The governor of Nigeria’s Plateau State has restructured the region’s security leadership following years of deadly communal violence.
Governor Caleb Mutfwang appointed retired Brigadier-General Nash Yakubu to head Operation Rainbow, the state-owned security outfit tasked with intelligence gathering and community policing.
General Yakubu joins the agency after a 35-year career in the Nigerian Army, where he served in counter-insurgency operations in Nigeria’s north-east and south-east, as well as UN peacekeeping missions in Sierra Leone and Sudan.
Plateau State has long been one of Nigeria’s primary security flashpoints, plagued by recurring ethno-religious clashes, farmer-herder conflicts, and reprisal killings that have left hundreds dead and thousands displaced.
School safety focus
As part of the shake-up, the outgoing head of the security outfit, retired Brigadier-General Gakji Shipi Goshwe, has been redeployed to lead the state’s Safe School Programme.
The initiative aims to secure educational institutions in the wake of mass kidnappings by armed gangs that have targeted schools across northern Nigeria in recent years.
The governor also named retired Major-General Bala Isandu, a former intelligence chief at the Ministry of Defence, as his new Special Adviser on Security.
A government statement said the appointments take immediate effect and are aimed at strengthening the state’s security framework to better protect lives and property in vulnerable rural communities.
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