The Siege Has Moved Indoors

To say Kaduna State Governor, Senator Uba Sani, has done well on security and the politics of inclusion is an understatement. I have said it on this page before, and I will say it again, because credit must be given where it is due. When he took over in May 2023, southern Kaduna was a bleeding wound. Many people in the zone felt like tenants in their own state, and the last administration did little to change that feeling. Uba Sani changed the temperature. He reached out, brought southern Kaduna sons and daughters into the room where decisions are made, and gave the zone something it had been starved of for eight years — a sense of belonging. You cannot put a price on that in a state as fractured as Kaduna.

The results followed. Killings in southern Kaduna dropped drastically. Communities that used to plan burials every other week started planning weddings again. The Kaduna–Abuja highway is another example. At one point it was one of the most dangerous roads in Nigeria, a stretch where Christians recited Psalm 91 and Muslims recited Ayatul Kursi in the same bus. Mind you, the terrorists did not even spare the train. In March 2022 they bombed the Abuja–Kaduna train and carted away passengers.

Today there is a semblance of peace on that highway. Banditry has also reduced on the Birnin Gwari axis, where farmers once paid levies to bandits before they could harvest crops on their own land.
So let me be clear from the start. This column is no hatchet job.But while the bandits were being pushed off the highways, they did what every business does when one market dries up. They found another market. They moved into town, and they came in full force.

Millennium City, the sprawling residential district in Chikun Local Government Area, is now under siege. I don’t use that word lightly.
On Tuesday, October 27, gunmen broke through the second gate of Nuru Suraj Estate in the early hours and abducted about six residents, secondary school students among them. The military responded early and rescued some of the victims, but several are still in captivity as I write this. The Kaduna State Commissioner of Police, Muhammad Rabiu, visited the community afterwards.

The second gate. Let that sink in for a moment. Residents of Kaduna now build two gates around their estates, hire guards, pay security levies, and the kidnappers still walk in as if somebody handed them the keys. What else are people supposed to do… dig a moat?

Three weeks earlier, on the night of October 5, bandits stormed Alrahus Estate at about 11.30pm and moved from house to house. They took Ahmed Abubakar Zakka, his wife, their six-month-old daughter Fatima and a ,pregnant woman. The captors later released a video with rifles pointed at the family’s heads and demanded ₦300 million. Thank God the Zakka family regained their freedom after nine days in captivity. But I keep thinking about that baby. Six months old. What exactly did Fatima do to anybody?

That attack came barely five days after gunmen struck PW Babban Saura, killed a man and abducted his wife, his son and six others. Before then, Kyauta was hit in August and more than a dozen people were taken. Keke B has its own sad record. At Danhonu II, angry residents marched to the Millennium City Divisional Police Headquarters, saying the abduction of seven residents was the 11th kidnapping in their community within a few months. Eleven.

Then there is Kamazou, where kidnapping has become almost a weekly ritual. Around Yakowa Road, the road leading to Millennium City, and in Karji, people are snatched in broad daylight. Broad daylight! These criminals no longer wait for darkness because they no longer fear anybody.

To say kidnappers have laid siege to Kaduna is, again, an understatement. They have left the highways and pitched their tents inside our towns.

Let me also add that Millennium City is no stranger to this horror. In 2022, under the last administration, terrorists invaded the settlement and carted away scores of residents. So the problem has history. What is new is the frequency, the audacity, and the fact that it is happening in the same season the government is (rightly) taking a bow for the highways.

Think about what this does to people. One resident of Alrahus told reporters he moved into the estate about four years ago after bandits chased him out of Keke B. He ran from one community to another looking for safety, and the bandits followed him there. Where does he run to next? Abuja? Many families in Millennium City are already asking that question. Landlords are counting empty flats. Parents are pulling children out of schools that require an early morning walk. Mind you, Millennium City was conceived to decongest the old Kaduna metropolis and give the middle class a decent place to live. If the people it was built for start fleeing, the project dies a slow death, and every naira the state and private developers sunk into it goes down the drain.

There is also a psychological cost that nobody budgets for. A man who has been kidnapped once never sleeps the same way again. His children flinch when a car slows down near the gate. His wife keeps the generator off at night so the house looks empty. Multiply that by hundreds of households, and you have a city living in quiet terror while official speeches talk about peace.

Some will argue that the governor does not control the police or the army, that Nigeria runs a centralised security architecture and a governor is chief security officer only in name. Valid point. I have made that argument myself on this page whenever I called for state police. Others will say Millennium City sits on the fringes of the metropolis, close to the bushy stretches of Chikun, and that the terrain favours the criminals. Also true.

But Kaduna has the Kaduna Vigilance Service. Kaduna has a State Security Council that the governor chairs. And Kaduna has the goodwill and the model Uba Sani built in southern Kaduna dialogue, intelligence, and community buy-in, which can be replicated in Chikun. The tools are there. What residents are not seeing is the same urgency.

This is where I have a problem. If the governor has said much about Millennium City, it has not reached the families now sleeping in their parlours because their bedrooms face the fence. A visit from the Police Commissioner after an attack is good. A town hall meeting with the governor in Millennium City, before the next attack, would be better. People want to see their governor, not a press statement signed by an aide.

We also need to understand the economics of this thing. Kidnapping is a business, and a ₦300 million ransom demand tells you exactly who these people think they are hunting. They are going after the middle class in gated estates: civil servants, traders, bankers, lecturers people who will sell land and empty their savings to bring a child home. Every ransom paid finances the next operation. As long as estates remain soft targets and the risk of getting caught remains low, the business will keep growing. Kidnappers are criminals, but they are not stupid. They follow the money and the path of least resistance.

The governor must wake up and treat this siege as the emergency it is. Millennium City needs a permanent joint security base, not patrols that arrive after the bandits have gone. Yakowa Road needs street lights and CCTV cameras that work. The vigilance service should be properly funded and tied to estate associations, so that every estate has a direct line to somebody who will pick up the phone at midnight. Our intelligence agencies need to trace the phone lines used for ransom calls.

These criminals call families to negotiate, and the last time I checked, every SIM card in Nigeria is supposed to be linked to a National Identification Number. Developers who abandoned half-built estates and left gaping holes in perimeter fences should be compelled to close them.
Residents also have a part to play. Estate associations must stop treating security levies as optional. Strangers renting uncompleted buildings near the fence, motorcycles hovering around at odd hours, the new “farmer” nobody knows these things should be reported, not gossiped about after Juma’at prayers or Sunday service. Informants win this kind of war long before soldiers do.

None of this is rocket science. The same Uba Sani who brought calm to southern Kaduna can do it in Millennium City. He has already done the harder part. Chasing the rat out of the farm is good work. Leaving it to settle in the kitchen is not. Residents of Kaduna should not have to choose between a safe road and a safe bedroom.