By Group Captain Sadeeq Garba Shehu (rtd)
When a serious security incident occurs, whether in Rukuba, Plateau State, or in the North East where our security personnel are tragically killed, the first instinct of the state is understandably to respond with urgency. There is justifiable anger. There is demand for immediate results, sometimes even reprisals. When the President says “get those responsible” or demands visible results, security agencies come under enormous extra pressure to demonstrate that they are acting, or “Something is being done.”
But this is precisely the moment when professionalism matters most.
If caution and professionalism are not exercised, in security operations, “doing something” could become “arrest someone at all costs.” It must not mean striking the wrong target, rounding up convenient suspects, or charging persons merely to reassure the public and Mr President that progress is being made. A suspect remains a suspect. Arrest is not conviction. Allegation is not proof. Public anger is not evidence.
The reports from Angwan Rukuba, Plateau State, where market leaders and traders, surprisingly and admirably from across religious and ethnic divides, have publicly claimed that some of the arraigned suspects were with them, protected them, and even helped some traders reach safety on the night of the attack, raise serious questions that deserve careful, professional examination. These claims may or may not ultimately be established. But they cannot be ignored.
There is something deeply compelling about the chorus now emerging from Angwan Rukuba. Traders cutting across religious and ethnic lines — Berom, Hausa, Igbo, Christian and Muslim — have stepped forward to vouch for the character and even the presence of those arrested , all of them 5 Muslims, on the night of the attack. When such diverse voices converge on a single narrative, it naturally provokes the old question behind vox populi is Vox Dei: how could so many people be of one voice?
But this is where discipline in reasoning must match discipline in investigation.
Vox populi is not evidence. But it is a signal. And in security work, signals matter. In a society as plural and fragile as ours, the fact that people from different ethnic and religious backgrounds are speaking in one voice should not be romanticized, but neither should it be dismissed. It is not the verdict. But it is a warning light that investigators must examine carefully.
Professionalism lies in holding all possibilities open simultaneously while allowing evidence, not pressure, to determine the outcome. The arrested persons may be guilty. They may be innocent. Some witnesses may be mistaken. Some may be truthful. Some accounts may be incomplete. That is precisely why investigation exists.
This is why due process is not a luxury; it is an operational necessity. A weak or hurried investigation does not strengthen national security, it undermines it. Wrongful arrests leave the real perpetrators free, erode public trust, and damage the very intelligence networks that security agencies depend on. In fragile environments, such errors can become new grievances, and new grievances are precisely what adversaries exploit.
Speed is required. But justice for the victims of Rukuba requires more than speed. It requires accuracy. It requires evidence, witness statements, timelines, forensic support where available, phone records, movement analysis, and careful cross-checking of alibis. It requires investigators to resist political pressure, media pressure, ethnic pressure, and institutional pressure.
The same principle applies in military and security contexts. After attacks on troops, retaliation must not replace investigation. Precision must not give way to anger. The strength of the state lies not only in its ability to act swiftly, but in its discipline to act correctly.
We must therefore be clear. Let the guilty be found and prosecuted firmly. But let the innocent not be sacrificed on the altar of urgency. Let public testimony be neither dismissed nor deified, but examined. Let every claim be tested, every alibi verified, every contradiction resolved through evidence.
Because in security, the wrong arrest is not progress. The wrong target is not success. And justice built on error is not justice at all; it is simply another form of insecurity.
But we must not lose a lesson here: when a divided community speaks with one voice, it reveals something deeper than the crisis itself. In the midst of tragedy and tension in Angwan Rukuba, Muslim and Christian traders, Berom, Hausa, Igbo—people so often cast along opposing lines—have chosen, however briefly, unity over division. They are not advancing politics or identity claims; they are affirming something more fundamental: shared humanity and lived truth.
It is a reminder that even in our most fragile moments, the bonds of everyday coexistence—built in markets, in neighborhoods, in ordinary life—can rise above the narratives that seek to divide us. And in a country like ours, that is not just noteworthy; it is worth protecting. DSS SECURITY @Department of States Service @Department of State Service https://web.facebook.com/groups/2334267007040791
Group Captain Sadeeq Garba Shehu (rtd) is a Security & Defence Analyst/Conflict Security & Development Consult Ltd