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The puzzle is not really that Deputy Commissioner of Police Abba Kyari has been accused of complicity in a drug cartel from Brazil to the point that he negotiated a reduction in the quantity of seized drugs, negotiated to sell some of it and give part of the proceeds to an officer of National Drug Law Enforcement Agency (NDLEA). Armed with video footage, screenshot of WhatsApp messages and trancripts, the NDLEA demonstrated how Kyari proposed a drug deal with its official. During the discussion, Kyari was said to have disclosed that his team had already taken out 15 kilogrammes of seized 25kg cocaine shared between the informant that gave the lead for the arrest and Kyari’s team.
The puzzle is not that Kyari, a high-ranking policeman, tried to compromise the NDLEA. Anyone with a sense of history of criminal elements would know that law enforcement agents have tended to be at the centre of some notorious cases. In Nigeria, in the 1980s, there was an armed robber named Lawrence Anini who was a terror in Bendel State, now Edo and Delta states. He held the state and environs hostage, such that the head of state at the time, General Ibrahim Babangida, gave an express order to the Inspector General of Police that Anini must be captured. A little background information on the Anini matter would show that his gang became more vicious when their deal for protection with policemen broke down. The gang was betrayed by some policemen such that, in protest, the Anini gang killed nine policemen in one month. On December 3, 1986, Anini was captured on Oyemmosa Street, Benin City, in company with six women.
The bubble burst during interrogation when Anini revealed that a senior police officer, George Iyamu, was the major supplier of arms to them, and gave them information that made it an uphill task for the police to arrest the gang. When Anini was executed on March 9, 1987, CSP George Iyamu went down with him and other members of the gang. Iyamu was reputed to have lived large, and loved the good things of life, but they were proceeds of crime. It was evident that Anini and his group shared proceeds of crime with him. Those things went the way they came. Like Kyari, Iyamu was a top detective who cracked many tough crimes.
In the video released by the NDLEA, Kyari spoke in Hausa with the narcotics operative, and said he had done what he was proposing two weeks ago or so. In other words, that was not his first time, a clear indication that he had a group even within the NDLEA, which was probably why he took it for granted that the operative he was trying to cut the deal with knew how it worked. The tendency is that the operatives try to have their cake and still eat it. They would go into the good books of the public, and the government for bursting drug cartels, yet they benefit from the cartels. Kyari would not propose to sell some of the seized drugs and replace them with dummies if he had not pulled through such a deal in the past. Those are leads the investigating team should explore. The point is that this investigation ought to go beyond the police. Kyari gave out a lot in that short video.
The police do not want to go down alone, and they should not. Already, Kyari has been arrested alongside other policemen, namely, Sunday Ubuah, ASP Bawa James, Inspector Simon Agrigba and John Nuhu. Another officer, ASP John Umoru, is said to be at large. The police force also made a statement to show that its personnel should not go down alone, and it pointedly asked the NDLEA to examine its own personnel, when it said the officers of the agency were shielding a certain cartel that ran the drug traffic via Enugu, but the NDLEA has cleared itself on the matter using the recorded conversation with Kyari, who gave details of how the ‘goods’ move from Brazil through Ethiopia to Nigeria. In the conversation, Krari gave the impression that his group in Nigeria in was touch with the Brazilian cartel. My contention is that he would not make that proposition if he had not done it in the past with success.
Although the NDLEA seems to have cleared itself, it needs to still look inwards. I have read comments to the effect that, if Kyari spills the beans, more heads may roll, that the rope may grow longer than what we see now. That proposition is a double-edged sword because it may or may not yield much fruit.
Kyari, by his position and rank, is a big fish in police circles, such that the buck could stop at his table. His reputation as super cop, going by the hard criminal puzzles he had solved in the past, he had earned an image that could allow him operate without supervision. He may well be the leader of the group, an indication that the rope would not go beyond him. Drug trafficking is a highwire Mafia operation across the globe. It always has a tendency to involve the high and mighty.
The award-winning novel, The Godfather, by Mario Puzo is a detailed investigative work, though fictional, involving the drug cartel in Italy. Although it’s a fictional work, the late Puzo did an extensive investigation on the matter, and showed how wide the tentacles of barons can go. The Kyari puzzle, in this instance, may go beyond him. The immediate puzzle is how an officer on suspension still had access to the people under his command to the point of still using them for illegal operations. At this point, the police authorities seem to have an unanswered question.
