Following the recent disappearance of Major-General Idris Alkali, the Nigerian Army and his family have been subjected to great pains and the task to find him, either dead or alive.

According to Daily Trust, while the task force of the Nigerian Army searches the deep pond in Jos, Plateau State, elsewhere in Yobe State, the mother of Major-General Mohammed Idris Alkali (rtd), Hajiya Halima Alkali Umaru, is in despair. They are in pains over the disapperance of their loved one.

However, the military is not leaving anything to chance. It is 10 days since the Nigerian Army began pumping water out of a mining pond in an area it described as Paddock, in Lafendeg of Du district in Plateau’s Jos South Local Government Area in search of the general, among other places.

The pond is suspected to be the final resting place of the black Toyota Corola car retired Major-General Alkali was driving when he went missing on September 3.

General Alkali, who hailed from Yobe but lived in Abuja, had left home for his farm in Bauchi, exactly 27 days after his retirement. He was travelling without his driver and orderly in a Toyota Corola car with registration number MUN 670 AA when he suddenly lost contact with family and his whereabouts has since remained a mystery.

So far, what the Nigerian Army has put out in the public domain is that it had contacted the MTN and Glo network operators which furnished them with the phone records of the retired senior military officer, and that they had deployed appropriate technical intelligence facilities which tracked his phone to somewhere in Du district.

The fear of Alkali’s fate is further amplified by the fact that his disappearance occurred a few hours after the Police confirmed that gunmen had attacked and killed 11 persons and injured 12 in Lopandet Dwei community of Du. With past cases of locals transferring such frustrations by pouncing on innocent and unsuspecting road users, there is a likelihood that the general may have met a similar fate.

However, Brigadier-General Ibrahim Mohammed, who is in charge of the search and rescue operation, told journalists that “General Alkali is declared missing. The second is that we are also looking for his vehicle, which is a black Corolla vehicle and then we want to find out if he is alive or not.”

The Army had to contend with hundreds of local women dressed in black and some half naked who staged a protest, stressing that their communities had strong ancestral ties to the pond.

Mary Yakubu, who spoke on behalf of the women, had said it was a taboo to tamper with the water from the pond because their husbands and children would die mysteriously.

But Brigadier-General Mohammed said no amount of protest by the women or any superstitious belief about the pond would stop their operation.

The publicity secretary of the Berom Youth Moulders Association, Jatau Davou said,

“There have been insinuations in other quarters, for instance, from one Idris Ahmed in the UK, that the military has some issues with General Alkali.

But the military, in a statement by the director of the Department of Army Public Relations, Brigadier-General Texas Chukwu, expressed dismay about the insinuation of Ahmed, that the Nigerian Army was unconcerned about the disapperance of Major-General Alkali.

•Excerpted from a Daily Trust report

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