The Yoruba of South-Western Nigeria may need to hold a colloquium to choose another word to capture the civilised kidnapping that is currently the rave in the country. Kidnapping simply means holding another person against his/her will, with the intent of extracting a ransom. That used to be the interpretation of kidnapping by the Western mind.
Before now, whenever it was reported that a kidnapping had taken place in Nigeria, the victims were usually small, defenceless children, and most of the time, it was for ritual purposes. That may be why the Yorubas coined Gbomogbomo, that is, child theft (Sounds like Jomo Gbomo, or what do you think?).
In recent times, however, the Nigerian crime scene has become suffused with cases of not only kidnapping for ritual purposes, but essentially for extracting ransom.
With the agitation by Niger Delta militants progressing from verbal confrontation with the authorities, in the days of Ken Saro-Wiwa, to the use of heavy weaponry in these days of Henry Okah, criminals seem to have discovered a new goldmine: kidnapping.
Last month, some kidnappers who were arrested in Abia State claimed to have committed the crime to source money for some of the activities needed for the actualisation of the Biafran State, as conceived by Ralph Uwazuruike, leader of the Movement for the Actualisation of the Sovereign State of Biafra (MASSOB). The bubble, however, burst as the hooligans were rounded off by the police. They are present in the custody of the police, pending the determination of their case by the law court.
There are clear indications that the kidnapping madness has progressed into areas hitherto without any any inclination towards militancy. The initial basis for the “patriotic” act, according to its purveyors, was to draw attention to their plight. Two weeks ago, the sick wife of a serving commissioner in Ondo State was kidnapped along with her female guest.
Recently, an Executive Assistant to the Oyo State governor, Mr Richard Fagbemi, was kidnapped along with his driver and a pregnant relation in Kogi State, on their way back from a private visit to Abuja. The kidnappers demanded a N20 million ransom. Reports have it that the elderly man had since been released, but the state government is still keeping mum on wether the N20 million ransom money was paid or not.
The ransom mania has taken the shine off complicated, and usually brain-tasking, bank robberies. With banks frequently flouting their own rules on withdrawal limits, it is now so easy for criminals to eat the fruit of their labour. Ransom money are daily being cashed with ease and, sometimes, with the connivance of bank officials. Business is booming, and only once had the police been reported as successfully bushing one of these desperate crimes.
The only other one that was busted, between Anambra and Delta states, was a case of the criminal playing the role of the victim.
A young girl who felt her parents had more money than they really needed connived with her boyfriend to be kidnapped and, as it happened, trouble over the ransom sharing formula led to a problem and they were caught.
The introduction of ransom into kidnapping notwithstanding, the issue of ritual kidnapping is on the rise. It is not only children being kidnapped even adults, are also disappearing without a trace. The economic doldrums in the nation, nay, all over the world, are introducing new levels of desperation into the search for money by all categories of Nigerians. Take these real life stories as examples.
Tolu (not real name) was easing himself behind the shop of his uncle. As he made to button his fly, something like a blanket covered the head of the JSS III student of a popular school in one of the elite residential areas in a Nigerian city. That was all he knew; he later opened his eyes to find himself in a compound with a high fence, painted white. There, he met many other children of his age group.
From time to time, his captors would come with packs of snacks from one of the popular eateries in town, and hand it out to the children. According to his account, sometimes, their kidnappers were friendly, while, at other times, they beat and starve them of food. From time to time, he said, some of them were driven out in a bus, with the curtains drawn.
The driver would park at intervals, a child would be taken away, and later cash would be brought in and counted by the kidnappers. Tolu never got to find out if the children were being sold to ritualists, or simply returned in exchange for ransom. He spent three weeks in captivity before his miraculous escape.
Goodnews (not real name) was sent to a nearby Texaco filling station to buy fuel for the family. He was also told to buy a charger for his mother’s phone.
The 12-year-old never returned, to the chagrin of his family, relations and church members. While the parents were on their way to a television station, having previously gone to the police and told to go back home and wait for 24 hours before returning to lodge their complaint, they came across a spectacle.
They were told a young lad had been found lying right on the road in the early hours of that morning. They moved nearer and, behold, it was their missing son. The young lad told of how someone had tapped him on the shoulders as he moved near the fuel pump with his can. That was all he could remember.
For some other families, they have not been that lucky. The family of a pastor in a popular pentecostal church is still awaiting his return since April. Another family are still awaiting the return of their 19-year-old first child, Seyi Adetifa, a student of NIIT, Lagos, since the second week of June.
