KIDNAPPING has grown from leap to bounds and become a lucrative business in Nigeria with many people of shady characters profiting from it.
NIGERIA has one of the world’s highest rate of kidnap-for-ransom cases. Other countries high up on the list include ,Venezuela, Mexico, Yemen, Syria, the Philippines, Iraq, Afghanistan and Somalia.
BEFORE now, there were scanty recorded cases of kidnap for rape, ritual or for other purposes in various parts of Nigeria. But kidnapping today is done primarily for ransom, either money or its material equivalent.
THE business started almost one and half decades ago and people tended to dismiss it as a business peculiar to the southeastern part of the country not knowing it would become a national headache.
IT received national attention in the celebrated case of one Chuwudubem Onwumadike alias Evans who conspired to kidnap one Donatus Duru on February 14, 2017 at Ilupeju Lagos and then freed him having collected a ransom of 223;000 Euros, about N112,000,000.
THE scourge has metastasized into a national disease allegedly carried out by gangs of Fulani herders roaming the rural space of both the north and the southern parts of the country.
AT least $18.34m was paid to kidnappers as ransom mostly by families and the government between June 2011 and March 2020, according to a report by SB Morgen (SBM) Intelligence, a Lagos-based political risk analysis firm.
Abductors have historically targeted the country’s middle and upper classes demanding ransoms depending on their victims’ net worth and capacity to pay.
THE huge amount people were being forced to pay to secure the lives or freedom of loved ones has provided a magnet of attraction for criminal minded people who formed gangs or acted solo in the business of kidnapping. Chief Olu Falae former Secretary to the Federal government had the unenviable experience of being kidnapped by Fulani nomads on his farm and spirited to a bush on the Owo- Benin road and was not released until appropriate ransom was apparently paid.
IN 2018, John Obi Mikel, the captain of Nigeria men’s national football team, received the news of his father’s abduction just a few hours before a crucial World Cup match against Argentina. Police later rescued his father following a shoot-out with the abductors in a forest in southeastern Nigeria. IN 2015, the family of James Adichie a renowned professor of Statistics and father of award-winning novelist Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie – paid an undisclosed amount of ransom for his release following his kidnapping on a highway, also in southeastern.
Nigeria roads, especially the notorious Kaduna-Abuja , Ilesa-Akure- Benin, Owo- Ikare- Abuja, Benin -Ore highways, have long been hunting grounds for kidnappers. They have also turned their attention elsewhere: learning institutions located outside of cities and town where security is often lacking.
WE therefore believe that the time is now that we discourage payment of ransom to these people, otherwise, this problem will continue to stay with us for a very long time to come.
OUR position is that ransome serves no good purpose but only makes criminal minded people see kidnapping as a lucrative and get rich quick venture.That is why we are calling for a re-orientation.
IT has gotten so bad that people are now arranging for themselves to be kidnapped. We remember a case in which a boy was arrested having collected N15 million ransom over a fake kidnapped of his girlfriend.
DELAYED sentencing of those arrested for kidnapping is a huge contributor to the menace. We recall that that the glaring cases of Onwumadike, Evans and Wadume have not encouraged people to believe in the legal system in Nigeria. The cases among others have dragged for so long.
IT gladdens us that the National Assembly is planning to criminalize ransoms payment. We urge the lawmakers to expedite action on this.
WE commend Governor El rufai of Kaduna state for refusing to dialogue not to talk of paying ransoms to those holding students of Greenfield University in captive. The Hope encourages other governments to take a cue from this bold and laudable position. We have to imbibe policy of no ransome payment and encourage people on that too.
WE appeal to Nigerians to be willing to make the sacrifice of not paying ransom for their loved ones in other to see the end of this monster.