His name has been everywhere and on every Nigerians’ lips. His picture is all over the social media, yet nobody knows Captain Tijjani Balarabe’s life before the Taraba saga that made him a focus of public attention and keeps him so for weeks on end.
Daily Trust on Sunday has dug up everything about him – a civilian, recruit, soldier, an officer; his house, planned bakery business and more.
In the early 1990s, the dusty streets of Tudun Fera, one of the communities in Jos North Local Government, the heart of Jos in Plateau State, would have been the most tranquil in the city centre, but for an energetic first generation of secondary school leavers. Freshly out of school and ambitious, these boys cut a new, boisterous image for a neighbourhood that hitherto knew only the austere and modest lifestyle of the Islamic scholars that first settled there – their parents. The youngsters played a lot of football to fill the vacuum their graduation from secondary school had created. But their eyes, buoyed by their individual aspirations and school certificates, were cast far afield.
Among these youths searching for what to do was Tijjani Balarabe, the now infamous army captain who has continued to grab the headlines over an alleged order he gave soldiers from 93 Battalion in Taraba to kill police operatives transporting a suspected kidnap kingpin, Hamisu Bala, alias Wadume. Read more