The death of retired Major General Sarkin-Yaki Bello, a former commander of the Nigerian Army’s elite 3 Division, is not merely a personal tragedy. It is a public indictment. Kidnapped from his home in Kaduna state last month, he died in captivity, his captors reportedly citing a lack of ransom payment and a failing health that went unattended.
The news hit with a particular sting: a man who spent his career securing the nation could not secure even his own freedom. Officials remain tight-lipped, but the pattern is familiar. Nigeria’s kidnapping crisis has a grim calculus: pay or perish.
For the general’s family, they paid the emotional cost of waiting, the psychological toll of negotiating with faceless men, only to receive a corpse. The system failed him twice. First by allowing armed men to snatch a senior citizen from his home.
Second by offering no rescue, no safe extraction. The abductors leverage fear, but the state’s silence is a deeper betrayal. On the streets of Kaduna, where I spoke to a widow whose husband was kidnapped three years ago, she said: “When a general dies, they notice.
When a trader dies, they shrug.” She is not wrong. The injustice is not that one man died, but that thousands before him died unmourned.
The general’s death may stir a parliamentary inquiry. It may follow a flurry of denials and promises. But the cultural shift has already happened: in Nigeria now, rank no longer protects.
No one is safe. Not even those who once wore the nation’s uniform.
