Ortom’s 23 Vehicles and the Dangerous Culture of Public Entitlement, by Boniface Ihiasota 

There are moments when a country does not need another corruption report, another audit or another international ranking to understand the depth of its governance crisis. Sometimes, all it needs is a single conversation. The recent controversy involving former Benue State Governor, Samuel Ortom, and 23 government vehicles provides one such uncomfortable moment.

In an interview on Arise Television recently, Ortom said 23 vehicles seized from him after he left office were legitimately allocated to him by the Benue State Government. He explained that the State Executive Council had approved the allocation of the vehicles to him and other officials because they had been in use for more than four years. He said he challenged their seizure in court and that the court ordered the return of the vehicles and awarded him N5m in damages. He also accused the administration of his successor, Governor Hyacinth Alia, of political persecution and disregard for the rule of law.

There is, however, a crucial distinction that must not be lost in the public argument. Ortom’s assertion that the vehicles were legitimately allocated to him is his account of the matter. Earlier, in July 2023, the Alia administration announced the recovery of more than 30 vehicles from an automobile workshop in Makurdi as part of an assets-recovery exercise targeting property allegedly taken from the previous administration. Ortom’s aide, Terver Akase, described the exercise at the time as persecution and maintained that former officials had been allowed to buy their official vehicles.

The matter had already entered the courts in June 2023, when Ortom and his deputy, Benson Abounu, challenged the assets-recovery process before the Benue State High Court in Makurdi. They asked the court to determine whether property allegedly allocated to them as entitlements and remuneration could still be regarded as government property.

This history matters because Nigeria’s problem is larger than Samuel Ortom, Hyacinth Alia or 23 vehicles. It is the disturbing culture that allows public office to blur the line between what belongs to the state and what belongs to the individual occupying an office.

The fundamental question should not merely be whether a former governor can legally acquire an official vehicle after leaving office. The more important question is whether a system in which senior public officials can acquire dozens of government vehicles at the end of their tenure serves the public interest.

Nigeria is a country where many public schools lack basic facilities, where primary healthcare centres struggle with equipment and personnel, where roads remain unfinished and where millions of citizens live with inadequate access to essential services. Against that background, the spectacle of political office holders arguing over who has the right to keep government vehicles is more than an administrative dispute. It is a window into the mindset surrounding public resources.

There is nothing inherently wrong with disposing of government assets that have reached the end of their useful administrative life. Governments everywhere sell surplus or obsolete property. The problem begins when public assets are transferred in ways that appear designed principally to benefit the people leaving office rather than the institution they served.

There is also a troubling contradiction in the political language surrounding the dispute. Ortom has invoked the rule of law to demand compliance with a court judgment. That principle is fundamental. If a competent court has ordered the return of the vehicles and the payment of damages, the judgment should be obeyed or properly challenged through the appellate process. No government should selectively respect judicial decisions.

But the rule of law must also extend beyond the courtroom. It should include transparent procedures for disposing of public property, proper valuation, accountability to citizens and institutions strong enough to prevent public officials from converting state resources into personal benefits.

The controversy is particularly revealing because Ortom governed Benue for eight years, from 2015 until May 29, 2023, before Hyacinth Alia succeeded him. Their administrations have since been involved in a prolonged political and institutional confrontation over government finances, assets and the conduct of the previous administration.

In June 2026, another chapter was added when a Benue State commission of inquiry reported an alleged N139.8bn discrepancy in the state’s finances between 2015 and 2023. Ortom rejected the findings through his media aide, describing the inquiry as politically motivated and legally flawed. The commission, chaired by retired Justice Jubril Idrisu, said it had examined financial records and conducted public hearings before reaching its conclusions.

Citizens should therefore resist the temptation to reduce the entire matter to whether Ortom is right and Alia is wrong, or vice versa. That would merely reproduce the politics that created the problem.

The deeper issue is whether Nigerian public office is still understood as stewardship. A government vehicle purchased with public money does not become morally private merely because an office holder has driven it for four years. A government house does not become a family inheritance because somebody occupied it for eight years. Public office is temporary; public property belongs to the public.

Nigeria will not change merely because another administration promises to recover assets from its predecessor. If every incoming government recovers vehicles from former officials only to acquire its own fleet of benefits when its tenure ends, then nothing fundamental has changed. The actors have changed; the culture remains.

