TERWASE “GANA” AKWAZA KILLING: A PEACE OF THE GRAVEYARD LIKE MOHAMMED YUSUF’S?
Samuel Enyi Otsapa
Samuelotsapa@gmail.com
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On September 9th 2020, militia leader Terwase Akwaza popularly known as Gana was murdered while on his way to Makurdi to sign an Amnesty offered by the Benue State government. Recall that in 2015, Gana, who is allegedly responsible for many abductions, kidnappings and killings in Benue State (particularly around the Sankera axis of Katsina-Ala, Ukum and Logo local government areas) and neighboring communities in Taraba State, was among the 500 people that had signed an Amnesty with the Benue State Government to lay down their weapons. However, Gana was to renege on that Amnesty agreement and went back to his atrocities. Among many atrocities, it was reported that Gana was responsible for the 2016 killing of Denen Igbana, who was the Senior Special Assistant on Security to Governor Samuel Ortom. Grapevine sources told that Gana killed Mr. Igbana because the SSA, a retired policeman, was always after him and his boys. To buttress his desire to arrest Gana, Governor Samuel Ortom, in July this year, reiterated that the N50 million bounty the state government promised, in 2017, to give to anyone with information that would lead to the arrest of Gana is still in play.
On the day of his killing, Gana had publicly expressed his willingness to sign another Amnesty with the Benue State Government. The event, which took place at the Katsina-Ala stadium, was witnessed by political, religious and traditional leaders of the area – and happened because the leaders, including the Senator representing that senatorial constituency, Senator Gabriel Suswam, who is also the immediate past governor of the state, appealled to Governor Samuel Ortom to grant a second Amnesty to Gana and his boys. After that ceremony at the Katsina-Ala stadium, Gana, some of his boys and some of the stakeholders instrumental to the Amnesty began their journey from Katsina-Ala to Makurdi, the Benue State capital, where the formal Amnesty signing ceremony with the state government was to take place. But as their convoy of cars approached the Gboko area of the state, men of the Nigerian Army, having received intelligence report of their movement, barricaded the road and grabbed Gana, who was travelling in the same Toyota Hilux vehicle with the Chairman of Katsina-Ala, his local government of origin. After this, the next thing Benue people saw were pictures and videos of a dead Gana, with a riffle by his side, circulating the social media. The Army commander of “ Operation Ayem Akpatuma III” explained that there was exchange of gunfire between the Army and Gana’s boys and Gana was killed in the process. While investigation over how Gana died is still on, the believe among eyewitnesses and the generality of Benue people is that men of the Nigerian Army murdered an armless Gana in cold blood.
For some of us, Gana’s death is reminiscent of the 2009 killing of Mohammed Yusuf, the founder and spiritual leader of the Boko Haram terrorist sect headquartered in Borno State, northeast Nigeria. At the time, police authorities claimed that Mohammed Yusuf was killed when he made an attempt to escape from their custody, after the Army handed him over to them. However, investigation was to later reveal that this was not true – and in 2011, four police officers directly responsible for Mohammed Yusuf’s cold blooded murder were placed on trial. But as is typical with many high profile court cases in Nigeria, the Nigerian public is yet to learn of the outcome of the trial of these ‘overzealous’ policemen whose actions is one of the many factors directly responsible for the growth of the Boko Haram brand of terrorism in Nigeria. But unlike Yusuf’s case, Nigerians never know the truth of what transpired on the day an armless and surrendered Gana was killed.
Recall that after the July 2009 military clampdown on members of the Boko Haram sect, legislators from Borno State held a press conference in Abuja to condemn the military strategy in the state and called for an amicable solution to the conflict with Boko Haram members. Since the killing of Muhammed Yusuf and the Nigerian Army’s clampdown on his followers that led to the arrest of many members of the sect just as some 300 of them fled Maiduguri into other states in the north, Nigerians are witnesses to the increased and sophisticated attacks, particularly since 2010 after the collapse of Col. Gaddafi’s Libya, by Boko Haram members whose grievance, among many unclear ones, is the extrajudicial killing of Muhammed Yusuf by the police and the killing of many sect members by the Nigerian Army. On 31st July 2009, Aljazeera’s Yvonne Ndege, quoting an Associated Press reporter, reported that in one of the many clapdowns by the Nigerian Army, some 100 members of Boko Haram were killed inside and outside a mosque in Maiduguri, Borno State.
Like Borno’s Mohammed Yusuf before him, Benue’s Gana committed many atrocities in Benue and Taraba states but killing him extrajudicial in the manner the military is accused to have done must be condemned by well-meaning Nigerians, particularly those who know how the story of how Boko Haram became a full blown terrorist group; a group that has reportedly killed an estimated 30,000 people in Nigeria and displaced millions internally (IDPs) and externally (refugees). The cold blooded killing of Gana demonstrates that the federal government and the country’s security community did not learn from the mistake they made with Mohammed Yusuf. The point must also be made that the action of the Nigerian Army breaches and falls short of Article 3 common to the four Geneva Conventions that requires “the humane treatment of all persons in enemy hands, without any adverse distinction. It specifically prohibits murder, mutilation, torture, cruel, humilating and degrading treatment, the taking of hostages and unfair trial.” It is from this knowledge that everyone of good conscience and all those who respect the rule of law as one of the cornerstones of democracy, must condemn Gana’s cold blooded killing.
