Law enforcement groups in Northern Mindanao have created a special inter-agency investigation team to probe the October 10 murder of whistleblower Niruh Kyle Antatico, a former National Irrigation Administration (NIA) legal researcher, in Cagayan de Oro City. Police have identified a person of interest based on initial leads, while the NIA central office has offered a P100,000 reward for information leading to the arrest of those behind the murder. The task force, led by the regional police office, includes the Cagayan de Oro City Police Office, the Criminal Investigation and Detection Group (CIDG), the National Bureau of Investigation (NBI), and other law enforcement agencies. Investigators have obtained CCTV footage from the crime scene and are examining it to track down the gunmen. Antatico, a 40-year-old father of three, was gunned down on Friday while driving through Barangay Patag, Cagayan de Oro, with dashcam footage showing two helmeted men on a motorcycle pulling up beside his car and opening fire on a busy afternoon street. Police suspect Antatico’s social media posts may hold the key to why he was murdered, as he had begun criticizing the culture of deceit and waste in the NIA in Northern Mindanao and Lanao del Sur. In the days before his murder, Antatico had posted about a project in Maguing town, Lanao del Sur, citing figures and implying that officials had signed off on ghost work. He had been receiving death threats since November 2024, shortly after he began flagging alleged NIA “ghost projects” which farmers never benefited from. Antatico’s anti-corruption advocacy may have made him a target, and investigators are circling back to what his Facebook posts had hinted at. He had posted photos of a P75-million irrigation project in a non-farming area of Maguing, Lanao del Sur, showing irrigation canals half-finished, earthworks eroding, and concrete cracked, yet the government paperwork showed that the main and lateral canals had been completed. The NIA central office had ordered an ocular inspection, but it never happened, and instead, the regional office claimed a walkthrough had been done the previous year, and that the Commission on Audit (COA) reports showed no problems with the project. Antatico had personally inspected the site and found numerous and serious irregularities, including irrigation canals that were disjointed, heavily silted, structurally damaged, and shorter than specified. He had written a strongly worded letter to his former superiors, asking if they were merely implementing irrigation projects, paying contractors, and then abandoning them, and allowing these projects to deteriorate so they can be later funded again for so-called “repairs” or “restoration”. The murder has sparked outrage, with Cagayan de Oro 1st District Representative Lordan Suan and Misamis Oriental 2nd District Representative Yevgeny Vincente Emano pushing for a House resolution condemning Antatico’s killing and urging police to conduct an urgent and thorough investigation to bring those responsible to justice.