Are Killings in Niger State Beyond Ordinary? By Alabidun Shuaib AbdulRahman

There is something increasingly unsettling about what is happening in Niger State. It is not simply the frequency of killings that should worry anymore. It is the changing character of the deaths, the places where they occur, the people caught up in them and, perhaps most importantly, the growing difficulty of explaining them as separate incidents.

It disturb one, of recent, to know that in one part of the state, terrorists are killing security personnel and civilians. In another, communities are settling old grievances with blood. Elsewhere, worshippers are taken away after Friday prayers. Then, within the same week, 37 suspected illegal miners die while in the custody of a government security agency. Each incident has its own immediate explanation, but when placed side by side, they begin to suggest something much bigger than ordinary insecurity.

Niger State has lived with banditry, kidnapping and communal violence for years, particularly in parts of Shiroro, Rafi, Munya, Mariga and other vulnerable areas. But 2026 has brought a succession of incidents that should make any serious observer pause.

On April 9, reports emerged of coordinated attacks in Shiroro Local Government Area in which scores of people were killed. Premium Times reported that at least 60 people, including more than 40 security operatives, were reportedly killed in attacks on communities including Bagna and Lanta. Although the details varied between accounts, but the central fact was difficult to ignore: armed men were able to attack several communities and inflict heavy casualties on both civilians and those deployed to protect them.

The disastrous event of Shiroro goes beyond the number of casualties. On many occasions, residents of the area have complained about the difficulty of getting timely security intervention whenever armed men move into their communities. The problem is not merely that criminals possess weapons. It is that rural communities are often separated from effective security response by bad roads, difficult terrain, inadequate communication and the sheer size of the state.

Then came the violence around Tegina in Rafi Local Government Area. On July 1, Premium Times reported that at least 48 people had been killed in violence involving Fulani and Kamuku communities. Residents said 42 people, largely women, children and elderly persons, were killed in an attack on a Kamuku community, while about six herders were subsequently killed in retaliation. The incident was particularly disturbing because it demonstrated how quickly communal grievances can become a cycle in which one death produces another. Once that cycle begins, the state is no longer dealing with one criminal incident. It is dealing with the gradual destruction of trust between communities.

But the August attacks in Borgu Local Government Area brought another dimension to the crisis. On August 21, armed men attacked communities during Friday prayers and abducted Muslim worshippers. The eventual account from the local government chairman, Mohammed Abdullahi, was that more than 60 people had been abducted across four villages and nearly 30 killed. The affected communities included Gbeji, Kpenya, Giyan Gbasu and Dekara. The fact that the victims were gathered for Jumaat prayers made the incident particularly disturbing, but it also exposed how far insecurity has penetrated ordinary life. Places of worship, which should represent sanctuary, are not immune. Villagers cannot assume that gathering for prayer will protect them from armed men.

The Borgu attack also exposed the practical weakness of the state’s security response. Difficult terrain and a damaged bridge were cited among the obstacles confronting security personnel. That may be a genuine operational problem, but it raises another question: if authorities know that communities are isolated by terrain and infrastructure, what preventive arrangements exist for those communities? Security cannot always depend on a distress call followed by a journey through impassable roads. Intelligence, local surveillance, communication networks and rapid-response arrangements are supposed to compensate for precisely these weaknesses. When they do not, citizens are left to hope that the attackers will not come.

Strangely, the deaths of 37 suspected illegal miners in NSCDC custody on September 17 have changed the character of the conversation entirely. According to the NSCDC, the victims were among scores of people arrested during enforcement operations against suspected illegal mining at the M.I. Wushishi/Lukoto axis on September 15 and 16. The corps initially said the detainees were found dead after what it described as a suspected disease outbreak, while stressing that the actual cause had not been established and would require medical examination.

That explanation cannot simply be accepted or rejected before the investigation is completed. Governor Mohammed Umaru Bago has ordered forensic examinations and autopsies, while the police, NSCDC and other security agencies have opened investigations. The Federal Government has also suspended the Niger State NSCDC Commandant, Suberu Siyaka Aniviye, pending the outcome of the investigation. There have been allegations from relatives and other sources about overcrowding, poor detention conditions and possible mistreatment, but those allegations must be established by evidence. At this stage, the scientifically established cause of the 37 deaths is still pending.

That caution, however, should not diminish the seriousness of what happened. Thirty-seven people did not die in a battlefield. They died after being arrested and taken into the custody of a government security organisation. The state therefore has a heightened responsibility to explain, with evidence, what happened between the moment of arrest and the moment their bodies were taken to the mortuary. Were they medically screened when arrested? How many people were held in the detention facility? How long were they there? What did they eat and drink? Was there ventilation? Was medical assistance available? Were any of them sick before their arrest? Were hazardous substances associated with mining involved? Were there minors among them? These are not questions for social media speculation. They are questions that a credible investigation must answer.

