By Adekunle Adekoya

WE should be very worried at the unending spate of kidnappings, mostly for ransom. When it started, we treated  it, as usual, with kid gloves, instead of dealing with the malaise with the seriousness it deserved and still deserves. First, militants of the Niger Delta started by kidnapping foreigners working on oil installations to further press their demands for resource control.

The security system and the power elite saw it as something just endemic to the Niger Delta then, an insecurity fad that will go away as soon as the state was able to deal with the militants. Sure, the state found a way via the Presidential Amnesty Programme, PAP.

But by then, the humonguous amounts of money that could be made from kidnapping for ransom had literally “opened the eyes” of criminally-minded compatriots from other parts of the country. Before we knew what has happened, a kidnapping industry had grown and is still growing in our country.

Kidnap gangs had become powerful non-state actors that dare the best of our security agencies. That it has become an industry can no longer be denied: the escapades of convicted notorious kidnapper, Chukwudimeme Onwuamadike, better known as Evans is a case in point. Another one is Hamisu Bala, better known as Wadume.

Many other outlaws, with or without name recognition have turned the beautiful rolling plains of Northern Nigeria and the lush forests of the South  into killing fields and kidnap grounds, and made travelling a nightmarish experience, to the extent that they bomb rail tracks, derail trains and abduct passengers, hold them for months in forests till ransom is paid.

What we are now seeing is a cascade effect of kidnapping, away from organised abductions by kidnap gangs to desperate individuals staging their own kidnap simply to make money. It should bother all of us that a pastor was arrested by the Police in Plateau State for allegedly staging his own kidnap on several occasions to extort his church members.

Plateau State Police Public Relations Officer, DSP Alfred Alabo, said of the incident: “The Plateau State Police Command has again uncovered the nefarious act of one Pastor(name withheld) of Jenta Apata, Jos, who on several occasions staged his kidnap with his cohorts and received ransom from sympathising members of his congregation.

“Sequel to his spurious kidnaps of 14/11/2022 and 30/11/2022 where N400,000 and N200,000 were respectively paid by his sympathisers as ransom for his release, the incidents triggered suspicion.

“Through credible intelligence, the clergyman was invited by the DPO Nassarawa Gwong Police Station, CSP Musa Hassan, and the investigation commenced immediately.

“In the course of the investigation, it was established that the suspect has been conspiring with his gang to stage his kidnap and fraudulently collecting the ransom.”

On interrogation, the pastor confessed to having committed the crime and even named his accomplices. A few months ago in Ijebu-Ode, Ogun State, a popular businessman was kidnapped and killed even after ransom was paid by his family. The Police later nabbed the kidnappers, one of whom was a manager at one of the businesses owned by the late businessman, a woman, who was found to be be working with her husband and other gang members.

We are clearly living in perilous times, and as the Good Book says, the days are full of evil. The cascade effect of untamed kidnapping is here with us: anybody can get kidnapped anywhere, anytime, by anybody, or group of persons that are convinced they stand a good chance of making money from the ransom.

This calls for individual and group vigilance by all and sundry. We must tame our adulation of wealth, especially wealth whose source is not clear to us. Before this country started going to pieces, every child in the village or community was everybody’s child, and there existed a collective effort at ensuring that youngsters behaved properly and comported themselves well at all times.

Almost overnight, the ethos changed to “mind your business”; people who scolded errant children got insults as rewards, and gradually, the things that bound us together, which also ensured that our society remained peaceful, started falling apart. How many of us today can question a hitherto unemployed youth who suddenly appears in the neighbourhood in a gleaming automobile?

Don’t we just mind our business? If we continue to “mind our business” this way, very soon, all of us will have no businesses to mind, we’d all have fallen victim of kidnappers or some other felons. Meanwhile, the national security architecture, which at best is reactive, has proved to be of no help in halting this odious trend.

Some states have enacted harsh laws, including the death penalty, to deal with kidnapping. But if execution warrants remain unsigned and convicts are left on the death row for years, of what use are the laws? Statutory deterrents have thus become ineffective. Kidnappings continue because the felons believe they can get away with it. That is not good for Nigeria as a state, and is a slur on the capabilities of the power elite, irrespective of the faction ruling at the moment. We must deal with this evil.