically translate into strategic success. Terrorist commanders have been neutralised. Camps have been destroyed. Hostages have been rescued. Yet violence repeatedly regenerates itself in new forms and new locations.
The challenge has never been solely defeating armed groups. It has been preventing their return.
This is where the principle of salus populi suprema lex esto, the welfare and safety of the people shall be the supreme law, becomes relevant. Security policy must ultimately be judged not by the number of operations conducted but by the degree of safety experienced by ordinary citizens.
For now, however, one family has been spared another jeopardy of double devastating loss. Somewhere in a military hospital, Amina, another innocent Nigerian woman, who recently faced the possibility of dying in captivity is beginning a difficult journey back to normal life. The physical wounds may heal. The psychological scars may linger longer. Amina’s rescue from the forest of death deserves celebration.
But it should also provoke reflection. The true measure of success will not be the number of hostages rescued after abduction. It will be the day Nigerians no longer have to wonder whether they, their spouses, their children or their neighbours might be the next to vanish into the forest forest of death.
Until then, every rescue will remain both a triumph and an indictment: proof that the state can still save its citizens, and a reminder that too many citizens still need saving.
For a nation of more than 230 million people, security cannot remain an endless cycle of attack, response and recovery. It must evolve into a system of anticipation, deterrence and prevention.
For in matters of national security, the highest achievement is not rescuing victims after the fact. It is ensuring there are no victims to rescue at all.
Bassey is the President of the African Council on Narcotics and a Security Specialist.
