The Kano State Police Command has arrested eight suspects in two separate intelligence-driven operations targeting drug peddling and organised thuggery, part of a widening crackdown that police say is being sustained under the national reform agenda of Inspector-General of Police, Tunji Disu.
According to a statement issued by the Command’s Public Relations Officer, CSP Abdullahi Haruna Kiyawa, operatives of the Surveillance Team attached to Panshekara Police Division acted on credible intelligence on Tuesday, September 9, at about 2:30 p.m., intercepting Samson Yakubu, 21, of Samegu Quarters, along with seven other suspects at a known black spot in the area. A search of the suspects turned up 15 capsules of Pregabalin, five tablets of Diazepam, ten tablets of Exol, and a quantity of dried leaves suspected to be Indian hemp. The suspects remain in custody as detectives work to trace the source of the drugs and identify other members of the supply network.
In a related operation the same day, between 1 p.m. and 9 p.m., officers attached to the Kunchi/Ghari Division carried out a coordinated market patrol and raid at Matanfada Market — an area the Command describes as notorious for youths who intimidate traders and residents during market sessions. Five suspects were arrested: Abdullahi Isah of Dustin, Haruna Isah of Daqarawa Village, Habu Badamasi of Dan Taimu Village, Gambo Ya’u of Kura Village, and Abubakar Dahiru of Farau Village. Investigations are continuing, with police said to be intensifying efforts to track down accomplices.
Commissioner of Police, Kano State Command, CP Ibrahim Adamu Bakori, commended the operatives for their professionalism, saying the Command would sustain pressure on drug abuse, thuggery and violent crime across the state. “In line with the IGP’s policing vision and our mandate to ensure a safe and secure Kano, we will continue to be proactive. We are sending a clear message to criminal elements that Kano State will not be a breeding ground for their activities,” Bakori said.
The Panshekara and Kunchi/Ghari raids fit a pattern the Kano Command itself has flagged as central to the state’s insecurity: “Fadan Daba,” the local term for the gang-style street thuggery — machete clashes, extortion at markets, phone snatching — that has plagued Kano’s metropolitan wards in recent years. CP Bakori has previously said that when he took charge of the Command in March 2025, a threat assessment identified Fadan Daba, drug abuse and mobile-phone robbery as the state’s principal security challenges, alongside bandit infiltration along border local government areas. A confidential police report obtained by PRNigeria earlier this year went further, finding that drug abuse and trafficking are responsible for over 70 per cent of major crimes in Kano State and that organised Fadan Daba groups are largely sustained by drug distribution networks that supply both funding and operational muscle. That report, which noted 3,081 suspects were arrested for major offences in 2025, recommended a multi-agency task force to coordinate enforcement — a recommendation the Command has since acted on, formally partnering in August with the Kano State Multi-Agency Taskforce on Drugs and Illicit Trafficking, chaired by Muhuyi Rimin-Gado, to run joint intelligence-sharing and operations against drug networks feeding the thuggery problem.
That template has played out repeatedly across Kano through 2026. The NDLEA’s Kano Strategic Command has run a string of raids this year under operations code-named “Sharar Mafaka” and “Restore Order,” including an August exercise that saw roughly 80 suspects arrested and 16 known drug joints dislodged across the state within a single week, with targeted locations including Panshekara itself. Just days ago, a broader state task force combining police, the Department of State Services, NDLEA and other agencies carried out overnight raids that swept up more than 70 suspected drug abusers, as part of a stated push to remove thousands of drug abusers and thugs from Kano’s streets for rehabilitation. Pregabalin, Diazepam and Exol tablets — the same substances recovered in Tuesday’s Panshekara arrests — have turned up repeatedly in NDLEA seizures across the city this year.
Police say the Kano operations are being carried out under the directive of IGP Tunji Disu (full name Olatunji Rilwan Disu), who was appointed acting Inspector-General of Police by President Bola Tinubu on February 24, 2026, following the resignation of his predecessor, Kayode Egbetokun. Disu was subsequently confirmed by the Nigeria Police Council on March 2 and formally sworn in as the 23rd substantive IGP on March 4, 2026. His appointment was widely read within official circles as a deliberate shift toward intelligence-led and citizen-focused policing, and by the second week of June, operational records under his leadership pointed to measurable outcomes nationally, including the arrest of more than 28 suspected terrorists, 85 kidnapping suspects and roughly 62 armed-robbery suspects across different commands.
The IGP has also pushed commands to deepen ties with local communities, and Kano offers a direct illustration of that directive in action. In May, the Command held a strategic community dialogue in Dala Local Government Area explicitly framed by its own spokesman, CSP Kiyawa, as organised “in line with the directive of the Inspector-General of Police, IGP Olatunji Rilwan Disu, mandating state police commands to deepen community engagement and collaboration with residents.” That forum, led by CP Bakori and attended by traditional rulers, ward heads and the state governor’s special adviser on community policing, was convened specifically to tackle Fadan Daba — the same phenomenon at the heart of Tuesday’s Kunchi/Ghari market raid. The same public-trust logic underpins the Command’s acknowledgment of “members of the public, community leaders, and vigilante groups” for the tips that led to this week’s arrests. Disu has separately directed commands nationwide to sharpen the financial-crime dimension of their work against organised networks, instructing police to channel cases involving terrorism financing, banditry and related offences to specialised investigative units so as to follow illicit money trails — an approach that maps naturally onto the drug-financed thuggery networks the Kano report identified.
All eight suspects arrested in Panshekara and Kunchi/Ghari are expected to be charged to court once investigations conclude, the Command said, while urging residents to report suspicious activity to the nearest police station. With Kano’s own data linking the bulk of its major crime to narcotics, and with the NDLEA, state task forces and now police Surveillance Teams all mounting near-weekly raids on the same category of black spots, the twin operations point to a sustained, if incremental, campaign against the drug-and-thuggery economy that has long troubled the state — one the Command frames as answering directly to Abuja’s push for intelligence-led policing under IGP Disu.
