The 37 people who died in Minna custody cannot speak for themselves anymore. The officers being held over their deaths can. That is why the way the two sides of this tragedy are being treated matters.
The dead have left behind families who want to know how their sons, brothers and relatives went into the custody of the Nigeria Security and Civil Defence Corps alive and came out dead. The officers have been suspended, moved to Abuja and placed in protective custody while investigators try to determine what happened. Then, before that investigation had established individual responsibility, 24 of them were paraded before the cameras.
That image is now part of the story.
It should not be.
The country has every reason to be outraged by the deaths. Thirty-seven people dying in the custody of a government security agency is not an administrative mishap to be buried under official language. It is a grave failure that demands a serious accounting of what happened inside that detention facility and of the decisions that brought those people there in the first place.
The Federal Government has constituted a 10-member independent committee to investigate the arrests, detention, causes and circumstances of the deaths and determine responsibility, complicity, negligence and misconduct. The NSCDC has also said that 24 personnel are being held for interrogation and disciplinary action and will be made available to the investigation and other panels.
That is the proper work.
What is harder to understand is why the public should first be shown the people being investigated as though the investigation has already produced its answer.
There is a difference between suspending an officer and publicly humiliating him. There is a difference between removing someone from his position so that an investigation can proceed without interference and presenting him before cameras in circumstances that make guilt look settled before the evidence has been tested.
Those differences are not technicalities.
They are the substance of due process.
The government may have very good reasons to suspend the officers. If there has been a catastrophic failure inside a command, those connected to it can be removed from operational positions while records are secured and statements taken. Nobody should object to that simply because an investigation is still under way.
But suspension is an administrative measure. It is not a conviction.
The official list itself shows why caution is necessary. Among those suspended are the Niger State Commandant, arresting officers, investigation personnel, a legal officer, station guards, duty officers and personnel assigned to guard duties.
They were not all doing the same job.
That matters.
The officer who made an arrest is not automatically responsible for what happened to a detainee hours later. The officer who was assigned to a legal function cannot simply be presumed to have known what was happening inside a cell. A guard on a particular shift cannot be held responsible for events that occurred outside that shift merely because his name appears on a list. A commander may have responsibility for failures that occurred far below him, but that too has to be established.
The investigation exists precisely because these distinctions have to be made.
If an officer failed to perform a duty, the evidence should show it. If somebody ignored a warning, that should be established. If somebody contributed directly to a death, that person should face the consequences. If responsibility reaches a higher level of command, the investigation should follow it there.
And if an officer had nothing to do with what happened, the same investigation should be capable of saying so.
That is not protecting the NSCDC.
It is protecting the integrity of the process by which the truth is supposed to emerge.
The more uncomfortable question, however, concerns what happened after the arrests.
The NSCDC has legal powers to arrest and detain within its statutory responsibilities. So the argument should not be reduced to the claim that the Corps had no authority to arrest people suspected of illegal mining. It did.
The authority to arrest, however, comes with responsibility for the person arrested.
Once the state locks somebody inside a detention facility, the detainee cannot decide that the room is too crowded and walk out. He cannot leave because the air has become unbearable. He cannot take himself to a hospital when he becomes seriously ill. He depends on the people who have custody of him.
That is the point at which the state’s responsibility becomes especially serious.
Reports about the Minna deaths have raised questions about overcrowding and ventilation, while Reuters reported that many of the dead were between 14 and 18 years old. The precise cause and circumstances of the deaths remain matters for investigation.
Those facts, if established, make the questions even more urgent.
How many people were arrested during the operation? How many were taken to the facility? What was its capacity? Who decided that it could accommodate them? Who was responsible for the detainees? What did the guards see? Were people complaining about their condition? Did anyone ask for medical attention? Who received that information? Was any superior officer informed? What did the command do when it became clear that something was wrong?
The answers should be found in records, duty rosters, statements, medical evidence and the physical conditions of the facility. They should not be manufactured from the spectacle of officers standing before television cameras.
There is another fact that deserves attention. Niger State Governor Mohammed Bago has said the state government was not informed about the arrests before the deaths and that 67 people had been taken into custody, 37 of whom subsequently died. He said the precise cause of death had not yet been established.
If that account is accurate, it raises questions beyond the conduct of individual guards.
It raises questions about coordination, command, notification and the way federal security operations are conducted inside a state.
That is why reducing the entire tragedy to a group of officers standing in Abuja may actually make the investigation easier to avoid rather than easier to understand.
There is a natural hunger, whenever something terrible happens, to see somebody punished. It reassures the public that government is acting. It produces pictures. It creates the impression that responsibility has been located.
But finding people to display is not the same as finding out what happened.
The families of the dead deserve better than that.
One parent has said that two of his children, Ibrahim, 17, and Abubakar, 12, died in the incident. He said the boys had left home for the mining site and never returned.
That is the human reality behind the official number 37.
Every one of those deaths represents a home that received terrible news, a family that began asking questions and a person whose final hours are now the subject of an investigation. The seriousness of the alleged offence that brought a person into custody does not erase what the state owes him once it takes control of his freedom.
Illegal mining is a legitimate enforcement concern. Nigeria has every right to pursue those who unlawfully exploit its mineral resources. But arrest is not a death sentence, and detention does not suspend a person’s right to humane treatment.
The same principle applies to the officers.
Being connected to an operation does not make a person guilty of everything that happened during it.
That is why the public parade was unnecessary. It added spectacle to a case that desperately needs evidence.
And once an image like that enters the public space, it is almost impossible to take back. If an officer is eventually cleared, the government may issue a statement. But the photograph will already have travelled through newspapers, television, social media and family conversations. The accusation may remain long after the official record has changed.
The state should understand the weight of that power.
It should also understand that accountability becomes weaker, not stronger, when it is performed before it is proved.
There is no need to choose between justice for the dead and fairness to the living. The two obligations arise from the same principle: the state must exercise its power responsibly.
If the investigation finds negligence, prosecute negligence. If it finds abuse, punish abuse. If it finds that officers ignored obvious danger, hold them accountable. If it finds that command decisions contributed to the deaths, follow the chain of command wherever the evidence leads.
But if an officer is cleared, say so.
Do not leave him permanently carrying a public conviction that no court, disciplinary panel or independent inquiry ever imposed.
The government has already told Nigerians that it wants a transparent and unhindered investigation. The best way to honour that promise is to stop trying to make the investigation look finished before it has begun to tell the country what happened.
Thirty-seven people died in government custody.
That is the fact that should haunt this entire process.
The country does not need another photograph of officers being made to look guilty. It needs the truth about the people who died, the conditions in which they were held, the decisions that placed them there and the failures that allowed 37 lives to be lost.
The investigation should follow the evidence wherever it leads. If an officer is responsible, he should answer for it. If the responsibility goes higher up the chain of command, those involved should not be shielded. And if the evidence reveals a wider failure within the system, that failure must also be confronted. Just as importantly, anyone who has been publicly linked to the tragedy but is found not to have been responsible should be cleared openly and without hesitation.
The 37 who died in Minna cannot speak for themselves anymore. The least the state owes them is the truth, however uncomfortable that truth may be. Justice is not served by finding someone to blame quickly; it is served by having the courage to follow the facts to wherever they lead, including to places the government may not want to look. For the dead, the truth is no longer a matter of politics. It is the last justice they are owed.
Stephanie Shaakaa shaakaastephanie02@gmail.com
08034861434