At this juncture, the point must be made that perhaps Gana was killed by the Nigerian Army because from recent history, Amnesty to leaders of bandit and criminal groups have rarely succeeded in Nigeria – because oftentimes, the bandit and crime leaders go back to committing the same crimes they had signed an agreement with state governments to stop. A prominent example of this narrative is the slained bandit leader, Buhari Tsoho popularly known as Buharin Daji. Before Buharin Daji was killed in March 2018, he and his armed members terrorised Zamfara State through activities such as cattle rustling, armed banditry, rape, land grabbing, kidnapping, arson and brutal killings. Buharin Daji (which in the Hausa language translates to “president-Buhari-of-the-bush”) lived like a president and had commanders in many of the local government headquarters of the state. Recounting their experience in his hand, the Zamfara State Chairman of the Council of Chiefs; Alhaji Attahiru Muhammad Ahmad accused Buharin Daji and his men of killing 1000 people, raping 5000 women and kidnapping 2000 people. Like Gana, Buharin Daji once signed an Amnesty with the Zamfara State Government to cease hostilities but after some time he went back to his old ways before he was killed. Although Buharin Daji was killed in 2018 by his repentant second-in-command (a man whose father in-law Buharin Daji had attacked), armed banditry, cattle rustling, land grabbing, kidnapping and and arson are still continuing in Zamfara State. This same story of criminals and bandits signing Amnesty with their state governments but going back to a life of crimes is also true of bandits and criminals who operate in Katsina State. While reacting to the issue of armed bandits and criminals signing Amnesty with state governments but going back to their old ways, popular telejournalist Babajide Kolade Otitoju during the September 18th 2020 edition of TVC’s Journalist Hangout, among other things, said that “It has not always worked…that is why it is a waste of time…it can only give you a reprieve…we must not show mercy to these guys at all.” This may be thinking of the Army echelon and the reason why the Army killed Gana.
On 15th September 2020, Nigeria’s nobel laurette and academic luminary, Professor Wole Soyinka, in “Between ‘Dividers-in-Chief’ and Dividers-in-Law was brutally honest about topical national issues in Nigeria including the killing of Terwase “Gana” Akwaza. On the killing of Gana, Wole Soyinka wrote: “still on security: any tear that is shed for the arch-bandit and multiple murderer Akwaza, known as Gana, is an obscenity. However, tears of trepidation are falling fast and furious over the conduct of an Army that eliminates a captive in cold blood, side-tracking the rationality of professional investigations and legitimate pursuit of felons and other enemies of society. The issue here is not one of the appropriateness of the policy of Amnesty – that constitutes a larger debate in its place. The issue here – and a critical one – is that a Wanted Man, on his way to surrender, has been killed in cold blood. I read yesterday that the Army has followed this up with a demand for the bounty earlier placed by the Benue State governor on the head of the Wanted Man. However, all reports so far indicate that he was on his way to surrender? And so, is this bounty demand a joke? An end then to such gallows humour! And certainly not now, not while the nation is freshly reeling from the latest horror of the targetting of unarmed Road Safety officials, gunned down in cold blood in their commuter bus, and the mass kidnapping of survivors. Shall we presume that the surviving casulties of routine duty rosters are also nation-dividers if they scream out for protection and deplore a breakdown in the entire security architecture of the nation?”
While the death of Terwase “Gana” Akwaza is goodnews to a section of people in Benue and Taraba states; particularly individuals and communities who have lost loved ones and property to the activities of his gang, his killing is a pyrrhic victory for the Army, Benue State, the northcentral region and Nigeria in general. Indeed Gana’s killing, like Muhammad Yusuf’s, would no doubt reduce the incidences of abductions, kidnappings, killings and arson in Benue State and neighboring Taraba communities but whatever peace is now enjoyed may be a peace of the graveyard – because as with Boko Haram, the remaining members of Gana’s militia group are likely to retaliate his cold blooded killing and the arrest of their members by launching attacks targetting leaders of the Sankera area they think, rightly or wrongly, set up Gana for death. After Mohammed Yusuf’s killing, his members regrouped and resumed attacks by attacking policemen and police stations (obviously to retaliate Yusuf’s killing by policemen) and government offices in Borno State. The immediate and direct security implication of Gana’s killing is that other militia leaders in the state and those of other states in the country would no longer trust any olive branch extended to them by any state or the federal government and this has grave consequences for security in Nigeria.
Nigeria is a country of laws and not a banana republic, Terwase Akwaza Agbadu aka Gana should have been allowed to go through the judicial process of investigation, trial and prosecution. Sadly, this action by the Nigerian Army warmed Gana into the hearts of many such that a section of Benue youths are referring to him as a “hero” and a “martyr” conveniently forgetting that the man was responsible for the untimely death of many people. This is an unfortunate development because with emotions like this, insecurity in Benue State, the northcentral and Nigeria in general would only heighten, just as it did with Mohammed Yusuf. This behavior by the Nigerian Army does not come as a complete surprise to some of us because President Muhammadu Buhari, who is the Commander-in-Chief of the country’s Armed Forces, had once admitted that as President he is more concerned with national security over the rule of law – and we know that he who pays the piper dictates the tune (and the dance steps that accompanies it).
