At the height of the Amnesty Programme of late President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua, Kenneth Tekena was among the militants who publicly renounced militancy and handed over some of their guns to the authorities just to collect their pay-offs in public view and to please the international community. Yet, many guns, including AK-47s, were stashed in the creeks and are today among those paraded by kidnappers who are not beneficiaries of the Amnesty Programme.
“I left my two guns and travelled to Lagos to learn commercial boat-building at Tarzan Marine, Lekki under an apprenticeship scheme of Niger Delta Amnesty Programme. Six months into the programme, I was told my brothers hired out the guns to youths who now use them for kidnapping. We would have handed over the guns then, but we were conscious because government has reneged on its promises severally,” Tekena says.
Some of those guns were the ones used in some high profile kidnappings, including those of the mother of Governor Henry Seriake Dickson of Bayelsa State, foster father of former President Goodluck Jonathan, uncle to former Governor Timipre Sylva, and many others across the Niger Delta.
Sad to say that there have been stage-managed kidnappings for political reasons over the past 10 years in the state which ranks as one of the states with high incidence of kidnappings for ransom.
But the past few months have seen a sharp reduction in the number of kidnappings which may be due to the heavy presence of military and paramilitary groups along the waterways or as a result of under-reporting.
A few years ago, the Bayelsa State executive sponsored an anti-kidnapping bill which has since been passed into law by the House of Assembly. The law prescribes a death penalty by firing squad for any persons found guilty but ever since, nobody has been convicted.
Stakeholders have faulted the law citing certain provisions which could hinder its implementation, such as the death penalty by firing squad. They also cite the fact that other states that have such legislation are facing an uphill task in implementation due to the negative impact of capital punishment all over the world.
However, from the Niger Delta, the many guns are finding their way to other parts of the country where jobless youths are using them to perpetrate so many nefarious activities, especially kidnapping, robbery and smuggling.
In the late 2000s, Abia State became notorious for kidnapping, especially the Aba region, due to the cheap guns from Niger Delta. Edo witnessed same spate of kidnapping as much as Rivers, Akwa Ibom and Anambra States.
Edo State, like others in the South-South geo-political zone, has had its fair share of the negative impact of kidnapping cases. The hydra-headed monster which reared its ugly head in April 2006 with the kidnap of Joe Atohegbe, commissioner for Agriculture and Natural Resource to Governor Lucky Igbinedion, has refused to abate.
Atohegbe was abducted at his residence in Benin City and taken to Abraka, Delta State, but was however granted freedom after the payment of N2 million ransom.
Since that incident several thousands of persons, both indigenes and non-indigenes of the state, had been abducted at different locations within the state.
Some of those that had a raw deal with suspected kidnappers include retired military officers, bankers, politicians, farmers, students, civil servants, businessmen and women, legal practitioners, judges, investors, clergymen and women, pupils, medical personnel, nurses, academics, market women, among others.
It is also noteworthy that these victims paid several millions of naira ransom to secure freedom while others either died or were maimed.
The activities of kidnappers have created several orphans, widows, widowers, single parents and childless parents in the state. Some of the victims that had their lives cut short by the kidnappers after payment of ransoms are Edwin Ajaere, managing director of God is Good Motors (N4m); Osazee Evbuomwan, managing director of Alpha Furniture Company (N3.5m); Bayo Ade, a musician (N500,000), among others.
Others who paid huge ransom to secure their release include Samuel Osaghae, a cleric (N12m), Ogiegor (N2m), Kennedy Okeguale, a petroleum dealer (N13m), Monday Osayande, a transporter (N40m), Andrew Ojiemhekele (N5m for his son’s release), and Omiaka (N2.8m) and Emmanuel Ewafo (N850,000).
The family of S.K. Ilugbekhai in Agenebode, Etsako East local government area, is still at loss till today as to the whereabouts of their over 70-year-old matriarch kidnapped in April 2010 at her residence at Ivhioghe by unknown gunmen in the presence of her grandchildren, in spite of the N50 million demanded by her abductors.
Also John Omiwen, the managing director and chief executive officer of Benroll Group of Companies and one-time Edo State chairman of Electronics Dealers Association, had early in 2010 left the shores of Nigeria following the kidnap and subsequent assassination of his wife as well as threat to his life and children.
Within that period, the former Inspector General of Police, Mohammed Abubakar, who was the then Assistant Inspector General of Police in charge of Zone 5, Benin-City, had in a March 2010 press briefing revealed that about 166 cases of kidnapping were recorded in the zone which comprises Edo, Delta and Bayelsa States, as against 229 as at September 2008 to June 2009.
