The death of human beings in the custody of the state should never be treated as an isolated misfortune to be mourned, investigated and then forgotten. Such deaths ought to compel governments, security institutions and society itself to ask difficult questions about what went wrong, what warning signs were missed, who was responsible and, most importantly, what must change to ensure that the same failure does not happen again.
By Shu’aibu Usman Leman
History repeats itself when institutions fail to learn from the suffering they have already caused.
Nations do not merely remember tragedies; they are judged by what they do with the lessons those tragedies leave behind. The death of human beings in the custody of the state should never be treated as an isolated misfortune to be mourned, investigated and then forgotten. Such deaths ought to compel governments, security institutions and society itself to ask difficult questions about what went wrong, what warning signs were missed, who was responsible and, most importantly, what must change to ensure that the same failure does not happen again. The real measure of a nation’s response to tragedy is therefore not simply the number of investigations it establishes or the number of official statements it issues, but whether the lessons extracted from tragedy are translated into lasting changes in institutions, procedures and culture.
The deaths of 37 people in the custody of the Nigeria Security and Civil Defence Corps in Minna, Niger State, have now confronted Nigeria with precisely such a moment. On September 17, 2026, 37 people detained in connection with suspected illegal mining died while in NSCDC custody. The precise circumstances and causes of their deaths remain matters for investigation. The NSCDC initially referred to a suspected disease outbreak, while reports from survivors and others have raised questions about overcrowding and ventilation. Those competing accounts must be properly tested against medical evidence and other available evidence rather than treated as established fact.
The Federal Government has constituted a ten-member independent committee to investigate the arrests, detention and deaths, determine responsibility where appropriate and recommend measures to prevent a recurrence. It has also directed that relevant records and material evidence be preserved and made available to the committee, while 23 officers and the Niger State Commandant have been suspended pending the investigation. These are necessary steps, but they are only the beginning. The real test will be whether the investigation is allowed to establish not merely how these people died, but whether failures in custody, supervision, medical care, detention conditions or institutional oversight contributed to what happened.
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History provides sobering examples of what happens when institutions fail to learn from catastrophe, but it also shows that painful experience can become the foundation for reform if institutions are willing to confront uncomfortable truths. One of the clearest examples is the Hillsborough disaster in Britain. On April 15, 1989, thousands of football supporters gathered at Hillsborough Stadium in Sheffield for an FA Cup semi-final between Liverpool and Nottingham Forest. Liverpool supporters were allocated the Leppings Lane end of the stadium, where a catastrophic crush developed in the central pens of the standing terrace. Ninety-seven people ultimately lost their lives. The disaster itself was devastating, but what followed became another chapter in the tragedy. The Taylor Inquiry was highly critical of South Yorkshire Police and identified failures in police control, yet the families of those who died spent decades challenging the official account and demanding answers.
Subsequent investigations, including the Hillsborough Independent Panel, uncovered evidence that transformed the understanding of what had happened. Fresh inquests were eventually held, and in 2016 the new inquest jury concluded that those who died had been unlawfully killed. Andrew Devine, who suffered catastrophic injuries at Hillsborough and died in 2021, was subsequently recognised as the 97th victim.
The Hillsborough story did not end with the fresh inquests. In December 2025, the Independent Office for Police Conduct and Operation Resolve published further findings into the conduct of South Yorkshire Police. The IOPC established that 327 police officers’ accounts had been amended and described this as part of what it characterised as a defensive approach by the force to controlling evidence submitted to investigators and the Taylor Inquiry. Hillsborough therefore became more than a story about crowd safety. It became a story about what institutions do when their own decisions, omissions or failures become part of the tragedy. Do they confront uncomfortable evidence? Do they preserve records? Do they cooperate fully with independent scrutiny? Do they listen to victims and bereaved families? Do they acknowledge institutional failure when the evidence demands it? And, perhaps most importantly, do they change afterwards? The significance of Hillsborough lies not only in the disaster itself but in the long struggle to establish the truth and the institutional lessons that emerged from that struggle.
