By Ishaya Ibrahim, News Editor
The suspended head of the Intelligence Response Team, Deputy Commissioner of Police (DCP) Abba Kyari, has been arrested by the Nigerian police.
According to the Punch Newspaper, Abba Kyari was arrested alongside four others after the National Drugs Law Enforcement Agency (NDLEA) declared him wanted.
Abba Kyari was caught in a video offering $61,400 (N35m) in bribe to NDLEA an agent to further his criminal activities.
Abba Kyari has been linked to all kinds of crime – murder, fraud and now cocaine trafficking. For many, he symbolizes the character of the Nigerian government
The Nigerian government has been reluctant in arresting Abba Kyari nor having him extradited to the United States after the Federal Bureau of Investigation linked him with Ramon Abbass, a self-confessed internet fraudster.
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The Police later set up a panel that literally cleared Abba Kyari of any wrongdoing. But the Police Service Commission rejected the report and ordered another probe until the NDLEA came with full proof evidence against Kyari for a worse crime.
The NDLEA released a video of Abba Kyari, doling out $61,400 (N35m) in bribe to a narcotic agent. The bribe was to under-declare a seized cocaine that Abba Kyari claimed his team of Intelligence Response Team (IRT) intercepted from cocaine couriers.
In the NDLEA statement, it appears that Abba Kyari, who is supposed to be under suspension for having ties with confessed internet fraudster, Ramon Abba, popularly known as Hushpuppi, was still active with the operations of IRT.
According to the statement, an IRT team intercepted 25kg of cocaine en route to Nigeria from Ethiopia. Abba Kyari then proposed a deal to a narcotic agent that he would replace 20 kilograms of the cocaine with a dummy, while the remaining 5kg would be used for prosecution.
According to Abba Kyari, a kg of cocaine sells for N7million, which means the 20kg would go for N140 million. Abba Kyari then offered the narcotic agent N35 million to aid the fraud.
Until his arrest, Abba Kyari went into hiding where he had been issuing threats to the narcotic agent who got him busted, until
Cocaine trade has been a major source of wealth to many Nigerians in the security services, politicians and businessmen.
In 2010, a former director-general of the NDLEA, Femi Ajayi, was asked by Newswatch Magazine why only small fries get caught and prosecuted for drug trafficking and not the barons.
He responded that in the trafficking business, the couriers do not always know the barons. He said the barons have a number of intermediaries between them and the couriers. He explained that when a courier is caught, an intermediary is often eliminated as a way of severing the link between the courier and the baron.
