STATE Security Service (SSS) operatives in Delta State are now on the trail of a Warri-based female socialite said to be a sponsor of militants operating in the Niger-Delta region just as about 300 militants have either fled the region or gone into hiding since the SSS and the Joint Military Task Force (JMTF) in the Niger-Delta commenced separate but synchronized manhunt for them about a fortnight ago.
Sunday Vanguard reliably gathered that the female financier, said to be a younger sister of a commissioner in one of the South-South states and woman friend to one of arrowheads of the Niger-Delta struggle, escaped from her Warri abode, last week.
Investigations by Sunday Vanguard showed that the widespread search for militants and audacious incursions into the once deified hideouts of the various gangs that specialized in the kidnapping of foreign oil workers for ransom in Rivers, Bayelsa and Delta states by security operatives made the woman to flee.
She was said to have recently given out N1 million to some militants for an undisclosed project before security operatives got to her deserted residence.
Last Wednesday in Warri, men of the SSS also ransacked the house of an Ijaw leader suspected to be involved in oil bunkering.
A security source, who disclosed this to Sunday Vanguard, asserted that �because the SSS has a list containing the names and addresses of the militants, the boys felt the game was up and took to their heels when they saw the dexterous manner the leader and some members of one of the feared kidnap gangs, including a government official that facilitated payment of ransom to militants, were picked up after they were lured to Asaba�.
Investigations by Sunday Vanguard showed that the region witnessed a respite in the last two weeks with no reported case of kidnap unlike the preceding two weeks during which an average of one person was kidnapped every two days.
Flight to London
Sunday Vanguard learnt that one of the kingpins who made good money from the business fled to London when the heat from the security agents on his trail became too hot. He was shocked by the dossier on him and in, collaboration with his partners-in-crime, a decision was taken for him to escape because so many things would happen if he was caught and forced to spill the beans.
Many others were said to have traveled. It is believed that their plan was to see how the security agents would sustain the present crackdown on militants. But security sources said the plan was not to give them a breathing space but flush out kidnappers, particularly moneymaking hostage takers� from the region.
Some of them fled leaving their vehicles and girlfriends and just a week or more outside their traditional home ground, a number of them were said to be feeling like fishes out of water in their new abodes.
Case files opened on government accomplices
Sunday Vanguard gathered that case files had been opened on the alleged role of some elected and appointed government officials in the kidnap business in the region. Security agents decided to investigate them following what a source described as revelations by some of the kidnappers already in custody on how they abetted and aided the business. It is a poignant blow to most of them who were feeding fat on the pay-offs from some of the state governments but they were also understood to be doing everything possible to cover their tracks, including lobbying and pressing button to stop their being invited for questioning in connection with kidnap.
Our source, a top security officer in the region, said: �If these politicians and government officials make the mistake of getting involved in any kidnap case again, we will pick them up and tell them that we have dossier on all they have been doing since. It is because they get involved in the past by collecting money from governors for these boys that the criminal act became a lucrative business for them�.
The intelligence reports on the affected persons have reportedly been forwarded to Abuja and the directive is that all the suspected accomplices be put on surveillance.
How the kidnap �industry� was paralyzed
�For those who don�t know, even if they are wont to deny it, this kidnap thing is masterminded mainly by some Ijaw youths and the network of their communities along the coast of the states in the Niger-Delta is wonderful but Delta State is no doubt the tactical headquarters, while Rivers State is the cash cow followed by Bayelsa State. Edo, Akwa-Ibom, Cross River and Ondo states are not so much in the reckoning of the militants business wise. It took us time but when we found out that the kidnappers in most of the cases took off from Delta State, we decided to pick them up, and as we did that, we were able to send panic into the various syndicates. And because the leaders who do the conceptualization and planning from Delta State are on the run, the boys who execute the drawn-out programme in Rivers and Bayelsa states for instance have been left without shepherds�, an informed source hinted. However, the spokesman of the Ijaw Youth Council, Mr. Peter Ajube, in an interview denied that hostage taking and vandalization of oil facilities in the region were the handiwork of Ijaw youths. He said that criminal elements had infiltrated the struggle and cashed-in on the crisis to make money.
Ijaw happy with the clean up
Clearly, there is a difference between those kidnapping for the struggle and those kidnapping for money but, in all, kidnapping for whatever reason is wrong and it�s a criminal offence. However, if one were to gauge the mood of the Ijaw nation on the crackdown by security agents on kidnappers, the truth, according to the national president of the Federated Niger-Delta Ijaw Communities (FNDIC), an influential Ijaw body, Chief (Dr) Bello Oboko, was that the Ijaw nationality is happy with the move by security agents to get rid of commercial kidnappers.
Oboko told Sunday Vanguard in Warri, last Wednesday, that it was because the Ijaw nation was not happy with the activities of commercial kidnappers that the FNDIC was mandated by Ijaw leaders at a meeting in Bayelsa State on Thursday, August 17 to proceed to Letugbene in Bayelsa State to rescue the Shell Petroleum Development Company (SPDC) worker, Comrade Nelson Ujeya, now deceased, that was kidnapped by Letugbene youths on August 8.
He said it was unfortunate that the boys who went for the rescue mission were shot dead by men of the Joint Military Task Force (JMTF) in the Niger-Delta, August 20, on their way back with the hostage.
The FNDIC leader said that before the Letugbene case, the group had had cause to disown the moneymaking hostage takers in Rivers and Bayelsa states, saying: �In reality, the struggle is not to take foreigners hostage and make money from it, our struggle is to draw government attention, whether federal, state or local to the underdevelopment in the region, particularly Ijaw land, and enjoin them to develop the areas since oil exploration and exploitation activities have degraded our environment and deprived our people of their means of survival�.
Oboko said that it was the same way FNDIC intervened when the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND) kidnapped nine expatriate oil workers in Delta State purportedly as human shields and bombed oil installations following the bombardment of some Ijaw villages by the JMTF, some months ago, that it intervened in the Letugbene case only for its peace emissaries to be killed.