News

Chekwas Okorie: 70 feathers on the cap of a man of vision and character

Published

3 years ago

April 10, 2023

By Sunny Igboanugo

He struck gold more than four decades ago, when God blessed him with wealth, a lot of it. He was still a young lad on the second floor of life’s existence. At that stage, he would have hit the streets like many of his age, painting nightclubs and social events red with money or be junketing around the globe, especially when Nigeria was practically at the beck and call of the world, with countries on bended knees, begging them to come and spend their money.

But not for this Prince of Alayi, in Bende Local Government of Abia State. He had other noble and far more enduring fancies. This was captured in a burning desire, the same David, must have been imbued with while kitting up to do battle with Goliath.

At that stage also, it was wont for the older generation, to quickly dismiss and refer his kind as a child on whose head the patch of amniotic fluid was yet to dry. But if they did, they could have found out so quickly soon after that this was not just an ordinary child. For in no time, he became a member of the prestigious Elders Council of Ohanaeze Ndigbo, the pan-Igbo socio-cultural organisation.

This particular one, was equipped with the tools needed not only to navigate through the maze of life’s vagaries and vicissitude, but the soap and water, with which to wash his hands clean enough to sit and dine with them at the elder’s table.

The trajectory of life for Chekwas Okorie, was one that saw him navigating through the shark-infested waters and contending the tempestuous wind, yet with eyes on the compass as the ship he captained headed to harbour.

Perhaps, very few people know or still remember that the political tide sweeping across the country today, has Okorie’s imprimatur somewhere in it. It was through him that Peter Obi, today’s political phenomenon cut his teeth on the turf, when he got the opportunity to run for governorship in Anambra State on the platform of the All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA), which Okoria founded in 2002.

Like every visionary with eyes on the big picture, he had started small by founding a group named Nzuko Abia N’Imo, where the then indigenous people of Abia and Imo met to discuss issues of commonality amongst them and when Ebonyi was carved out from Abia and Enugu, the meeting expanded to Nzuko Abia, Imo N’Ebonyi.

It was at the success of that effort that he decided to expand the vision to include the entire Igboland, hence the formation of Igboezue Cultural Organisation, a powerful body that acted as a major think-tank for the younger elements of the Igbo people, as well as serving as the supply chain and footsoldier for Ohanaeze Ndigbo, the apex decision-making body of Ndigbo.

As the leader of Igboezue, there was never any dull moment at the Zik Avenue office of Chel Waters Nigeria Limited, the head office of his company, where the young, debonair, forthright and outspoken Chief Executive Officer (CEO), combined his thriving business with daily engagements with various groups on how to advance the lot of the Igboman.

It was from that engagement that the idea of forming a national political party from the South East sprout out. The idea, Okorie, had severally explained, was to offer a platform for Ndigbo to meet their counterparts across the nation at the negotiation table to enable them get a fair share of the popular national cake.

That thinking and the subsequent effort put into its actualisation, eventually bore fruit, when APGA, was birthed on Saturday, June 22, 2002, ahead of the general elections the following year. This was after an initial failure to register the Peoples Democratic Congress (PDC).

It was Okorie’s vision that led him to bringing the late Ikemba Nnewi, Emeka Odumegwu Ojukwu, a man he had associated as a major ally and right hand partner. The idea was with Ojukwu’s name and influence, the party would garner the needed fillip to attract Ndigbo and thus galvanise it through the South East into the national arena.

Indeed, contrary to wide-held view that Ojukwu founded APGA, the party was actually Okorie’s baby. In fact, the formation of the party, retold the story of Noah and the Ark in a certain way, in that he was actually abandoned by many people, who never thought it would amount to anything at the time the journey was on.

That was until he returned with certificate, which was handed over to him on that day by Abel Guobadia, National Chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC). But despite the carnival-like activities and atmosphere that heralded its birth, many Igbo politicians still avoided APGA in preference to the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and the opposition All Peoples Party (APP), they believed had the levers of power.

