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It is difficult to laugh or cry or sympathise with Abba Kyari, the celebrated commander of the elite force of the Inspector-General of Police’s Intelligence Response Team (IRT) who was arrested and detained early last week by the National Drug Law Enforcement Agency (NDLEA). Kyari’s fall was swift, extraordinary, and unexpected. 
Here is the paradox of life. Yesterday, many people wanted to associate with Kyari. Today, no one wants to dance with him, dine with him, drink with him, and attend public ceremonies with him. Here was a man whose name alone opened doors into government departments, ministries, and parastatals. Today, when you mention Abba Kyari’s name, the doors of almost all offices will be shut as quickly as it took you to mention the name. The world is truly a stage.
In Nigeria, as in other countries, people rise to power and people tumble from high positions of office. No condition is permanent in life. A rich man yesterday could become a poor man today. A man could fall in love with numerous attractive women today only to be abandoned by those same gorgeous women tomorrow.
Life can be unfair too. In an enchanted world, nothing is real. Everything is artificial, simulated, contrived, and unnatural. It is like a woman who wears so many artificial ornaments on her body, from false eyelashes to false fingernails, from false pack of breasts to false buttocks, from false toenails to fake hair pack, from artificial set of teeth to bogus jaws. This is what Abba Kyari looks like today, a man who built a soaring reputation based on an uncanny ability to apprehend criminals in their hideouts.
Kyari, known widely as the “super cop”, was a dreamer. All dreamers are romanticists. Unfortunately for him, there is a world of fantasy and a world of reality. Many people prefer to live in an imaginary world. It is a fake world. It is obvious that Kyari’s successes swelled his head, his ego and, ultimately, diverted his attention to other less important matters. In no time, he lost direction. He believed he was above the law. Many people perceived him as such and wanted to associate closely with him.
A spokesperson for the NDLEA, Femi Bababafemi, said in a statement that shocked the nation last week: “Few hours after he was declared wanted by the National Drug Law Enforcement Agency (NDLEA) over his involvement in a 25-kilogramme cocaine deal, the Nigerian Police Force…handed over the suspended DCP Abba Kyari to the anti-narcotics agency.”
The statement also clarified that Kyari was apprehended along with four suspects wanted by the agency.
It is unthinkable to imagine that a garlanded police officer such as Kyari would ever be arrested and incarcerated over serious allegations of involvement in drug trafficking. That is the stuff with which high-tension television drama is made. How does the man dig himself out of the hole into which he fell? How does a “super cop” untangle himself from the mess in which he has been robed?
Credit must be given to anti-crime agents for remaining steadfast in their determination to apprehend Kyari and to demonstrate that, in the fight against drug trafficking and other criminal activities, nobody should be seen as unblemished. Everyone, regardless of their status or rank or level of affluence, is subject to the law. In essence, while Kyari might be a top crime fighter and a Deputy Commissioner of Police (DCP), those titles do not grant him immunity from arrest or prosecution, if there is evidence of criminal conduct.
Grave allegations of drug trafficking made by the NDLEA against Kyari have shredded the man’s public persona, even though he is yet to be tried and convicted by a competent court of jurisdiction. The Nigerian public is not only sceptical, it also does not forgive high-profile officials easily.
Bad behaviour, in whatever form it shows, is like a quick ladder. With that ladder, some people climb to high positions of power and influence. But it is an unstable ladder that can also cast those people into the bottom of the valley of life.
The last days of Kyari’s freedom, prior to his arrest and detention, epitomise this metaphor. His arrest signified the end of a fairy tale, too good to be true. As he reflects on his current situation, Kyari now sleeps with minimum comfort. He must be pondering how his life has unravelled and what might have been.
In detention, Kyari can only dream of his exploits, his former retinue of aides, his impressive lifestyle, his bulletproof vests, all the technologies that assisted his team to infiltrate the world of criminal gangs and their networks, as well as his interactions with top politicians, ostentatious but dubiously rich businesspeople, political leaders, and men and women of industry.
Kyari is learning quickly some important lessons about the transient nature of life, as well as the duplicitous and slippery character of untrustworthy men and women. Consider these: When Kyari held power, everyone craved his friendship. But when he fell from that enviable position of authority, everyone, including his so-called friends, sneered at him. That is human behaviour. When you fall from media spotlight into the rarefied world of a detention room, you lose your entitlements to nobility. You are denied access to extravagance. Everyone avoids you like a man or woman devastated by the bubonic plague.
In just one week, Kyari, a man who symbolised power, charm, unrestricted access to the good things of life, suddenly became a subject of parody in national newspapers. How could a man whose world before now was marked with sunshine smiles, glistening white teeth, and suave lifestyle slip so quickly and distressingly into a planet inhabited by villains?
Abba Kyari must be praying fervently for a day he would appear in court to dismantle all allegations brought against him. That will not be easy. There are so many charges that hang on his shoulders like an albatross. It will take time for Kyari to argue his case convincingly before a judge who could free him.
Human beings never learn. Kyari failed to learn from other people’s cardinal sins. He failed to learn from history. But that is what usually happens when privileged people get involved in illegal activities. They assume they would never be caught, that the good times would roll on, and that their godfathers would protect and defend them in good times and in bad times.
Part of the reason nothing works in Nigeria is that people in authority think they can break the law and get away because they believe they are unconquerable. This goes against the spirit of the rule of law. The law was not made so that some people could determine when it was alright for them to respond to official request for interrogation by anti-crime agencies.
Great men and women attract various levels of sympathy or disdain when they leave office gracefully or in ignominy. Kyari left office in disgrace, in the most astonishing way. This is probably because he made many enemies when he led the crack Intelligence Response Team.
The integrity of the government’s fight against corruption and other vices depends so much on how the NDLEA handles the case against Abba Kyari. Everyone is watching.
