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The spate of kidnappings across the country has called into question the level of security available to Nigerians as kidnappers seem to be abducting victims at will and demanding for unimaginable ransoms
| By Olu Ojewale | Oct 5, 2015 @ 01:00 GMT |
NIGERIA appears to be embattled on two major fronts. The Boko Haram insurgency, which started about six years ago, is ebbing and may soon be eradicated if, indeed, the military and other security agencies live up to expectations.
While the war against the Boko Haram is raging in the North East, other internal crimes, especially kidnapping appear to be festering across the country. In the past few weeks a number of prominent personalities had been kidnapped. Prominent among them are Toyin Nwosu, wife of Steve Nwosu, deputy managing director of Sun Newspaper; Donu Kogbara, a columnist on Vanguard newspaper; Martha Binabo, wife of Nestor Binabo, a former acting governor of the state, and Kehinde Baruwa, Afikpo zonal manager of Nigerian Breweries Limited, among others. Nwosu, Kogbara, Binaba and Baruwa were kidnapped in Lagos, Port Harcourt, Rivers, Yenegua, Bayelsa, and Lagos States, respectively. Some of them were made to pay ransom before they were released. Other previous high profile kidnappings in the country in 2013 include that of Mike Ozekhome, a prominent Lagos lawyer who was also kidnapped in Benin, Edo State and Kamena Okonjo, mother of Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, former finance minister and coordinating minister of the economy who was also abducted in Asaba, Delta State.
The latest in the kidnapping saga is that of Olu Falae, former secretary to the federal government and a former presidential candidate of Alliance for Democracy, who was abducted from his farm in Akure, Ondo State, on Monday, September 21, the day he turned 77. Mercifully, Falae regained his freedom on Thursday, September 24, following the intervention of President Muhammadu Buhari who gave Solomon Arase, inspector-general of Police and leaders of other security agencies a marching order to ensure safe and speedy rescue of the former minister of Finance. Arase said no ransom was paid to the kidnappers but he refused to give details of how Falae regained his freedom. No arrest has been made either.
No doubt, the issue of kidnapping is another area Nigerians would want the president to take seriously, especially as it appears that the crime has become a thriving business.
For instance, the family of Binabo was said to have paid N8.2 million before she was released July 5, after four days in the kidnappers’ den. When she was being released the ‘benevolent’ abductors gave their victim N18,000 for transport and a big fish, which they mandated her to use to prepare pepper soup for her husband. Realnews also learnt that the sum of N10 million was paid before Nwosu’s wife was released although the family has been silent on the ransom package for the release of Toyin.
No doubt, kidnapping has become one of the daunting security challenges facing the country. The recent upsurge in the wave of the crime has made it another security issue that President Buhari needs to tackle immediately before it blows over.
It all started in the Niger Delta where youth restiveness and agitation for resource control graduated to abduction of foreign expatriates for ransom. But it has become a cash cow for some criminal-minded youths in different parts of the country.
The situation became so worrisome in the South-East in past few years that state governments in those areas enacted laws, to demolish houses suspected to belong to kidnappers in order to discourage people from earning their livelihood through criminal activities.
For instance, in August last year, the Anambra State government took its battle to the kidnappers by demolishing houses that belonged to some of the suspected and known kidnappers in the state.
The unconventional treatment of the property of kidnappers in Anambra was a direct response to the spate of kidnapping incidents in the state, which forced Peter Obi, former state governor, to present a bill to the Anambra State House of Assembly, seeking more stringent sanctions against kidnappers in 2010. The bill, which was eventually passed into law, allows the state government to confiscate, destroy and put houses belonging to kidnappers and their sponsors to other uses.
As soon as the law came into effect, a number of houses belonging to kidnappers were reduced to rubble by bulldozers. In one of the incidents, two buildings were pulled down at Oraifite in Ekwusigo Local Government Area, where a large cache of arms was uncovered by the police, while a church and three other buildings linked to kidnappers were demolished in Awkuzu, Oyi Local Government Area.
In another incident, three buildings were pulled down in Aguleri, where the arrested suspects confessed that they had collected N295 million in three kidnap operations.
Governor Willie Obiano, during the celebration of his 100 days in office, in June last year, revealed that 177 kidnappers had been arrested, while 97 are facing prosecution. The demolition helped to reduce the incidence of kidnappings in the state.