Nigeria does not have to look as far as Britain to understand the responsibility that accompanies state custody. In March 1980, the Black Maria tragedy in Lagos became a national scandal after 50 detainees died while being transported in a police vehicle under severely cramped conditions. The tragedy should have compelled Nigeria to confront the responsibilities that arise when the state takes control of a person’s liberty and, with it, assumes responsibility for that person’s safety.
Forty-six years later, Nigeria is again confronted with deaths in the custody of a state security institution. The circumstances of the Black Maria tragedy and the deaths in Minna are not identical, and no responsible investigation should pretend otherwise. The connection lies elsewhere, in the question of whether institutions have learned sufficiently from previous failures to prevent another tragedy involving people whose safety depends entirely upon the state.
That responsibility is not merely moral; it is constitutional and legal. Section 34 of the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria protects the dignity of the human person and prohibits torture and inhuman or degrading treatment. Nigeria’s obligations under the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights reinforce protections relating to dignity, liberty and security of the person. These protections do not disappear when a person is arrested. Indeed, the logic is the opposite, that the moment the state deprives someone of liberty, that person’s dependence upon the state increases because the detainee can no longer simply leave an unsafe environment, seek medical treatment independently or call upon relatives and members of the public to intervene. A person suspected of illegal mining remains a human being. Suspicion is not conviction, and arrest does not strip a person of his humanity. The fact that someone is accused of an offence does not diminish the state’s responsibility to ensure that the person is treated humanely while in its custody.
This is why the conditions in which people are detained matter so profoundly. Adequate ventilation, sanitation, food, water, space, medical attention and supervision are not acts of institutional generosity; they are practical components of the responsibility that accompanies the state’s decision to take away a person’s liberty. Nor is that responsibility satisfied merely because rules exist on paper. A functioning custodial system must be capable of identifying danger before danger becomes fatal. If a detainee becomes seriously ill, there must be a mechanism capable of recognising the danger and ensuring that appropriate medical assistance is provided.
If a detention facility becomes dangerously overcrowded, somebody must have both the authority and the obligation to act. If a detainee complains that he cannot breathe, the complaint cannot disappear into an administrative void. If something goes wrong, the records must be sufficiently reliable to reconstruct what happened. These are not assumptions about what happened in Minna; they are the basic questions that any serious investigation into deaths in custody must answer.
This is where Minna becomes a question of institutional design rather than merely individual conduct. Institutions can sometimes describe catastrophes as failures of individuals, that an officer made the wrong decision, a supervisor failed to notice something, someone misunderstood a warning or somebody failed to follow a procedure. Such explanations may ultimately prove correct in particular cases, and where individual wrongdoing is established, there must be accountability. But an institution that stops there may simply identify the final link in a much longer chain. The harder questions are systemic, why was the condition allowed to develop, why did nobody intervene earlier, were responsibilities clearly assigned, were warnings recorded and communicated, were inspections meaningful, was independent oversight effective and, after previous tragedies, had the institution actually changed its procedures?
If an officer violated a rule, why was the violation possible? Was supervision inadequate? Was the officer properly trained? Was the facility overcrowded? Were commanders aware of dangerous conditions? Had similar concerns been raised before? Conversely, if officers followed existing procedures, then the adequacy of those procedures must itself be examined. A system cannot claim to have learned simply because it identifies someone who failed within a defective system.
The Federal Government’s decision to establish an independent committee is therefore important, but the credibility of the process will depend on whether the committee can follow the evidence wherever it leads. It must have access to the detention facility, custody registers, medical records, communications, duty rosters, officers’ statements, available recordings and every other piece of evidence capable of reconstructing what happened. It must establish how many people were detained, where they were held, for how long, what the capacity of the facility was, what the conditions were, what medical screening and assistance were available, whether complaints were made, who received them and what action was taken. None of these questions presupposes the guilt of any individual or institution. They are simply the questions required to determine whether the deaths were the result of an unforeseeable event, individual misconduct, systemic failure or some combination of circumstances.
