Remarkably, the kidnap in Kaduna early this month of Alfred Nelson-Williams, the Defence Attaché of the Sierra Leone High Commission in Nigeria, has failed to galvanise our security agencies to take extraordinary counter- measures. Unsurprisingly, kidnappers, bandits and Fulani herdsmen have stepped up their game, snatching innocents, killing scores and presenting the country in the garb of a failed state. The Muhammadu Buhari government should implement very strong action to halt the rampage.
Legitimate businesses may be declining in Nigeria; kidnapping for ransom is not. It is argued that economic kidnapping tends to take place in countries where the risks for kidnappers are fairly low. The main risks they face are detection, arrest, prosecution and the penalties they are subjected to if brought to justice. Confusion reigned in Iba in Lagos State where kidnappers, as of press time, were still holding the traditional ruler of the town, Yishau Oseni, after abducting him two weeks ago. Also in captivity is Abiodun Oyewunmi, the traditional ruler of Iyansan in Irele Local Government Area of Ondo State who was attacked and taken away by as yet unknown kidnappers. Reports from other parts of the country are no less worrying.
No one is safe. In June, ruthless kidnappers abducted five expatriate mining engineers in Calabar, Cross River State, among them, three Australians, one New Zealander and a South African. In the same month in Benue State, it was two Indians that fell victim to the kidnappers. The impunity is rising. Last weekend, a gang stormed a Redeemed Christian Church of God parish in Ikorodu, Lagos, and took away its pastor as he prepared for the Sunday morning service. On July 14, kidnappers ambushed a police team that had just rescued several other victims in Ubiama, Ikwerre Local Government Area of Rivers State, killing two officers and injuring two others.
The lawlessness has reached a level where the hoodlums, wielding sophisticated weapons, operate for hours unchallenged, invading and sacking entire neighbourhoods and villages, killing indiscriminately and raping women and young girls. This has been the fate of several communities in Lagos and Ogun states and it is spreading. On Tuesday, scores of armed marauders invaded Igando, a suburb of Lagos, and in their now familiar modus operandi, brutally attacked residents and passersby, invaded and ransacked homes and engaged police in gun battles. Over the weekend, the military reportedly bombarded the base of the militants at Arepo. This should be sustained.
Nothing demonstrates the flat footedness of the security agencies than the fact that their comrades are also being killed: nine Department of State Services officials were ambushed and murdered in Arepo, Ogun State, by pipeline hoodlums a year ago and their corpses are yet to be recovered; kidnappers who abducted two Chinese technicians in Ondo State killed their two police guards.
While the Buhari government has squarely faced the Boko Haram terrorists in the North-East region and banditry in Zamfara, it has no effective response yet to the kidnapping epidemic. The frenzied rhetoric and haphazard show of strength, featuring massive deployment of police, troops and DSS agents often result in harassment of innocent victim communities and further alienation of the grass roots from the ruling elite. The Lagos Chamber of Commerce and Industry has highlighted how insecurity drives away investors and raises the cost of doing business via excessive spending on security. The latest United States travel advisory to its citizens lists Nigeria among countries prone to terrorist attacks and kidnapping by criminal gangs.
It is outrageous that neither the President nor the Minister of Interior, Abdulrahman Dambazzau, is treating this menace with the seriousness it deserves, reflecting the poor service delivery that has characterised successive governments and their disdain for Nigerians. Both and the acting Inspector-General, Ibrahim Idris, have the responsibility of mapping out an intelligent response to the menace and the activities of hoodlums claiming to be Niger Delta militants who have expanded from their traditional hunting grounds to other parts of the country. Foreign Policy Centre, a United Kingdom-based independent think-tank, says kidnappers seek low risk environments in which to operate. They also seek areas where there are high opportunities for the crime. This is where potential hostages are poorly protected and do not manage their risks well.
Idris in particular should do better than his lacklustre predecessors who had no effective response to these maladies. The reality is that victims’ families are paying for their release and the odious business should be stopped. So confident are the villains that they are reportedly demanding N500 million to free Oseni, while N100 million is their asking price to free the RCCG pastor. Paying ransom to free relatives provides a powerful incentive for the fiends to persist in the crime.
The security agencies should ruthlessly neutralise the hoodlums master-minding this vice and hypocritically hiding under the banner of Niger Delta self-determination. They are common criminals and should be treated as such. State governments should take up the gauntlet and initiate extraordinary measures to protect their people from the criminals despite the constitutional constraints that vest authority over all formal security agencies in the Federal Government. They should strengthen and properly fund their neighbourhood watch outfits, continue to provide support to the police and undertake sustained public enlightenment programmes.
To be sure, Nigeria is not the only country grappling with the phenomenon of kidnapping, ransom and extortion. According to Neil Young & Associates, a global consultancy, Nigeria was, however, the No.1 country for kidnapping in 2014, accounting for a substantial part of the 30 per cent of the global kidnapping incidents occurring in Africa that year amid an 84 per cent rise in such incidents worldwide. The critical difference is the security response. Faced with a wave of kidnappings and hostage-taking by the Red Brigades and Baader-Meinhoff gangs respectively in the 1970s, Italy and Germany reformed their crime-fighting techniques and set up special counter-terrorism teams to defeat the criminals. Kidnapping is treated as a special class of crime in the US with the Federal Bureau of Investigation establishing data banks, special response teams and hostage negotiating units, a system adopted by many city and state police departments.
The Nigeria Police and Department of State Services should follow suit. Safety and security of its citizens and others living within its borders is traditionally seen as the basic responsibility of government. Sadly, this is a function the Nigerian state is not always able to deliver. The primary responsibility of security agencies is to fight crime and make the country safe; they are not personal servants of the elite. They should set up special units on kidnapping, train and equip SWAT (Special Weapons and Tactics) teams and develop extensive and effective intelligence networks to infiltrate and neutralise kidnapping gangs.