It was Okorie’s persistence and power of persuasion that to led to the dragging of Ojukwu, who was actually not making any major headway in his APP into the new platform. With the handing of the APGA presidential ticket to Ojukwu on a platter, Okorie eventually recorded achieved his goal. For in no time, the party began to gain traction across the country, which led to the big wins in 2003. That was how Obi came into the fray, though he was declared the winner of Anambra governorship, three years after.

In fact the process was in itself a hard work on Okorie’s part. For despite the fanfare which was evident when Ojukwu hosted Okorie and his team from Abuja at his number 4 Isi-Uzor street, Independence Layout, Enugu home, when they returned with the party’s registration certificate, seemed to have gone no further thereafter.

No doubt the Ikemba was visibly excited, which he displayed with a huge bear-hug he gave Okorie, which he followed up by ordering a carton of Moet Chandan, to be handed to the new party boss as a symbol of his appreciation, while hosting the team on that day. Yet, he still stuck with the APP, perhaps out of apparent political reality, until he was persuaded otherwise.

Elsewhere, the late former Vice President of Nigeria, Alex Ekwueme, who was equally enthusiastic, when he received Okorie’s team to bless the certificate, appeared too deep into the leadership of the PDP. Ekwueme, who was the arrowhead in its formation of the then ruling party, had twice failed to claim its ticket as the presidential candidate. Yet he seemed not moved with his misfortunes to leave the party.

Even the Eze Ozobu, then President General of Ohanaeze Ndigbo, made his own efforts in attempt to ginger Igbo patronage of the party. Earlier, when the party’s certificate had landed in his house, the former Chief Justice of Enugu State, was so excited that he proclaimed on touching the document that he was ready to die at that moment, because he now had something positive to report to departed Igbo heroes like the late Owelle of Onitsha, Nnamdi Azikiwe, Michael Iyeonukara Okpara and others.

There and then, he had directed Ndigbo to troop en-masse to APGA as their party of choice. Indeed, so celebrated was the party among Ohanaeze and the Igbo leadership that Okorie was conferred with the Ogbatuluenyi Ndigbo, at the meeting of the body in Asaba that year where, again, emphasis was made on Ndigbo adopting it as their platform.

But then, the dream and vision were shared by few. But Okorie dreamt on. Just like the story of Joseph, the trajectory points to an unravelling. Just like the story of Joseph sons of Israel was full of ups and downs intrigues and mischief APGA has also witnessed its own fair share of crisis, part of which it is still suffering today.

But it was out of that set of events, strung together by God himself that Moses emerged to lead the people out of Egypt. Today, does the picture not seem similar. Does the story of Nigeria not appears like resemble that of Israel in the land of Egypt?

Is the political struggle in Nigeria today not akin to the confrontation between Moses and Israel on the one hand and Pharaoh and Egyptians on the other? Are the intrigues not there – the hard-heartedness of Pharaoh the sufferings of the oppressed and the hopelessness? Are they not quite apparent?

If indeed, God is planning to manifest Himself once again as He did to the freedom of the Israelites in the land of Egypt, if it is His plan to set Nigerian free from their oppressors, where would Chekwas Okorie be found in the whole story? Could he be denied the position of a Joseph who dreamt dreams and through whose dream God’s plan for his people was made manifest?

Like Joseph, he dreamt dreams, like Joseph, he was betrayed by his brothers and thrown into the prison by the evil deeds of Potiphar. But in all those trials and burdens, God still showed His hands and the reasons for them made clear.

Perhaps, it is still God’s plan divide the Red Sea of Nigeria to allow his people pass through the dry land. He might yet clog the chariots of Pharaoh and drown their charging soldiers in the sea that would return. Nigerians, to the last man, might look back to see as their traducers who refuse that they would never be free struggle with the red sea as it swallows them. They may sing songs of praises as Israelites sang as they to the Promised Land. If and when all that happens, historians would have to connect the dots and fix Chief Chekwas Okorie in his own place.