The psychological trauma of awaiting a missing relation is better imagined than experienced; spiritual efforts are mostly employed to complement the physical since families who have not been contacted for ransom will not know if only science will resolve the puzzle.The Adetifas have been to all known hospitals, mortuaries and police stations along the Lagos/Ibadan expressway, yet Seyi has not been found.
Most escapees recount a touch of the supernatural in their lives, as they move out of their captors’ territory.
For Tobi, he said his kidnappers suddenly started complaining that he was exuding a foul odour. On one of their trips to exchange kids for cash, they stopped the bus around the Berger area in Lagos and threw him out. It was the passengers at the bus stop to whom he narrated his story who contributed money and paid his fare back to the state from where he had originally been kidnapped.
An elderly woman, who was kidnapped in Ibadan, recounted how she found herself in the heart of Kogi State:
“I was going to somewhere around Adamasingba when my car developed a fault at Mokola, in front of the police station. I called my mechanic and he said he was somewhere far away. I could not wait, so I told him where to find the key in the parked car, and flagged down a taxi. I had quite some amount of money on me, as I was going to pay for the drinks which I sell wholesale.
There was a woman in the taxi when I got in, and, shortly afterwards, another man flagged the cab down. The man said he was going to Sabo and the other woman and I protested his picking someone going to Sabo when we told him we were going to Adamasingba, and Dugbe. He pleaded with us, saying he would make a detour at the stadium and turn back into Adamasingba, and we believed him.
Soon, the woman sitting beside me started complaining that she had just bought a phone but found it faulty, and was going to return it and get a refund, but I said nothing. We got to Sabo and the driver pleaded to be allowed to collect something in one of the compounds in view. That was all I knew.
“ When I opened my eyes, I found we were in a large compound. There were several other persons there. I also saw the woman that was with me in the car, crying. There were also some corp members there, about 10 in number, in their uniforms.
The corp members were the ones who told us we had been kidnapped. My bag, phone and every other thing had been taken away. Somehow, the other woman still had the phone that she was going to return. She told me our captors had removed the SIM. I asked her to let me see it, and, to the glory of God, the children had obviously forgotten to remove the SIM.
I called home and told my family I was in trouble, and that they should start praying. I also warned them not to try to call me back. I did not know the exact geographical location where we were, but the corps members informed me we were within Kogi State.
“The woman also called her people but, unfortunately, they called her back— and when the phone rang, our captors heard it and seized it. Big cars, bringing obviously affluent men and women, were always being driven in and going out with human parts which they had paid for. There were so many freezers in the place, with labels indicating the human parts kept in each.’’
The miraculous escape of this woman is a story for another day.
The size of Nigeria and its large unpoliced areas have become a major source of concern, as criminals find easy hide outs in large, fenced compounds or thick, uncultivated forest areas, where they site large warehouses to perpetrate their evil acts. According to the Abia State Commissioner of Police, Mr. Edgar Nanakumo, the police were doing their best.
“ We are doing our best, given the circumstances surrounding our operations and the prevailing economic situation in the country. There is manpower decline in the police. Some newly, deployed men and women have not reported, citing one reason or the other. There is also the need for better welfare package for more effective performance.
“We have also been trying to cope with the demand of modern technology. Crime prevention and fighting is information based” he said.
The population of the police vis-a-vis the policed is another major source of concern. The police authorities have always noted that the task of policing the Nigerian landmass is daunting. The Oyo State Commissioner of Police, Mr. Baba Bolanta, said on Monday at an event that the security situation in the state had improved, but his Abia State counterpart dwelt more on kidnapping.
“There is no particular strategy or logic we employ against kidnapping in Abia state. We only rely on information being supplied by people to aid our crime prevention and control. We also have an effective anti-kidnapping squad, which had made several arrests. Also, logistics have helped our operations . For instance, recently, some people in Abriba town in Ohafia local government area donated one Hilux bus and two motorcycles to police.
Specifically, two measures have helped to bring down the rate of kidnapping cases here. One is the order on the restoration of road blocks as in stop-and-search in the South East states. Also, the ban on commercial motorcycle operators in the state by the governor has helped to reduce kidnapping and armed robbery.
With the porous nature of our borders, the tendency of a small fraction of criminally minded Nigerians to bend technological to suit their illegal whims, only God knows when Nigerians will be truly safe.