As colleagues, friends and associates of the late Major-General Rabe Abubakar (rtd) who died in bandits’ custody addressed journalists in Kaduna on Thursday, another retired general and former Director-General of the National Youth Service Corps (NYSC), Brig.-Gen. Maharazu Ismail Tsiga, recalled his harrowing experience at the hands of bandits, making startling allegations about the shadowy networks he believes are sustaining Nigeria’s worsening insecurity, ABDULGAFAR ALABELEWE reports.

The first thing Brigadier-General Maharazu Tsiga (rtd) lost was not his freedom. It was an illusion. Before armed men stormed his hometown in Katsina State and dragged him into the unforgiving forests where bandits hold sway, the former Director-General of the National Youth Service Corps (NYSC), like many Nigerians, understood insecurity largely from the outside.

But weeks in captivity transformed the retired soldier from a distant observer into an unwilling witness. What he returned with was not merely a survivor’s story. It was a troubling portrait of a criminal enterprise that, in his telling, is sustained not only by gunmen in the forests but by invisible hands beyond them.

For many Nigerians, Tsiga’s account was more than the recollection of a kidnapping victim. It was the testimony of a retired military officer who had spent decades in uniform defending the country, only to find himself at the mercy of armed criminals operating from forests that have become symbols of fear across large swathes of Northern Nigeria.

His experience, he suggested, fundamentally changed his understanding of the country’s security crisis. Beyond the bandits wielding rifles in the forests, he said, are a much larger network of informants, suppliers and collaborators whose activities continue to fuel violence and frustrate efforts to restore peace.

That was why when asked whether negotiation should remain part of Nigeria’s counter-banditry strategy, Tsiga did not hesitate to argue that dialogue alone cannot resolve a conflict sustained by powerful interests outside the forests.

Security, he insisted, is a collective responsibility. But, for him, that responsibility extends beyond the military and security agencies. It includes communities, intelligence networks and institutions that must identify and dismantle those providing information, logistics and material support to criminal groups.

Drawing from his weeks in captivity, Tsiga said one lesson became abundantly clear to him: bandits are not invincible. Contrary to the widespread perception that they are fearless, he said the criminals are ordinary human beings who fear death and sustained military confrontation.

According to him, there were moments in captivity when anxiety spread among the kidnappers whenever they suspected that security forces might launch an operation against them. That experience, he argued, convinced him that relentless pressure rather than endless negotiations offers a better chance of weakening armed groups.

“We must follow them aggressively,” he said, insisting that fear should change sides. Rather than allowing communities to remain perpetually terrified of bandits, he argued that criminals themselves should be made to fear the consequences of their actions through consistent and decisive security operations.

Yet, for all his confidence that the gunmen can be defeated, Tsiga believes the country’s greatest challenge lies elsewhere. In his estimation, the real strength of the bandits is not merely the weapons they carry but the invisible support system sustaining them.

He maintained that informants embedded within communities continue to provide intelligence that helps criminal groups evade security operations, identify wealthy targets and plan attacks with disturbing precision.

But it was one incident during captivity that left the deepest impression on him. According to the retired general, sometime around 2 am, he overheard a conversation between a suspected supplier and one of the bandit leaders.

The caller, he recalled, asked the bandit commander whether he was prepared to purchase 10 cartons of ammunition. The response, Tsiga said, appeared to suggest that the transaction would proceed after the bandit concluded dealings with “one old man”—a reference he later realised was to himself.

In what he described as a light-hearted attempt to engage his captor, Tsiga jokingly asked to be included in the business arrangement. The answer he received would become one of the most disturbing moments of his captivity.

According to him, the bandit leader dismissed the idea, telling him that he was merely a retired general who no longer occupied public office. “We are talking to people who are in office now,” the kidnapper allegedly told him.

That response, Tsiga said, has continued to trouble him long after regaining his freedom. To him, it suggested that the support network sustaining armed groups may extend far beyond local collaborators hiding in remote communities.

He therefore alleged that some individuals occupying public offices may be supplying arms and ammunition or otherwise facilitating the operations of criminal groups, insisting that such collaborators have little interest in ending the conflict because they profit from it.

“They are after their pockets,” he remarked, arguing that those benefiting financially from insecurity would naturally resist any genuine effort capable of ending banditry.

His allegation also led him to pose another question that has echoed repeatedly throughout Nigeria’s security discourse: where exactly do the thousands of rounds of ammunition used by criminal groups originate?

For Tsiga, the answer cannot simply be found inside the forests. The flow of weapons and ammunition, he suggested, points to wider networks whose activities deserve far greater scrutiny than they currently receive.

His position mirrors concerns frequently expressed by security analysts that defeating banditry requires dismantling the financial, logistical and intelligence structures supporting criminal groups as much as confronting armed men in the field.

Beyond his allegations, Tsiga also challenged communities to rethink their response whenever bandits attack. He lamented that a handful of armed men often succeed in dispersing entire villages without meaningful resistance.

According to him, if communities, working alongside legitimate security forces, overcome the fear that criminals deliberately cultivate, the psychological advantage currently enjoyed by bandits would begin to diminish.

His comments, however, also reflect the difficult realities confronting many rural communities that often face heavily armed attackers with little protection, inadequate weapons and delayed security response whenever attacks occur.

Still, his central argument remained consistent throughout the interaction: Nigeria’s fight against banditry cannot be won by soldiers alone. Without citizens providing timely intelligence and supporting security operations, military successes may prove difficult to sustain.

Earlier at the briefing, the spokesman of the group, Brigadier-General Ismaila Abdullahi (rtd), described the death of Major-General Rabe Abubakar as a painful reminder of the deepening insecurity confronting Nigeria and called for urgent reforms across the country’s security architecture.

He urged governments at all levels to strengthen intelligence gathering, improve border security, enhance regional cooperation against the flow of illegal arms and evolve a coordinated security framework among the 19 northern states to confront terrorism, kidnapping and banditry more effectively.

Abdullahi also appealed for greater support for families of serving and retired security personnel affected by insecurity, while urging authorities to intensify efforts to rescue Nigerians still languishing in captivity across the country.

Taken together, the speeches delivered at the Kaduna gathering painted a sobering picture of a nation confronting not merely armed bandits in isolated forests but an intricate web of criminality allegedly sustained by informants, suppliers, financiers and collaborators whose activities continue to prolong bloodshed.

Whether every allegation raised by Tsiga is eventually substantiated remains the responsibility of investigators and security agencies. Yet, coming from a retired general who survived the trauma of captivity himself, his account adds another troubling dimension to the national conversation on insecurity and reinforces growing calls for government to look beyond the forests in its search for lasting solutions. (The Nation)