On this Monday, April 10, 2023, as friends and well-wishers, both at home and in the Diaspora, gather at the BMO Event Centre, Riverplate Park, 174 Ahmadu Bello Way, Wuse 2, Abuja to pay homage to the Ojeozi Ndigbo, who has just turned 70, only those who know the true story would put it in proper perspective.

Indeed, others would have other reasons to be at that party. Having climbed the biblical three scores and ten, who knows what else God is planning. For Ojeozi is a good man. Still in stable health, mind and spirit, there might just be something else to end his efforts with a crown of glory. But that decision lies with the Almighty, whose ways confounds creation. Happy Birthday, Ojeozi Igbonine!

Igboanugo, a journalist, wrote from Lagos

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Columns

The Three-Month Sprint (1): Philosophical Architecture of an Intellectual Trilogy of State Decay

Published

47 minutes ago

June 14, 2026

Whirlwindnews

Last week on The Sunday Stew, we unveiled the Decoupling Sovereignty Index (DSI), a quantitative metric I developed as an extension of the Trinity of State Decay. It is meant to be a mathematical instrument for measuring the degree of separation between a state’s juridical sovereignty and its lived reality. I had planned to follow up today with the first instalment of a three-part series on the methodology and indicators of the DSI.

Then, from the middle of last week, there was a development that sent me into a sustained period of reflection.

On Wednesday, Zenodo — the open-access repository developed by CERN, the European Organisation for Nuclear Research, and the European Commission — published my 16,315-word theoretical treatise, ‘The Trinity of State Decay (Part 1): Sovereign Decoupling and Rival Sovereignty — A Theoretical Statement.’ On Thursday, Harvard Dataverse, owned and operated by Harvard University, published the same work. On Friday morning, an email arrived from the Social Science Open Access Repository (SSOAR), operated by GESIS — the Leibniz Institute for the Social Sciences in Germany — confirming that they too had accepted, published, and archived the paper.

Late Prof. Edward Said

I sat with that for a while. It is exactly three months since The Sunday Stew made its debut. In those three short months, we have produced an original analytical framework (The Insecurity Triad), a comprehensive theoretical formulation (the Trinity of State Decay), and a quantitative index (DSI). Within the same period, the framework entered global scholarly circulation, and now the theoretical paper has been published by three of the world’s most respected scholarly repositories within seventy-two hours of each other. I found myself thinking about the symmetry of it: three months. A trilogy of original contributions. A triple publication in a single week.
Numbers sometimes carry meaning far beyond arithmetic. This one felt like it was trying to tell me something.

I. The Seed Planted in a Library

When The Sunday Stew was conceived, I did not set out to become a framework architect, a theorist, or an index creator. But looking back, I think the seed was planted much earlier — by accident, in the history section of the University of Calabar library.

I was preparing a term paper on Nigerian history. Our lecturer was the late Dr. Erim O. Erim — a man you had to do your absolute best to satisfy. I was moving along the shelves when I stopped. What arrested me was a name on a spine: Sigmund Freud. His biography. I could not understand what such a book was doing in the history section. I took it anyway, borrowed it, and in one week read it cover to cover.

Of everything I read about Freud’s life, one idea lodged itself in my subconscious and has never left: Freud’s concept of immortality. He defined it simply but profoundly: immortality is being known by many anonymous people. Not a mystical phenomenon, but a psychological and systemic one. It is the act of leaving behind an intellectual footprint so distinct that your ideas are absorbed by millions of people who may never meet you, but who must use your language to understand their own reality.

Freud did not merely write a theory. He changed the global vocabulary. Because of Freud, anonymous people who have never read a page of psychoanalysis use the words ego, subconscious, projection, and defence mechanism every single day. They are operating within his architecture without ever knowing it. That, he argued, was immortality.

I was a young man in a university library who had come looking for Nigerian history and stumbled into a philosophy of intellectual legacy. I did not know, at the time, that I had been given a compass.