These figures were, however, at variance with the figures released by Danlami Yar’Adua, the then commissioner of police in Edo State who disclosed that 126 kidnap suspects were arrested in the state, out of which 85 were charged to court while about 41 were then in police custody.
Lagos: the story of one-chance
But while the kidnappers in these areas were fiercer and after big money, their counterparts in South-West states, especially Lagos, were mainly after innocent passengers and passersby until recently when the big guns from the creeks found their way into the riverine areas of Lagos.
Though mild, the one-chance kidnapping model has been very popular in Lagos for ages now. The kidnappers are even reinventing their skills in the face of much public awareness of their nefarious activities.
Idiks Abel, a young graduate, has a dose of experience with Lagos kidnappers. Though a newcomer to the labour market in Lagos, she was not a stranger to the intricacies of the city, thus she had no qualms boarding a bus in the evening as long as it was at designated bus-stops.
This was the case one early evening in 2006 when, on her way home to Ebutte-Metta, a suburb of Lagos, she boarded a half-filled commercial bus at Masha area of Surulere. Always cautious, she looked around as she sat at the rear of the bus beside a male passenger who sat close to the exit. Everything seemed normal, and when one of the passengers alighted at a bus-stop not far from where Abel had boarded, it only helped to set her at ease.
This ease did not last long as the driver took a wrong turn, heading towards an area in Ajegunle known as Boundary, instead of her stop at Costain. When she raised an alarm at the wrong turn, she received a resounding slap from the supposed passenger beside her who after then brought out a pistol. At that point it was evident that apart from an elderly man, a middle-aged lady and Abel herself, all others in the bus were part of the gang of robbers/kidnappers popularly referred to as “one chance”.
“This is not happening. But I took the bus from a known bus-stop, not randomly along the road,” she thought.
But it was not a nightmare; it was real! They searched their three victims and took everything they had on them that they felt would profit them. An irony was when the gun-wielding thug beside Abel ransacked her bag, took the money he saw in her wallet and shoved it into his pocket as he called out to his partners, “This girl has no money on her, only her empty bags and documents”.
Meanwhile, the elderly man was pleading that they could take his phone, but that they should let him have his SIM card, but they turned a deaf ear. Obviously the cash they got that night was not worth their while as they eventually dropped their victims at a notorious area, known as Ijora, a hood for thugs, bandits and hoodlums.
Fast-forward to 2016, the same drama and scene still play out, as evidenced by the case of Grace Ekong. Ekong was picked from the same bus-stop, headed to the same location, Costain, and her bus diverted at the same intersection which was heading to Boundary/Apapa area. The only difference was the timing.
Ekong was on her way to the popular Oyingbo market at 5 that morning when she boarded the bus and as she recounted, she was suddenly aware that they were taking her to an unknown destination.
Again, the victims were searched and their valuables taken from them. One of the ladies in the bus was wailing that she was a widow on her way to the market as she pleaded with them to have mercy, but her pleas fell on deaf ears.
What saved the day for Ekong was when she received divine insight on how best to save herself from the situation without putting up a struggle and getting shot in the process because by then, the hoodlums had brought out their guns as usual.
“Please don’t hurt me. I am pregnant,” Ekong cried to her captors.
Her declaration was met with anger and frustration from the gang of kidnappers because, according to them, kidnapping a child or a pregnant woman was deemed ‘bad luck’; in fact, it was something they forbade.
So grudgingly, Ekong had her possessions and cash returned to her. Not just that, she was driven back to the bus-stop where they had picked her and wished a ‘safe delivery’!
But how many people are that fortunate in a country that has become a nightmare for many families who are suffering in silence over loved ones who stepped out the front door never to be seen five, 10, 15 years later?
The spate of kidnapping is alarming and it is evident it will not reduce or abate anytime soon due to various factors working in its favour.
Lagos as a metropolitan city, with its vast resources and enviable internally generated revenue, is still one big ‘local village’ or ‘rural area’ when it comes to development. It boasts some of the worst set of streets/roads in any state as well as dark corners.
The dark streets and bus-stops make it difficult for commuters to carefully select which bus or taxi to patronize. The police are content to hide in the shadows of this darkness to harass unsuspecting private car owners and collect monies from motorcyclists and tricycle riders. And for the better part, these police officers have been compromised because apart from collecting bribes from these bus drivers and conductors, they are absent from major roads.
Sad to say, Lagos is not the only state with these nefarious acts as every state in Nigeria has its share of kidnapping, unsettling indigenes and residents who oftentimes live in fear of being kidnapped.
