Reported by: Ijeoma G | Edited by: Oravbiere Osayomore Promise.
The Katsina Community Watch Corps has arrested two men accused of supplying ammunition and running errands for one of the state's most wanted bandit leaders, Kachalla Maha, in an operation that has once again exposed the civilian networks that keep armed groups alive and dangerous. The suspects, identified as Abubakar from Jaya and Ubale Change from Matazu, were apprehended in Matazu Local Government Area and have confessed to their involvement, according to a video of their interrogation obtained by SaharaReporters.
The confessions, delivered in Hausa, lay bare a supply chain that is chilling in its simplicity. Abubakar told his interrogators that he was sent to collect ammunition from Ubale, whom he named as his contact. Asked how many times he had collected ammunition from Ubale, Abubakar said twice. Asked where he collected it, he said at Ubale's house. Asked where he took it after collecting it, he said he left and later went to a location behind a police station. When the interviewer turned to Ubale, he confirmed Abubakar's account and said he had given him ammunition twice. Ubale denied selling the ammunition himself, saying he collected it from a man named Mustapha, a pump operator from Karefa, who gave it to him twice before he handed it over to Abubakar. When asked whether he considered what he had done to be a good thing, Ubale did not hesitate. "Honestly, there is nothing good about what I have done," he said. Asked what benefit he gained, he admitted, "Honestly, I benefited from it." He also told the interviewer that there were others involved, others planning to join, and others already getting involved.
The arrests come amid a broader and deeply troubling pattern in Katsina State, where the government has repeatedly disclosed that civilian collaboration is the backbone of banditry. The state's Commissioner for Internal Security and Home Affairs, Alhaji Nasir Mu'azu, said in August 2026 that 80 per cent of bandit attacks in Katsina are aided by local informants and suppliers who provide food, fuel, drugs and intelligence to criminal groups in the forests. He cited individuals who sold soft drinks for N3,000 and fuel for N5,000 per litre to bandits, and described a case in which a man connived with bandits to abduct his own diabetic father, reserving the man's daily medication in the hideout before collecting N30 million in ransom and receiving N8 million for his role. Governor Dikko Radda has gone further, stating that more than 90 per cent of the bandits terrorising the state are not strangers but homegrown criminals who live among the communities they attack. "These are not strangers," he said. "We know their families, their fathers, their grandfathers. They are from our towns and villages."
The scale of the complicity is staggering. The Community Watch Corps has arrested more than 1,000 informants working for criminal gangs since its establishment, according to Governor Radda. In May 2025, a 50-year-old man named Birish from Gozo in Zango Local Government Area was arrested for supplying fuel, food, water and drugs to bandits, admitting that a woman was sent to collect the goods on the bandits' behalf. In May 2026, police arrested 45-year-old Surajo Isyaku, who confessed to supplying intelligence to bandits in Matazu LGA, participating in two kidnapping operations in Sayaya village where victims paid N7 million in ransom, and receiving N900,000 as his share. He also admitted to inviting bandits to Dukawa village on two occasions where 14 cows were rustled, for which he received N40,000. The pattern is consistent: ordinary people, often driven by poverty, profit or coercion, become the eyes, ears and logistics providers for the very criminals who terrorise their neighbours.
The question that the arrests of Abubakar and Ubale raise is not whether the supply networks exist. The evidence is overwhelming that they do. The question is how they continue to operate within communities, and what can be done to stop locals from aiding criminal groups. The answers are uncomfortable. Poverty is a powerful recruiter. The economic opportunities in many rural communities in Katsina are scarce, and the money offered by bandits for information, food, fuel and ammunition can be more than a person earns in months of legitimate work. Fear is another factor. Communities that have witnessed the brutality of bandit attacks may calculate that cooperating with the criminals is safer than resisting them. And in some cases, the bonds of family and kinship complicate the picture. A brother, a cousin or a neighbour may be part of the gang, making the line between criminality and community loyalty dangerously blurred.
The government's response has combined kinetic operations with efforts to disrupt the support networks. The Community Watch Corps, which recruited 2,500 personnel from affected communities, was designed to gather intelligence and identify informants and logistical collaborators. Governor Radda has urged residents to expose bandit collaborators, stressing that lasting peace cannot be achieved while criminal networks receive support from within. The Chief Imam of the National Mosque, Abuja, Sheikh Ibrahim Makari, has called for stronger community-based intelligence gathering, proper moral upbringing of children and greater involvement of retired public servants and security personnel in efforts to make communities safer. But arrests alone will not solve the problem. The government must address the poverty and lack of economic opportunities that drive individuals to cooperate with bandits. It must provide alternative livelihoods and social welfare programmes. It must strengthen the presence of security agencies in rural areas and rebuild the trust between communities and law enforcement that years of neglect and abuse have eroded. And it must ensure that those arrested are prosecuted in courts, so that the message is sent that aiding bandits is not a low-risk, high-reward venture but a criminal offence that carries consequences.
The arrests of Abubakar and Ubale are a victory for the Community Watch Corps. They are also a warning. The men who supplied ammunition to Kachalla Maha were not strangers from another state or foreign mercenaries. They were residents of Matazu Local Government Area, members of the same communities that have suffered from the violence their actions enabled. Until the conditions that make cooperation with bandits attractive, profitable or seemingly unavoidable are addressed, the supply networks will continue to operate. The question is whether the government has the will and the resources to confront that reality, or whether the next arrests will be the same story with different names.
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