Last Wednesday, the famous Kano-based Muslim cleric Sheikh Ahmad Suleiman and five others regained their freedom after 13 days in captivity in Katsina State. The men, who were returning to Kano from a JIBWIS religious mission, were kidnapped along Kakumi to Kankara Road in Kankara Local Government Area of Katsina State on March 14, this year. The Army said the men were rescued in a special military operation with the help of other security agencies and that no ransom was paid.
The Army 17 Brigade in Katsina said the Sheikh was rescued following a “sustained surveillance as well as tactical lines of operations… in close synchronization with relevant security agencies.” The army undertook this operation because it received marching orders from Army Chief Lt Gen Tukur Buratai, who in turn must have acted at the prompting of the Presidency, since the cleric was described in some newspaper reports as “a Buhari prayer warrior.”
We congratulate Sheikh Sulaiman on his safe return home from captivity and on his rescue from the merciless kidnappers. We regret however that his is about the only publicly known case in recent times when a kidnap victim was rescued by security agencies. In almost all other cases, victims’ families and friends must pay ransom, which ranges from tens of millions of naira to GSM scratch cards, depending on the circumstances. In fact, kidnapping has become a daily reality in Nigeria and almost no day passes without the news media reporting cases of kidnap in one part of the country or another, especially in the Northern states. Lots of other cases go unreported.
Around the time the Sheikh was rescued, Dr Jen Sunail, a North Korean doctor working in Tsafe general hospital in Zamfara State, was kidnapped in Tsafe town. Witnesses said armed bandits stormed the hospital at about 9pm, went straight to the hospital’s staff quarters and whisked away the expatriate doctor. Zamfara State, in fact, has been the Ground Zero of kidnapping and rural banditry in the last seven years. Despite three rounds of special military operations, dozens of people are kidnapped or killed by bandits in the state’s rural areas almost daily and many more are snatched on the highways. Farmers all over the state said they are unable to go to their farms for fear of kidnappers and bandits.
Birnin Gwari Local Government in Kaduna State has suffered a similar fate for several years now, and at one point, a score of soldiers sent to help the situation were massacred by bandits. Almost the whole of Katsina State is now overwhelmed by bandits and kidnappers. The situation is so bad that some traders in the state’s northern fringes cross over to Niger Republic to spend the night. Only last week, Governor Aminu Bello Masari’s 80-year-old mother in law Hajiya Maisitiyari was released by kidnappers after eight days in captivity. She was snatched from her house right inside Katsina town’s Sabongari area.
The scourge has recently expanded beyond these places. Only last week, Plateau State Police Command alerted members of the public to a new trend of kidnapping in the state. It said “criminals go into unsuspecting homes to kidnap” children and that “these kidnappers are not far from the communities.” In Niger State too, the Police Command said on Wednesday that it had dispatched its men to Lapai Local Government Area to investigate kidnapping cases in some villages. Vigilante groups had told newsmen that some villages in the local government including Mute, Egba, Gupa and Abugi were under the siege of kidnappers.
In Ekiti State last Friday, an Ado-Ekiti High Court sentenced an unemployed man, Olumide Ogunrinde to 12 years in prison for kidnapping. The incident occurred between May 3 and 15, 2015 at Epere Ekiti and other villages. Ogunrinde’s victims said he kidnapped them on Ido-Ilogbo Ekiti road and took them to an unknown place.
Travelling on many of the country’s highways is now a major hazard, including the all-important Abuja-Kaduna-Kano and the Abuja-Lokoja highways. Despite massive police operations last year that drastically reduced kidnap incidents on the Abuja to Kaduna highway, kidnappers are now back and they strike every now and then. Kidnap victims, including a Daily Trust staff member who was recently kept in captivity for 8 days, tell harrowing tales of beatings, shootings, threats, long marches on foot deep into the bush and starvation food rations while their family members scramble to assemble ransom money.
Clearly, kidnapping has now shot to the top of this country’s many social malaises ahead of Boko Haram and pipeline vandalism. It has driven cattle rustling and farmers/herders’ clashes off the headlines and beside it, age old armed robbery looks like a very peaceful affair. Everywhere, people are afraid to travel for legitimate business and social reasons. Our fragile economic recovery could easily be reversed when farmers abandon their farms, traders are unwilling to travel, tens of thousands of people abandon their villages and social occasions ground to a halt due to the fear of kidnappers.
The Federal Government should drop everything and address this problem with all the seriousness it deserves. It should declare a national emergency on kidnapping, commit all its security resources to fighting it, acquire all the intelligence, electronic and drone hardware needed to fight it and mobilise the entire population to assist in the fight. Everything now depends on it. We must take this country back from kidnapers before any socio-economic or infrastructural progress is possible.