The families of the dead must also remain at the centre of that process. They deserve to know who their relatives were, where they were detained, what happened to them, when they became ill, what medical assistance was sought, when they died and what happened afterwards. They should not have to spend years fighting the state for information about the final hours of their loved ones. One of the painful lessons of Hillsborough is the human cost that follows when bereaved families are forced into a prolonged struggle simply to have their accounts taken seriously. An investigation into a public tragedy should not become another source of trauma for those who have already lost someone. The families should not have to choose between accepting an official narrative and spending years trying to discover the truth for themselves.
Nor should reform be measured simply by the number of officers suspended, dismissed or prosecuted. Personnel changes may be necessary where wrongdoing is established, but institutional learning requires measurable changes in the conditions under which custody occurs. That could include clear limits on detention capacity, mandatory recording of admissions and movements, documented medical screening, regular independent inspections, minimum standards for ventilation, sanitation and space, accessible mechanisms through which detainees can make complaints safely, and clear obligations on officers to escalate concerns when a detainee’s health or safety is at risk. There should also be a mechanism for determining whether such reforms are actually implemented and whether they work. A report is not reform. A recommendation is not reform. A promise is not reform. Reform becomes meaningful only when the system changes in a way that can be demonstrated and independently assessed.
This is where many institutional responses to tragedy fail. A report is published, recommendations are announced, officials promise that lessons have been learned and public attention eventually moves elsewhere. Years later, nobody can say with confidence which recommendations were implemented, which were rejected, which remain outstanding or whether the changes made any practical difference. Learning requires institutional memory. A major death-in-custody investigation should therefore produce more than a report; it should produce a public record of recommendations, responsible agencies, implementation deadlines and subsequent progress. Where recommendations are not implemented, the public should know why. Without such a mechanism, every tragedy risks becoming another isolated episode, remembered emotionally for a time and then absorbed into the institutional memory without producing meaningful change.
The Black Maria tragedy occurred in 1980. Hillsborough occurred in 1989. The deaths in Minna have occurred in 2026. The circumstances are different, the institutions are different and the societies are different. The connection lies elsewhere, in the question of what institutions do with the knowledge that tragedy provides them. Black Maria should have compelled Nigeria to confront the responsibilities that accompany state custody. Hillsborough demonstrates how difficult and prolonged the process of institutional learning can become when public authorities fail to confront uncomfortable truths. Minna now presents Nigeria with another opportunity to ask whether its systems of custody, supervision, medical care and accountability are capable of learning before another tragedy occurs.
There will be statements after Minna. There will be condolences, investigations, expressions of shock and assurances that those responsible will be held accountable and that such a tragedy must never happen again. But those words will mean little if they are not followed by institutional change. The real test will come after the headlines disappear, whether the country knows how 37 people came to die in state custody, whether their families receive clear and credible answers, whether responsibility is established on the evidence, whether weaknesses in detention, supervision, medical care and oversight are identified and whether those weaknesses are corrected. If individual wrongdoing is established, there must be accountability. If systemic failures are established, there must be reform. If existing procedures were followed but proved inadequate, those procedures must be changed. If warnings were available but went unheard, the country must understand why an institution entrusted with human lives was able to ignore them.
That is why the most important question is not simply, Who is to blame? It is, What must change so that this cannot happen again? That is the question that transforms mourning into responsibility. The past cannot be changed and the dead cannot be restored to their families, but institutions can change, rules can change, practices can change and oversight can become stronger. A society can decide that people who enter state custody will not disappear into a world where their safety becomes invisible.
Nigeria cannot change what happened in the Black Maria tragedy. And it cannot change what happened in Minna. But it can decide what those tragedies will mean. The ultimate memorial to those who died will not be another plaque, another anniversary statement or another expression of regret. It will be a system in which the next person taken into custody is protected by institutions that have learned from the failures of the past. Because custody cannot mean the suspension of humanity.