•Late Antonio Gramsci

II. The Book C.Don Handed Me

Several years later, when I lived in Lagos, I had someone who was (and still is) a friend, a big brother, and a mentor. The home of C.Don Adinuba — then at Ilupeju — was like my second home. I could walk in at any time. C.Don was the perfect host, and his wife a hostess of uncommon warmth. There was never a dull moment in that house. He knew I loved books, and he is himself one of the most intellectually deep people I have ever encountered.

On one of those days, he pulled a book from his shelf, handed it to me, and said: “Go and read this.” I looked at it. The author was unfamiliar. I asked: “Who is Edward Said?” He replied: “Just go and read the book.”

Representations of the Intellectual — which grew out of Said’s 1993 Reith Lectures for the BBC — turned out to be, apart from the Bible, one of the most impactful books I have ever read. In its pages I first encountered Antonio Gramsci, whose Prison Notebooks has made an enduring impression on my intellectual formation and theoretical development. Said’s argument — that the intellectual’s vocation is to speak truth to power, to represent the unrepresented, and to refuse the comfort of specialisation in favour of the discomfort of genuine engagement — became a way of understanding what journalism, practised seriously, is actually for.

And from Antonio Gramsci, particularly his broad conception of the intellectual, I came to understand that intellectuals are not confined to universities, research institutes, or academic titles. Gramsci argued that intellectual activity exists wherever people help shape ideas, interpret reality, organise knowledge, and influence how society understands itself. Through that lens, I realised that journalism is not merely a profession of reporting events; it is an inherently intellectual vocation.

As a journalist, I do more than gather facts and relay information. I help frame public conversations, interrogate power, highlight social challenges, preserve collective memory, and contribute to the global marketplace of ideas. This understanding deepened my sense of responsibility to society. It reinforced the belief that journalism carries a duty not only to inform but also to enlighten, challenge assumptions, encourage critical thinking, and provide citizens with the knowledge necessary to make informed decisions.

Gramsci’s perspective helped me see that the journalist occupies a vital bridge in the relationship between structured knowledge and public life. The responsibility is therefore not simply to report what happens, but to pursue truth rigorously, interpret developments thoughtfully, and contribute constructively to the intellectual and moral development of society. In that sense, journalism became for me not just a career, but a pure form of public intellectual engagement.

These two books — one stumbled upon by accident, one pressed into my hands by C.Don — formed the philosophical foundation on which everything that follows in this column rests. I did not know that at the time. I know it now.

Late Sigmund Freud

III. The Question That Started Everything

When The Sunday Stew made its debut on March 8th, I initially envisioned a column anchored broadly on faith, character, and the structural forces that shape society, with a focus on Nigeria and Africa in a global context. But the second edition on March 15 inspired our current trajectory. Entitled ‘A Country Without Earthquakes — Yet Shaken by Itself’, it explored the tragic reality of Nigeria manufacturing catastrophic man-made disasters while other nations contend merely with natural ones. The insights that came from writing that piece—drawing heavily from an expansive interview a former colleague and I conducted with the late Professor Jubril Aminu in 2012—inspired the rigorous analytical direction this column ultimately took, beginning with the development of The Insecurity Triad.

At the outset, I only set out to understand why Nigeria keeps bleeding. I wanted to discover why the same communities bury the same dead in the same circumstances decade after decade, while the state issues the same predictable condemnations, commissions the same redundant reports, and recommends the same superficial reforms that are never implemented. I set out, in other words, to do journalism.
What I did not anticipate was that the honest, uncompromising pursuit of that question would eventually produce what the academy calls a macro-theoretical framework—and that this framework would, in time, find its home at Harvard and other top-tier scientific repositories.

The Trinity of State Decay did not arrive fully formed. It emerged from a profound frustration—the frustration of a scholar-journalist who has spent years watching analytical frameworks imported wholesale from external academic traditions fail to explain the immediate reality happening in front of his eyes.
Failed state theory, useful as far as it goes, describes a static outcome. It names the corpse but completely fails to trace the actual cause of death. The Fragile States Index produces superficial comparative rankings but isolates no mechanisms. What was missing was an indigenous framework that could explain the operational process—the structural logic by which sovereign authority fractures and is progressively displaced by rival formations.