Perhaps, its success also made the Abia State government to adopt the same measure as houses of suspected kidnappers were also demolished. On July 22, 2014, the state demolished a bungalow belonging to one Ogbonna Daniel Ogbuonye alleged to have been involved in kidnapping activities in the state.
Ogbuonye, an alleged ringleader of a kidnap gang that abducted Sunny Nwakodo, chairman of National Union of Road Transport Workers, was killed that Sunday morning during a shootout with security operatives who later rescued the victim unhurt. Two other members of the gang were also killed during the gun battle, which took place at Ikwuano.
Ogbuonye was also alleged to be the mastermind behind the killing the late Ken Nwosu, former commissioner for Agriculture in the state, who died later in a hospital as a result of gunshot wounds.
The demolished bungalow was located at Umuariaga, Oboro in Ikwuano Local government area of the state. Briefing journalists after the demolition, Awa Udonsi Agwu, a retired captain and security adviser to former Governor Theodore Orji, said the measure was to serve as a deterrent to other kidnappers and those nursing the idea to enter the illicit business. He said the state government abhorred kidnapping and would stop at nothing to stamp the menace out of the state.
South-West governments may have to adopt a similar legislation to reduce incidents of kidnappings where they are now becoming very rampant.
However, before jumping into such measure wholesale, perhaps, the experience of Kehinde Bamigbetan, a former journalist and former chairman of Ejigbo Local Council Development Area, LCDA, Lagos State, may have to be taken into account.
According to Bamigbetan whose name is among the nominees for position of a commissioner in Lagos State, it took the intervention of God for his captors to change their initial plan to kill him. He said the kidnappers claimed that they were graduates and that they did not like what they were doing but had to do it because they had no jobs.
“One claimed to be an engineering graduate, another claimed to be a human resources management graduate, while another said he was already in final year in an American university when his father’s shopping complex was demolished and he had to be recalled home.
“One of them also said he was a commercial motorcyclist but his source of income had been outlawed by the state government. They were generally bitter about youth unemployment and I had to engage them on my various activities as a crusader for youth employment,” Bamigbetan said. He said some of them claimed they had graduated six years back without any hope of getting employment, which eventually turned them to crime.
Unconfirmed report claimed that Bamigbetan’s family had to pay N15 million ransom before he was released.
Ariyo-Dare Atoye, a public commentator and convener, Nigeria Centenary Group, NCG, noted that kidnapping was becoming more sophisticated daily because of the involvement of young educated minds, mainly the unemployed graduates, who are making big money from it.
“It is fast becoming a big and lucrative business with culprits getting away with the crime. Even recently, Boko Haram has bought into this lucrative crime to keep its operation alive,” Atoye said. He similarly noted that the insurgents had a significant number of graduates among them and that they had perfected the act of kidnapping with significant success through which they could make hundreds of millions of naira in the process.
Atoye said the sad development could be traced to the level of unemployment in Nigeria, which had made a good number of youths to become desperate and fast losing hope in the governments’ promises. He said they were fast becoming easy recruits for kidnapping, which had become another source of concern for government and security agencies.
To solve the problem, Atoye said it would require the active involvement of all stakeholders in the country – government at the three tiers, the private sector, traditional institutions, religious institutions, opinion/community leaders. He said everything necessary must be done to significantly improve the economy to provide jobs for the youth.
Atoye said Nigeria must re-examine its economic roadmap to make it production-led. He said Nigeria had no business with unemployment if the critical economic sectors such as textile industry, agriculture among other were working. The sectors, he said, could employ millions of people if the country stopped importation of items that it could produce at home, even in commercial quantities.
“We can stop kidnapping through a multilevel initiative, exploring all that is necessary to address the remote and the immediate causes. However, we must act fast as a nation as this crime is becoming more alarming and challenging. We are getting late and behind schedule. The monster of kidnapping is capable of driving-dry foreign direct investment and could make the nation ungovernable,” Atoye said.
But before the Buhari administration plan to tackle economy starts to take root, it is apparent that something needs to be done to stop the drift. Because as it is, it appears nobody is safe except those in power who have access to police and military protection. So, the time to act is now!
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