Kidnappers everywhere

They seem to be lurking just about everywhere, stalking hapless quarries. Not that the threat they lately pose is really new, but the frequency of their attacks is ballooning off the handle and their menace creeping ever closer to citizens’ safety zones. Kidnappers are on a rage run across our country and you never know if some of their kind aren’t hovering on the next bend down the road or who their next victim might be. Again, it isn’t that banditry and other forms of security breaches are novel in our national life in Nigeria, but the pervasive impunity of kidnappers appears to have taken the challenge to a distinct peak.

Only last weekend, five pastors of the Redeemed Christian Church of God (RCCG) were abducted on their way to a ministers’ retreat of the church of which Vice President Yemi Osinbajo is himself a pastor. As at when this piece was rested, they were yet to be rescued; and the incident has elicited open lamentations from revered and typically reticent leader of the church, Pastor Enoch Adeboye.

Earlier in the week, it was reported that a 24-year-old lady went missing during her routine roadwork in Ajah, Lagos State. Gbemisola Alabi was suspected to have been abducted while jogging on Sunday along the urban Monastery Road, near Novare Mall by Shoprite in Shangotedo. Although the police were initially said to have contested the family’s claim that her disappearance was a case of kidnapping, since no one had called in to demand ransom payment, subsequent reports indicated that security agents were on a hunt for suspected kidnappers.

About the same time last week, the police rescued three employees of an Ibadan hospital who were abducted close to Ajebo on the busy Lagos-Ibadan expressway on Tuesday. The hospital staff, among them the son of the Chief Medical Director, were kidnapped by bandits who reportedly opened fire to intercept the vehicle they were travelling in from Lagos at about 7p.m. on the fateful day. Of course, that expressway has historically been notorious for armed robberies, which the police had made a sterling career curtailing. Still, considering the typically high volume of traffic on the route said to be Nigeria’s busiest, and its centrality to high-density cities of Lagos and Ibadan, brazen kidnappings on that highway posed a huge threat to safe motoring and other socio-economic operations in the axis, which incidentally hosts the largest singular concentration of religious communities anywhere in this country.

The police made known in a statement last week that when they stormed the kidnappers’ suspected hideout to free the hospital workers, they found four other persons that were subsequently abducted by the hoodlums but had gone unreported in public domain. That is to say only God knows how many more persons have been abducted without notice on that expressway as on other highways across this country.

The rage run of kidnappers is a national plague tagging with random killings of unarmed citizens by roving gunmen. Among prominent kidnap victims in recent times is the mother of former national football team coach, Samson Siasia, who was abducted some weeks ago in Bayelsa State. Her kidnappers were reported to have demanded a ransom and she was yet to be freed as at last weekend. It was two weeks ago that four Turkish nationals kidnapped in Kwara State regained their freedom. The diplomatically shaming incident left Kwara State Governor AbdulRahman AbdulRazaq rationalising that it was a “one-off event (that) does not represent who we are as a people.” Perhaps most embarrassing yet for the Muhammadu Buhari presidency was the abduction by gunmen in May of the Magajin Garin Daura and father-in-law of the President’s aide de camp, Alhaji Musa Umar, who did not regain his freedom until after two months in abductors’ captivity. Cases with lesser profile are too numerous to mention.

Apparently to discourage the trend, the police and relations of abductees rarely confirm ransom-for-freedom deals. But there is little doubt such transactions do indeed take place and were instrumental to abductors letting off many victims. This transactional element has inspired orchestrated kidnappings whereby alleged victims have turned out to be the ransom seekers themselves. Remember purported cleric Adewuyi Adegoke in Ekiti State who was nabbed for faking his own abduction and demanding three million naira ransom from his church members?

By sheer frequency and spread, kidnappings are the most virulent of Nigeria’s security challenges. Police Inspector-General Mohammed Adamu recently cited official crime statistics indicating that no fewer than 685 persons were abducted across Nigeria between January and April, this year. Speaking at the quarterly Northern Traditional Rulers’ Council meeting held in Kaduna in May, he said 546 of the national total (79.8 percent) were recorded in the three northern geopolitical zones, with the highest zonal prevalence rate occurring in the North-west where 365 persons were reported kidnapped within the period under review.

Reputed online medium Premium Times as well offered helpful insight with its report, also in May, of a survey showing that no fewer than 27 Nigerians were kidnapped in four states – Edo, Kaduna, Ekiti and Osun – within 48 hours. “Nigeria has one of the world’s highest rates of kidnap-for-ransom cases. Other countries high up on the list included Venezuela, Mexico, Yemen, Syria, the Philippines, Iraq, Afghanistan and Somalia,” a scholar at the Federal University, Lafia, Chukwuma Al Okoli, also wrote in a research paper on the menace that he published in May.

President Buhari outlined government’s plan to adopt “modern, technological and people-centred methods” of tackling security challenges at a parley with South-west traditional rulers in Abuja last week. The brewing strategy, according to him, includes kick-starting community policing, revamping police intelligence gathering capacity with the use of drones to monitor forests and other criminal hideouts as well as CCTV cameras at strategic locations to track activities in those places, recruiting more police personnel from council areas to boost security presence in local communities, and calling in the military when necessary to complement the police. It remains to be seen how promptly the administration will effectively enact the measures outlined.

But monarchs as well have a role to play. “As the traditional authorities in your communities, government and the security agencies will be relying on you to monitor the different communities and people coming in and out of your areas (and)…observe new entrants into the community by requesting leaders of such ethnic groups to notify the traditional authorities of new intakes, thereby creating opportunity for gathering actionable intelligence,” the President said.

Part of the problem we have with kidnappings, in particular, in this country could be that the law is too soft in dealing justice against culprits. The act gravely endangers the lives of victims who are for most parts soft targets, and offers extorted huge cash returns to perpetrators. Yet the penalty is limited to some years in prison except in extreme cases, such as where murder results, which could incur a life term. Some states have amended their law to prescribe capital punishment for kidnapping, but there isn’t any known till date to have applied such amendment. Besides, the convoluted process of prosecution might offer some comfort to culprits as the case of suspected kingpin, Evans, has shown.

Beyond community policing, there is need for outright community action to deal a mortal blow against the ubiquitous menace of kidnapping in our land. Strangers in communities need to be closely watched. Then, there are abandoned buildings and isolated spots within communities that are notorious for offering first-instance haven to culprits after they’ve picked off their victims. Community members would do well to train attention on such locations and prevent their availability as initial hideaways.

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