The insight, when it came, was disarmingly simple: states do not lose control randomly. They lose it systematically along three specific axes—Money, Land, and Mind. When the state loses its command of fiscal and economic legitimacy, when it loses territorial authority over its physical space, and when it loses ideological and psychological hold over the behavioural psyche of the population, something else moves in. Not chaos. Something far worse than chaos: a disciplined, purposeful Shadow Order, which is often more efficient at its enforcement functions than the formal state it is displacing.
This is what the Trinity of State Decay theorises. Not the mere failure of the state—but the active production of an alternative to it.

The geography of legitimate knowledge production has long maintained a centre and a periphery. The global centre produces the theoretical frameworks; the periphery receives them, submissively applies them, and occasionally pushes back against them in minor footnotes. What is happening right now with the Sundiata Post Intelligence Unit (SPIU)—with The Insecurity Triad already circulating in global academic repositories and the Trinity of State Decay now anchored across multiple institutions—is a clear demonstration that intellectual rigour does not possess a postal address.

The publication of the Trinity of State Decay on global scholarly platforms is not an end point. It is the formal opening of a conversation three decades in the making. If in the months, years, and decades to come, a professor at Harvard, a post-doctoral fellow in Legon, a PhD candidate in Oxford, or an undergraduate in Makerere writing a term paper finds it useful and engages with it, our purpose will have been fulfilled. None of them may ever know me personally, just as I never knew Freud, Gramsci, or Said.

Coda: The Symmetry Completes Itself

I began this reflection thinking about the symmetry of three: three months, a trilogy of contributions, a triple publication. But symmetry, I have come to understand, is not always visible at the beginning of a journey. It reveals itself exclusively in retrospect—which is, incidentally, also how Sovereignty Decoupling becomes visible to those who are living through it.

A young man borrowing a biography of Freud by accident in a university library. A mentor handing him Edward Said across a table in Ilupeju. Several years of frontline journalism asking the same stubborn questions about why our nation bleeds. A column that began as political commentary and rapidly transformed, by structural necessity, into a site of deep theoretical production. And now: Harvard, Zenodo, GESIS-SSOAR, all in a single week.

Three months. A trilogy. A triple publication. And with SSOAR’s confirmation arriving on Friday morning, our overall global archival footprint expands to seven critical institutional repositories when we include the foundational papers of The Insecurity Triad: SSRN, Harvard Dataverse, Zenodo, SocArXiv, SSOAR, ResearchGate, and Academia.edu. The symmetry, it appears, was not done with me yet.

The Trinity of State Decay is now available on Harvard Dataverse (doi:10.7910/DVN/ZQWEM7), Zenodo (doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.20580627), SSOAR (nbn-resolving.org/urn:nbn:de:0168-ssoar-110533-8), ResearchGate, and Academia.edu. Read it. Push back against it. Apply it. Find its limits. That is exactly what it is there for.

Trust is sacred. Stay seasoned.

•Dr. Max Amuchie is a Scholar-Journalist, Media CEO, and Lead Researcher at the Sundiata Post Intelligence Unit (SPIU). He is the architect of The Insecurity Triad framework for African security analysis, the Trinity of State Decay theory, and the Decoupling Sovereignty Index (DSI)—original, indigenous analytical frameworks for understanding, categorising, and measuring conflict, state decay, and sovereignty in the Global South. He writes The Sunday Stew, a weekly syndicated column on faith, character, and the structural forces that shape society, with a focus on Nigeria, Africa, and the Global South in a changing world.

X (formerly Twitter): @MaxAmuchie | Email: max.a@sundiatapost.com | Tel: +234(0)8053069436

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Editorial

Rabe Abubakar et al: Different military, shame of a nation!

