The kidnapping industry has settled into this era as one of the most lucrative criminal activities. Its pernicious effects will take gargantuan effort to offset. Its escapades fill lots of space in the media, but you wouldn’t know how close you are to it until a relation or someone you know is affected.
Last week, I went to commiserate with a colleague who recently spent over a week in the hands of kidnappers in the forest surrounding Abuja. He was just unfortunate to be one in the sordid statistics of abductions. When you hear his account of the abduction and the fact that it happened within shouting distance of Abuja, you would come to realise how helpless we all are as sitting ducks.
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He will tell his story in his own words, he said, when he is ready and at the appropriate time. I guess when he comes to relate his story you would learn that he was returning from his farm in the outskirts of Abuja, along with another colleague, just before five in the evening, when they were brutally abducted. They were driving on the dirt road from the farm and were just about to reach the express road when they were accosted by a large number of fierce-looking AK47 wielding youths. The attack was sudden and brusque, and would be the beginning of a long walk of over nine hours, trudging throughout the night into the wilderness, wading through valleys and making steep climbs. He was already nursing a back ailment and had a walking-stick as a companion yet the kidnappers hardly acknowledged that.
The account he would give would be that of the days spent with these criminals who were constantly on hemp and probably other drugs and were not seen to be observing any religious rites. There were days of long haggling over ransom and when it was eventually paid, the kidnappers decided to hold onto the messengers who brought the ransom money until more was paid. He will tell a story of virtually living in the lion’s den, chained and constantly under watch by these urchins armed to the teeth. There was little food and water and sleeping condition was in the open, exposed to the elements.
It would be trite to say that kidnapping as a criminal activity has today become a big business. And for one or two reasons it will also be hard to dispense with. From the account of my colleague, and from what I gathered from various other sources, a huge swathe of our forests are just ungoverned areas now becoming the playground of criminals. Most kidnapped victims end up in the forest where even the conventional security would be unwilling to venture. Another reason could be that the foot soldiers that wield the AK47 to carry out the brutal acts would usually not be acting alone. They could, as alleged, be remotely guided by some who would probably have overall intelligence in their hands. These tele-guiders who, in most cases, are away from the scene of activity, take away a larger share of the booty, even though they avoid soiling their hands in the hurly-burly of the kidnapping acts. Most importantly, there is too much money involved in the venture for the criminals to lay off easily. The ransoms get bigger with the day, enabling the criminal gangs the financial wherewithal to equip themselves with the most up-to-date weaponry for them to strike whenever, and wherever they wished.
The galore of kidnapping has continued to run unabated particularly in the communities in the northernmost part of the country. This week, we were all witnesses to the abduction of over 300 students from Government Science Secondary School, Kankara, in Katsina State. The nefarious act was rendered more audacious by the fact that Nigeria’s President Muhammadu Buhari was in the state to spend a short leave in his Daura home. The act reminisces the abduction of the schoolgirls from Chibok in Borno State in 2014 and Dapchi in Yobe State in 2018. Many of the Chibok girls are yet to be traced but the majority of the Dapchi girl have been home since. Happily also, the Kankara abduction had a satisfactory closure as the students have been found and are now safely home.
Probably what helped the successful closure of the Kankara and Dapchi abductions was the obvious involvement of the state governors in one way or the other. State governors are presently handicapped to effectively deal with security issues in their domains because they do not have direct control over security agencies domiciled in their states. That’s the exclusive reserve of the federal government. Yet in the Dapchi abductions, we saw the deft hands of Ibrahim Geidam, then governor of Yobe State, in the early return of the school girls. Similarly, the Kankara abductions were resolved by both Governor Masari of Katsina State, from where the boys were abducted, and Governor Matawalle of Zamfara State, where the boys were taken to. I may tend to agree with those who have called on the federal government to devolve some of its powers to the state governors to let them handle security issues that arise in their domains. Then, perhaps, we shall break the backbone of the kidnapping industry.
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