His ambition in life was to become a pilot and fly huge aeroplane around the globe. But because his poor parents could not afford to pay the huge amount required to train a pilot, he opted for his other love, the police.
But before becoming a police officer, Abba Kyari, the top cop in charge of the Inspector General of Police Intelligence Response Team (IRT), played the role of a judge advocate in his family of over 30 children, where he presided over the family court and meted punishment to whoever was found guilty.
So, after his secondary and university education, he applied to join the police. He was successful and thereafter went for training. However, before applying to join the police, Kyari, had applied for the job of a lecturer in one of the universities and another at the printing and minting company.
Incidentally, he got the offer as a lecturer while at the same time he was called for training at the police college, even as the offer from the printing and minting company came when he was already in training at the police college.
Upon his passing out from the police college, he was posted to Adamawa State where he started his career as an officer. As a young officer, Kyari said that he enjoyed watching investigative channels, reading books on crime and investigations, coupled with his background of being the judge in his family. All these, he said, helped built him to become good at what he is doing today.
Married with children, the Yobe State-born cop, said the secret to his success and that of his team lies purely on God first, technology, dedication, hard work, determination and most of the welfare of his men. In an interview, Kyari, who has been a cop for about 20 years, said that even though his kind of job involves taking very dangerous risks, what keep him going is when he gets the culprits arrested after a hard chase, which sometimes take months and even years. On bribes he said:
Yes, when we arrested Evans, he offered us $2million if we can keep quiet and let him go and he offered to provide the cash in 48hours.
But we rejected his offer, we had to move away with him and then I blew the thing up. And I think that should be the highest amount that I have ever been tempted with. There was also the case where some people stole money from a Bureau De Change outlet totaling $2million that was brought to us and we were able to recover $1.8million from the thieves among them a bank staff.So, after the recovery, those guys offered to pay us 50 per cent of the money that we recovered which is about $900,000. We also rejected that offer and informed the owner of the money about the arrest and recovering $1.8million. So, that was another big offer that was made to us.
Photo Credit: Getty