Published

1 hour ago

June 14, 2026

Whirlwindnews

What does Dura community of Dura-Du area of Jos South Local of Area of Plateau State, 2018, Okporo, Ihuoma and Amaifeke communities in the Orlu Local Government Area of Imo State, 2022, and Okuama community of Ughelli South Local Government Area of Delta State 2024 have in common? Do they ring a bell?

Certainly! They are just a few of many demonstrable examples of military anger, recently on display in the Nigerian polity. Here are some details.

In September, 2018, Idris Alkali, was declared missing. The retired Major General of the Nigerian Army, was said to be travelling through Jos, Plateau State to Bauchi when he disappeared.

Reactions: The army came calling! In what they termed “search and rescue operation,” soldiers descended on communities along the route. It was a brutal exercise – the imprimatur of military operations. The youths of the communities, especially Dura-Du area in Jos, virtually disappeared into the bush or scampered out of town to escape the blitzkrieg.

Scores of the unlucky ones who fell into the wide net they cast on the entire area, meant to drag everyone in, regardless of status, were reportedly subjected to some of the most harrowing experiences they might not forget in their lifetimes.

The situation even worsened when the remains of the ex-military top brass was discovered in a disused well in one of the communities. That was when war was actually declared on the people in their bid to fish out the supposed culprits – albeit – military style.

Even after more than four years, the people of Okporo, Ihuoma and Amaifeke communities, are still nursing the physical and psychological wounds they sustained in the hands of the military who came visiting in April 2022.

Their only crime was to be the host of a hot gun battle between soldiers and elements said to be members of the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB), during an ambush, which reportedly left casualties on both sides.

Many reportedly lost their homes and businesses in inferno, as the soldiers who descended on the communities, reportedly set many facilities on fire outside mowing down many residents, who they termed IPOB members.

What about Okuama? The case of the Delta community perhaps the freshest in mind. There, residents are still reeling in the pain inflicted on them in similar circumstances as their counterparts in Plateau and Imo, following the military operations that took place after some 16 personnel, including two officers were reportedly ambushed and killed by natives.

Tukur Gusau, then spokesman of Defence Headquarters (DHQ), Nigeria’s seat of military authorities, who reported that the troops from the 181 Amphibious Battalion were deployed in the Bomadi region and were on a peace-keeping mission in the Okuoma community when they were killed, had indicated that there would be grave consequences.

That promise was kept to the letter, with virtually nobody escaping the wrath of the military, from the ordinary citizens, the community leaders and even the traditional institutions. Even the fishes in the river and trees in the forest of the Niger Delta community, felt the anger of the soldiers.

Now, the question: Where is that anger today? On Saturday, Nigeria and its citizens were dazed from the hangover of another celebration of Democracy Day with the news of Abubakar Rabe, a retired Major General and former spokesman of the Nigerian Army.

The ex-military boss, just retired after more than three decades of service to country, died like an infected chicken in the hands of some rag-tag ruffians, unfit to polish his military boots when he was in service, who took him hostage and detained him in the bush in the last two weeks.

Yes, for two weeks, Rabe, who was abducted alongside his wife while travelling through Katsina, a hotbed of terrorist activities in Nigeria, was kept in the bush in a decrepit condition with signs of obvious failing health quite evident.

There was even a video of him begging the authorities including the Katsina State Government to come to his rescue, all which failed to get any positive result until he eventually took a bow on Friday, the same day the same country he served were celebrating what they termed – Democracy Day. What an irony!

Neither the central government under President Bola Tinubu, Katsina or the military authorities to whom he devoted his youth, could lift a finger to help him, or his wife, whose fate even remains unknown after the sad incident. What a nation!

But Rabe Abubakar is not an isolated case. Maharazu Tsiga (rtd), a Brigadier General and former Director-General of the National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) was abducted by bandits from his hometown in Bakori Local Government Area of Katsina State, spent 56 days in captivity before eventually regaining his freedom, while Rabi’u Garba Yandoto, a retired colonel and two of his children were abducted along the Gusau-Tsafe road in Zamfara State, also spent 10 days in captivity before regaining freedom.