The economic hardship faced by many has been blamed for the rise in kidnap cases, but that is not the only reason. Most kidnappers caught always confess that the fact they can make ‘quick cash’ without much toil is an attraction in that line of business.
Who to blame
Currently, Nigeria witnesses at least 10 kidnapping cases every day, and many attribute the growing rate to hardship in the country. Some others argue that even in the oil boom, kidnapping was rampant, and just that 80 percent of the cases involved expatriate oil workers.
Tracing the history of kidnapping in the country, Ofili Ojie, a security expert and lawyer, noted that kidnapping and even terrorism were unknown until the late 90s. The rate of kidnapping increased further in the late 2000s and is about quadrupling with the economic recession. Ojie blames government for the spate of kidnapping in the country today.
“It is a sign that formal authority is ineffectual and that checks and balances in governance are not working since little or no prosecution of cases abound. The kidnapper grows his trade on the assumption that there is no justice and equality provided by organisation of society as to encourage people to work and conscientiously earn a decent living,” he says.
Government interventions
Worried by the upsurge of kidnappings that had resulted to loss of several lives, capital flight, Edo State Government under Governor Adams Oshiomhole created employment interventionist agency codenamed Edo Youth Empowerment Scheme (Edo YES), the now-disbanded agency which had provided job to over 10,000 youths in the state to stem the tide of youth involvement in criminal activities.
The government also initiated a joint patrol security outfit known as “Operation Thunderstorm”, which comprises 170 army, 16 air force, and 110 police officers to combat the ugly trend. It also provided the security outfit with the necessary equipment, including over 100 well-equipped Hilux Pick-Up vans, complete with the state-of-the-art communication gadgets and a greater number of bullet-proof vests. In addition, the state government initiated a financial assistance reward and recognition scheme for the police personnel wounded or killed in the course of duty.
As part of the government security policies, Oshiomhole set up the Neighbourhood Watch Committee to fast-track community policing. Under the now-disbanded initiative, thousands of able-bodied men and women were recruited. In September 2011, the state governor revealed that over 250 persons were in prison serving various jail terms for kidnapping while 100 others were in police custody then awaiting trial.
The government also initiated a financial reward system for anyone who volunteered useful information that could lead to the apprehension of kidnappers. From an initial N1 million, the state government increased the prize to N2 million.
In 2013, the Edo State Government signed into law an anti-kidnapping law prescribing death penalty for anyone found guilty of the crime. The law also prescribed demolition of houses that harboured kidnappers.
But in spite of the government’s security intervention, especially in the period between the signing of anti-kidnapping law to date, the number of arrested kidnappers in the state is estimated to be above 200. But for ordinary Edo citizens, the number of kidnap victims is estimated to be more than 1,000 as they believe that the number of victims reported to security agencies is far less than those that were not reported.
Statistics by the office of the then Assistant Inspector-General of Police, Zone 5, Musa Daura, revealed that between January and December 31, 2015, a total of 209 kidnappers were arrested, nine killed and four foiled in the zone.
Available statistics from the Edo State Police command in August 2015 stated that between July and August that year, 20 kidnappers were arrested. Also from December 14, 2015 to January 31, 2016, a total of 19 kidnappers were arrested. The same Police Command arrested 47 kidnappers between September 9, 2015 and April 7, 2016, while 17 were charged to court. In the same last July, 10 kidnappers were arrested by the command.
Kidnapped victims such as Joe Atohegbe and Tes Soare attributed the spate of kidnappings and other criminal activities to unemployment.
While Atohegbe advocated for massive investment in job creation by the three tiers of government, Soare expressed willingness to collaborate with the state government in its job creation drive by setting up employment foundation.
Way out of the wood
Proffering solutions, Sonubi Oyemade, a university don and counsellor, suggested that government at all levels should ensure quality education and jobs for youths, and equitable distribution of wealth.
“It is time we stopped paying lip-service to the fight against corruption, prosecute and jail those found corrupt no matter their status in the society and also discourage people from displaying stupendous and inexplicable wealth that lures youths to crimes like kidnapping,” Oyemade says.
For both Ojie and Oyemade, getting the right leadership is one thing Nigeria has never done since independence, and it is imperative now, especially leaders that will lead by example and with a touch of human-face in their policies to ensure that majority of the populace are lifted out of poverty, one major reason the youths take to kidnapping.
OBINNA EMELIKE, MABEL DIMMA, IDRIS MOMOH, Benin, & SAMUEL ESE, Yenagoa
