Nigeria is facing an unmitigated crisis of missing persons. This was reinforced after a police announcement that they are investigating 100 cases of missing persons in Lagos State alone. Being the figure for January to May 2015 only, this is scary. It is unwarranted agony for the families concerned. The security agencies need to step up measures to infiltrate, dismantle and prosecute these criminal gangs. Nigerians must take crime and safety issues more seriously. “Trust your instincts” has always been the police standard safety tip.
It confirms the long-held belief that there is a high turnover of missing persons in Lagos. Police Calling, the bulletin of the Lagos Police Command, says no fewer than four persons are reported missing by their relatives every week. Many of the victims are children. This spells human tragedy. Life is precious, more so those of children. The police should not stop at reeling out statistics; it is high time they unveiled effective, intelligence-driven measures to put an end to this horrendous crime.
When people go missing, there are several factors involved. Some pedestrians are killed by hit-and-run drivers, while others are attacked by hoodlums and robbers. Their corpses litter our highways and their relatives might never be able to locate them. Others, especially women, are kidnapped as sex slaves and kept locked away in seclusion. In 2010, for example, the police in Lagos declared 238 persons missing. This is frightening. One other reason, which the police always proffer, is that children run away from their guardians who are maltreating them. This is true in some cases, but when 20 people disappear in one month, that is not the whole picture. There is something much more fundamental.
One of them is the crude manner the police go about cracking crime. The proclivity of the police to carry out indiscriminate arrests contributes to the high rate of missing persons. Randomly, the police “raid” scenes of crime, arrest and lock up innocent people. Some are charged to court, while some other unlucky ones die in the process of incarceration. Busting crime has gone beyond this. Modern policing is about intelligence and scientific investigations aided by forensics.
In a pathetic case, a Lagos-based Ghanaian, Etroo Mensah, was arrested by the police along with others in the Ajah area of Lagos in March. With no way to contact his family members to come and bail him, he languished in prison. “They (police) arrested about 40 persons,” he said. “They had a big bus. We were in Elomoro (police station) for four days. …we were arraigned at the Tinubu Magistrate’s Court and four of us were taken to Ikoyi Prisons. That was where I had been for three months.”
But the police denied culpability. This shows that the police don’t keep proper records. In other climes, they won’t get away with this kind of dereliction of duty. The Inspector-General of Police, Solomon Arase, must compel the Commissioner of Police in each state to institutionalise record keeping at our police stations. It is a virtue widely practised elsewhere. And Mensah is not alone in this type of police-induced ordeal, perhaps because the police operate above the law here. The police are meant to protect the public, not the other way round. The police hierarchy is too lenient with acts of impunity by its officers. This should change.
But the main reason for the rising number of missing persons has been attributed to kidnapping for ransom and rituals. In a society where many still believe that they can get rich and acquire supernatural power through diabolical means, the rush to lure the innocent for ritual sacrifices has triggered this ugly phenomenon. Examples abound across the country, but the police are yet to devise the appropriate plan to address the menace.
Last month, Morenikeji Owolabi, 21, a polytechnic undergraduate in Ogun State, was dismembered by ritual killers, who removed her private organs before boiling her remains in their shrine located in Isara-Remo. In March 2014, the public was presented with the discovery of a ritual killers’ den in Soka, Ibadan, capital of Oyo State, where about 20 decomposing bodies were found and 23 people rescued.
Likewise, youths burnt down a building in Igbotako, Ondo State, this year following the discovery of a shrine used for ritual killings. The den had been used for human sacrifice for three years. Equally puzzling is the case of Bolarinwa Olomo, a professor of nuclear physics at the Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife, who travelled from the school to Eket, Akwa Ibom State, for a conference. Olomo vanished late in 2013 and has not been found since. In mid-2012, Rasaq Gawat, a television presenter, also vanished in Lagos. Nothing has been heard of him though his Sport Utility Vehicle was found intact on Eko Bridge shortly after his disappearance.
What’s the way out? For one, the police need to create a special unit dedicated to searching for missing persons. In the United Kingdom, this is handled by the Missing Persons Bureau under the National Crime Agency. In conjunction with the police and other security agencies, the police should be more thorough in investigating complaints. The case of Madeleine McCann, who was aged three when she disappeared in 2007 in Portugal, is instructive. Eight years on, the British police have yet to give up in their search, constantly updating her profile through forensic art and following up leads from the public and investigators.
The police should also stop arresting people indiscriminately, but conduct proper investigations when a crime has been committed. Nigerians should take personal safety measures more seriously to avoid distress.