Governor Bago himself said possible causes being examined included suffocation from overcrowding and exposure to hazardous chemicals associated with illegal mining, while cautioning that no conclusion should be reached before forensic and medical examinations were completed. That is the right approach. The tragedy should not become another occasion for competing political narratives to outrun evidence.

But there is a larger issue here that Niger State cannot afford to overlook. The state is dealing simultaneously with armed insurgents, banditry, communal violence, illegal mining and growing public distrust. These are not entirely unrelated problems. Illegal mining, for instance, is not simply an environmental or economic offence when it takes place in insecure areas. Mining sites can become sources of informal wealth, weapons, local influence and criminal networks. Communities struggling with poverty may depend on the activity even when government considers it illegal. Security agencies then arrive to enforce the law, often in places where trust between residents and authorities is already weak. The possibility of conflict is therefore high.

This is why the deaths in NSCDC custody deserve an investigation that goes beyond finding one or two individuals to blame. The country has seen too many official inquiries become exercises in administrative containment. A commandant is suspended, a committee is announced, condolences are issued and, after public attention moves elsewhere, the families are left with questions. Niger State should not allow this case to follow that familiar path.

If the detainees died from disease, the investigation should establish what disease, how it spread, whether it was detectable and whether reasonable medical precautions were taken. If overcrowding contributed, somebody must answer for the decision to keep so many people in unsuitable conditions. If toxic exposure contributed, the circumstances of the arrests and detention must be examined. If there was negligence or deliberate abuse, those responsible should face the law.

The same seriousness is required in the fight against the armed groups terrorising rural communities in the state. It is not enough to announce that troops have been deployed after another village has been attacked. Niger State is too large and too strategically important to be treated as a collection of isolated rural emergencies. Its proximity to the Federal Capital Territory, its international boundary with Benin Republic, its vast forests and its extensive rural settlements make its security problems a national concern.

The temptation will be to treat each tragedy separately. The Shiroro killings will be classified as terrorism. The Tegina violence will be described as a farmers-herders or communal clash. The Borgu deaths will be treated as another kidnapping incident. The NSCDC deaths will be called an unfortunate detention tragedy. Technically, those descriptions may be correct. But they cannot stop at classification. The real responsibility is to understand why so many different forms of violence are flourishing within the same geographical space.

There is also a danger in allowing residents to become accustomed to death. When a community loses ten people, the next community loses twenty, another loses forty, and then dozens die in custody, society can gradually develop a frightening tolerance for casualty figures. That is perhaps the most dangerous stage of a security crisis. Numbers begin to replace human beings. Thirty dead becomes a headline. Forty-eight becomes another headline. Sixty becomes another statistic. Yet behind every figure is a family, a household, a child, a livelihood and a future that has been abruptly removed.

Niger State should therefore resist the urge to normalise what is happening. These killings may have different immediate causes, but their cumulative effect is the same: they weaken citizens’ confidence that the state can protect life. That confidence is not restored by press statements. It is restored when communities see attackers arrested, when victims receive justice, when intelligence prevents attacks, when security personnel are held accountable for misconduct and when people taken into custody return alive to their families.

The question, therefore, is not whether every killing in Niger State has one hidden explanation. There is no evidence to support such a conclusion. The more credible concern is that the state is facing several overlapping failures at once, and each failure makes the others harder to contain. Terrorism creates displacement. Displacement creates economic hardship. Economic hardship can deepen dependence on illegal activities. Communal killings produce revenge. Weak institutional trust encourages rumours and vigilantism.

That is why the 37 deaths in NSCDC custody cannot be treated as an unrelated footnote to the wider security crisis. Neither should the killing of Muslim worshippers in Borgu be dismissed as just another kidnapping. Both incidents raise the same fundamental issue from different directions: what value does the Nigerian state place on the life of the ordinary person when that person is outside the protection of privilege?

For Niger State, the answer must now be demonstrated, not merely spoken. The dead deserve more than condolences. The families deserve facts. The communities living under the shadow of terrorists and bandits deserve protection. Those detained by security agencies deserve humane treatment, regardless of the offence for which they are suspected. And the institutions entrusted with keeping people safe must understand that accountability is not an obstacle to security; it is part of security.

