“You have two options now: To live or to die.” That was the chilling message with which a senior police officer confronted Mubarak Bello, a 38-year-old whistleblower and father of four young children, whose revelation has left the Katsina State police command fiercely rattled since 2019.
Bello, a civilian staff in the finance unit of the state command had exposed three layers of massive fraud perpetrated by the command’s high-ranking but heavily corrupt police officers: a payroll inflated with thousands of phantom officers; illegal “tax” deductions ranging from N5,000 to N80,000 levied on officers’ monthly salaries; and a fraudulent loan scheme through fake companies in which loanees were fraudulently deducted long after repaying the loans.