They were the lucky ones. Others who were not that lucky, never lived to tell their story. One of them was Musa Uba. The late Brigadier General, and former Commander of the 25 Task Force Brigade, was leading his men and members of the Civilian Joint Task Force (CJTF) when insurgents struck.

The attack, which reportedly happened along the Damboa–Biu axis, led to the killing of four operatives: two soldiers and two CJTF members.

However, Uba, who reportedly escaped the initial ambush, was again encircled by the terrorists as he was communicating with military authorities on how to be rescued and returned to base. He was captured and subsequently killed.

Again, on April 8, 2026, Oseni Omoh Braimah, another Brigadier General Commander of the 29 Task Force Brigade, under Operation Hadin Kai, also met a fatal fate in the hands of the same Boko Haram -ISWAP fighters.

They were said to have launched a coordinated, midnight assaults on military formations in Benisheikh, a strategic town in the Kaga Local Government Area of Borno State.

Before then, Alex Bardeh, a retired Air Vice-Marshal and former Chief of Defence Staff (CDS) was killed on December 18, 2018 by hoodlums who attacked his convoy on the Keffi- Kaduna Expressway while he was returning from his farm on the border between Nasarawa State and the Federal Capital Territory.

Ironically, all these tragedies took place under the nose of the All Progressives Congress (APC), a party, which, before assuming power in 2015, had made a song and dance of how they were going to offer Nigerians a breather from what they saw then as the parlous condition of the Nigerian polity, particularly in insecurity.

Interestingly, the government of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), which they heavily assailed as incompetent and clueless in arresting the situation, did not count a single case of a General being killed in such a manner.

Today, the terrorists who had hitherto seemed to be acting scared by hitting soft targets and disappearing, now appear quite frontal unfazed.

They no longer limit themselves to civilian targets. Outside kidnapping and outright carnages on civilians, which are now daily stories, they have since upped the ante – hitting even some of the highly-fortified military bases, slaughtering soldiers at will.

After Alex Bardeh, Musa Uba, Omo Braimah and now Abubakar Rabe, the question that seems quite natural now, is who is next? The other question, is where is the notorious Military Anger that kept the polity in check and the nation safe?

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News

BREAKING: Two weeks after, Rabe Abubakar, retired General, dies in kidnapper’s den!

Published

1 day ago

June 13, 2026

Whirlwindnews

Abubakar Rabe, retired Major General former spokesman of the Nigerian Army who was abducted by bandits in Katsina State exactly two weeks ago, has died in captivity, reports coming from the state, one of the hotbeds of terrorist activities in Nigeria, confirmed on Saturday.

The retired senior military officer was kidnapped alongside his wife around the Matazu area of Katsina State while traveling to attend a wedding ceremony, was said to have died of complications from diabetes and high blood pressure in the camp of his abductors.

Nasiru Mu’azu, Commissioner for Internal Security and Home Affairs, in the state, who confirmed the incident, in a statement, said the government received the news with heavy heart and deep sense of loss.

He wrote: “It is with profound sadness that we confirm the General’s death while in bandits captivity. Despite the relentless and concerted efforts of the State Government and various Security Agencies to secure his safe release, the situation ended in this tragedy.

“The deceased Retired General died a natural death from complications of diabetes and hypertension. His abduction and subsequent death are not only a loss to his family and Katsina State but a monumental loss to the entire country.

“His Excellency, the Executive Governor of Katsina State Malam Dikko Umaru Radda, PhD, CON, extends his deepest condolences to the family of the late General and the country at-large.

“The Governor has described this incident as a “dark moment” and a reminder of the urgent need for a collective and intensified front against the criminal elements threatening the peace of our communities.

“The Katsina State Government remains committed to working with the Federal Government and security forces to ensure that those responsible for this heinous act are brought to justice. We assure the citizens of Katsina State that our resolve to eliminate banditry and ensure the safety of all residents remains unshaken.

“Our thoughts and prayers are with the bereaved family during this difficult time. May the soul of the departed Retired Major General Rabe Abdulakdir rest in eternal peace.”

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