Perhaps that is what makes the events of 2026 so troubling. Niger State is not experiencing one crisis. It is experiencing a convergence of crises. Until government confronts that reality with the same urgency with which it responds to individual attacks, the killings will continue to look like separate tragedies when, in fact, they are becoming chapters of the same larger story.

Alabidun is a media practitioner and can be reached via alabidungoldenson@gmail.com

Niger’s 37 Dead: When Poverty Meets the Failure of the State, by Boniface Ihiasota 

I can’t understand how about 37 people died in the custody of the state within hours of being arrested for allegedly engaging in illegal mining. It is unsettling not merely because of the number of lives lost, but because of what the incident in Minna, Niger State, says about the relationship between poverty, law enforcement and the Nigerian state.

Between September 15 and 16, 2026, the Nigeria Security and Civil Defence Corps reportedly arrested scores of suspected illegal miners during enforcement operations in the M.I. Wushishi and Lukoto areas of Minna. On Thursday, September 17, 37 of those detained were found dead in NSCDC custody. The exact cause of death has not been conclusively established. The NSCDC initially referred to a suspected disease outbreak, while survivors alleged that overcrowding and poor ventilation caused detainees to struggle for breath. The bodies were taken to the General Hospital, Minna, for medical examination and autopsy.

In a country where public outrage can quickly become a substitute for evidence, the temptation is to pronounce judgment before investigators establish what happened. But there is an equally dangerous temptation to hide behind an investigation when the circumstances demand immediate accountability. The men and boys who died were suspects, not convicts.

Even if every one of them had been guilty of illegal mining, the state had a duty to keep them alive and treat them humanely while they were in custody. The law does not confer a licence to punish suspects outside the judicial process. A person does not lose his right to life because he has been accused of breaking the law.

Niger State is endowed with gold and other mineral resources, but much of the artisanal mining economy exists at the intersection of poverty, unemployment, weak regulation and insecurity. For many young Nigerians, particularly in impoverished communities, mining is not an ideological rebellion against the state. It is often a desperate attempt to make money where legitimate economic opportunities are scarce.

That does not make illegal mining lawful. It does, however, make the phenomenon more complicated than a security problem.

Some reports have indicated that several of those detained were between 14 and 18 years old. Women in Mining Nigeria has called for the ages and identities of the deceased to be independently verified, alongside independent monitoring of autopsies. If the presence of children among those arrested is confirmed, another uncomfortable question emerges: where were the schools, families, social protection systems and economic alternatives that should have kept children away from hazardous mining sites? Nigeria cannot police poverty out of existence.

The protests that followed the deaths in Minna on Friday, September 18, further demonstrated how quickly mistrust between citizens and security agencies can turn tragedy into confrontation. The Niger State Government imposed a curfew as unrest spread, while police and other security personnel were deployed.

President Bola Ahmed Tinubu subsequently directed a comprehensive investigation. On September 19, Interior Minister Olubunmi Tunji-Ojo announced a 10-member independent committee chaired by retired DSS Deputy Director-General Jonathan Kure, with Professor Isa Hayatu Chiroma, SAN, as secretary. Professor Olayinka Buhari, a histopathologist and former Chief Medical Director of the University of Ilorin Teaching Hospital, is among the members. The committee is expected to establish the identities of the dead, examine their arrest and detention, determine the circumstances of their deaths and identify any negligence or misconduct. Twenty-one NSCDC officers, including the Niger State Commandant, Suberu Siyaka Aniviye, have also been suspended pending the investigation.

That investigation must be more than another government exercise that produces a report and then disappears into an archive. The families deserve names. They deserve facts. They deserve to know how their relatives died. And where wrongdoing is established, they deserve justice.

There is a mining economy that needs regulation rather than perpetual chaos; communities that need legitimate livelihoods; children who need schools instead of mine sites; and security institutions that need stronger standards for detention, medical response, ventilation and protection of human life.

The lesson from Minna is therefore not simply that illegal mining must be stopped. It is that enforcement without institutional responsibility can produce another tragedy while attempting to prevent one.

A government that asks citizens to obey the law must demonstrate that those enforcing the law are equally bound by it.

From the Diaspora, this is perhaps the most troubling reflection: the true measure of a state is not how forcefully it can arrest the vulnerable, but how responsibly it treats them after they fall into its hands.

The 37 who died in Minna should not become another statistic in Nigeria’s long catalogue of preventable deaths. Their deaths should become a test of whether accountability in Nigeria is capable of reaching those who wield the authority of the state.

Because when a suspect enters government custody, the responsibility of government does not diminish. It begins.