The Centre for Justice for Common Nigeria, speaking as a member of the Coalition of Nigerian Civil Society Organisations, has issued a detailed rebuttal to the call by lawyer and human rights activist Hamza N. Dantani for the termination of the tenure of the Commandant-General of the Nigeria Security and Civil Defence Corps, Professor Ahmed Abubakar Audi, insisting there is no legal, factual or moral basis for his dismissal and describing the demand as politically motivated, premature, misdirected and fundamentally at odds with the principles of natural justice, the presumption of innocence and basic organisational accountability.
The coalition said the tragic deaths of suspected illegal miners in NSCDC custody in Minna, Niger State, were a matter of grave concern to every Nigerian, and that it mourned with the families of the deceased and demanded that justice be served. It, however, stressed that justice must be served correctly through proper investigation, identification of actual culpability and lawful sanctions against those directly responsible, and must not be reduced to a spectacle of scapegoating senior officials who are not directly linked to the issue to appease public outrage.
According to the coalition, the central fact that Dantani and others calling for the Commandant-General’s removal consistently ignore is that Professor Audi neither ordered the operation nor was present during the arrests, nor did he have prior knowledge of the circumstances that led to the deaths until the tragedy struck. It explained that the enforcement operations in the M.I. Wushishi/Lukoto axis of Minna were conducted by the Niger State Command of the NSCDC on September 15 and 16, 2026, as state-level operations carried out under the authority and supervision of the Niger State Commandant, Suberu Siyaka Aniviye, who has since been suspended by the Federal Government and is currently under investigation.
The coalition argued that the Commandant-General, as the national head of the Corps, does not personally oversee every arrest operation conducted by state commands across the federation and that to suggest otherwise is to fundamentally misunderstand the structure and operational hierarchy of the NSCDC, since the chain of command places direct operational responsibility for such enforcement actions on state commandants and not on the national headquarters. It added that upon learning of the deaths, Professor Audi’s first action was to order an immediate investigation into the circumstances surrounding the incident, constituting a high-powered investigative team led by the Deputy Commandant-General in charge of Intelligence and Investigation, with a clear mandate to examine the condition of the suspects upon arrest, the duration of their detention, the conditions of custody, medical attention provided and all other relevant circumstances, describing this as the response of a leader committed to accountability and not of someone complicit in wrongdoing.
It noted that the persons directly culpable for the Minna tragedy are being held to account through due process, with the Niger State Commandant, Suberu Siyaka Aniviye, under whose watch the operations occurred, suspended by order of the Minister of Interior, Olubunmi Tunji-Ojo, pending the outcome of investigation, with the Minister stating clearly that it was an unfortunate incident and that a full investigation would be conducted while the commandant under whose watch it happened remained suspended. It added that twenty-one NSCDC officers have been identified and suspended in connection with the incident, being the personnel who conducted the arrests, supervised the detention facility and were directly responsible for the welfare of the detainees at the time of their deaths.
The coalition further noted that the Federal Government has constituted a 10-member independent committee including representatives of the Minna Emirate Council, the Niger State Government, human rights activists and legal experts to investigate the incident, determine responsibility, complicity, negligence and misconduct, and recommend appropriate action, with the committee given two weeks to complete its work, while the Inspector-General of Police and the Director-General of the Department of State Services have initiated separate investigations, meaning multiple layers of accountability are actively in motion. It maintained that the proper course of action is to allow these investigations to run their course and to sanction those found culpable based on evidence, and that demanding the dismissal of the Commandant-General before investigations conclude is precisely the kind of prejudgment that Dantani claims to oppose when he cites Section 36(5) of the Constitution on the presumption of innocence.
It accused Dantani of applying the constitutional principles selectively and inconsistently, arguing that if the presumption of innocence applies to citizens accused of crimes, as it unquestionably does, then it must also apply to public officials accused of administrative or supervisory failures. It stressed that Professor Audi has not been charged with any crime, no evidence has been presented linking him personally to the deaths, and no witness has testified that he ordered, sanctioned or had knowledge of unlawful conduct in Minna, adding that to demand his removal before any investigation has concluded is to treat allegation as proof, the very thing Dantani warns against when he says that arrest, detention or allegation must never become a substitute for proof before a competent court. It said the rule of law demands consistency and cannot be invoked to protect citizens from state power while simultaneously being discarded to destroy the career of a public official against whom no evidence of personal wrongdoing exists.
The coalition said a deeper principle was at stake, noting that security institutions function through hierarchical accountability and that when a failure occurs, responsibility must be traced through the chain of command to the specific individuals whose actions or omissions caused the harm, warning that accountability which skips levels to punish the most senior official regardless of actual involvement is not accountability but scapegoating. It listed the NSCDC’s response to the tragedy as including the immediate suspension of the officers directly involved, the constitution of an investigative panel by the Commandant-General himself, cooperation with external investigations by the Ministry of Interior, the Nigeria Police and the Department of State Services, and a commitment to sanction any officer found culpable whether through administrative, disciplinary or criminal processes, saying this is how a responsible institution responds to a crisis and not by summarily dismissing its leader before a single finding of fact has been made.
It warned that if the Commandant-General were to be removed now, the message would be that any time officers under a leader’s command commit wrongdoing, the leader must be dismissed regardless of their own conduct, and that public officials can be sacrificed to public pressure without evidence or due process, adding that such a precedent would be catastrophic for governance in Nigeria, incentivise scapegoating, discourage competent leadership and make a mockery of the very rule of law Dantani claims to champion.
The coalition said it must not lose sight of the human tragedy at the centre of the matter, as thirty-seven people died in custody and their families deserve answers, accountability and justice, but that the path to accountability runs through evidence, investigation and due process and not through political theatre, with the suspended officers, the ongoing investigations and the committee of inquiry being the proper mechanisms that must be allowed to work. It called on President Bola Ahmed Tinubu to resist pressure to prematurely dismiss the Commandant-General and instead allow the independent investigations to conclude and be made public, on the Federal Government to ensure that the investigative committee is truly independent, adequately resourced and that its findings are published transparently, on the NSCDC leadership to continue cooperating fully with all investigations and implement whatever reforms are necessary to prevent such tragedies from recurring, and on Dantani and other activists to channel their energy toward ensuring that the actual investigation process is thorough, transparent and just rather than demanding the head of an official whose only sin appears to be that he leads the institution in which a tragedy occurred.
In conclusion, the coalition said justice must hold the actually guilty accountable and not the conveniently positioned, stressing that Professor Ahmed Abubakar Audi did not order the attack, was not present and had no knowledge of it from what the suspended commandant said, that the persons who were culpable have been suspended and are facing investigation, and that the Commandant-General responded to the tragedy with transparency and decisive action. It declared that there is no basis for his removal and every reason to allow the investigations to proceed without political interference, urging all Nigerians to support the cause of genuine accountability, the kind that punishes wrongdoing based on evidence and not on the politics of outrage.
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