By Tony Ogunlowo
VOICE OF NAIJA – In the past month two high profile kidnapping cases have captured the attention of the nation. One involved the kidnapping of more than 45 pupils and teachers from a school in Oyo state and the other involved the relatives of an ex-minister.
Whilst the relatives of the ex-minister, his sister and her two sons, were rescued in a highly publicized police operation the fate of the missing school children, and their teachers, remain unclear. Already two teachers have been killed: one was shot and the other beheaded.
Nigeria is a hotbed for kidnapping and in 2025, alone, there were more than 4,000 reported cases. But bare in mind that for every case recorded two or three went unreported leaving relatives to deal with ransom demands on their own. And for cases reported the over-stretched and under-staffed police are not much help and often suggest relatives negotiate with kidnappers. As a result, what was once a small sore has now festered becoming an even bigger wound and growing.
It has been more than twelve years since 276 girls were kidnapped from their school in Chibok. To date not all of them have been recovered. Some have died whilst others, heavily traumatized, have been found bearing children of their captors: their lives destroyed and those of their families.
The swift rescue of the ex-ministers’ relatives in a short window of just a few days points to one thing – elitism! If you’re well connected the powers that be will pull out all the stops to do what they’re supposed to be doing in the first place. If you’re a mere ordinary citizen they can’t be bothered.
Even though the Federal Government has a policy of not negotiating with kidnappers which is understandable since they don’t want to encourage the practice neither do, they have the means to end the scourge. Every government from the Obasanjo regime up to the present incumbent have promised to take a hardline on abductions and banditry. To date all that hardline rhetoric has just been ‘audio’ leaving bandits and kidnappers to get up to all sorts. There have been calls to allow citizens to take up arms: not a good idea as this might encourage extrajudicial killings rather than for self-defense. There have also been calls for stiffer penalties but yet again you need to catch the perpetrators first and make sure they don’t bribe their way out of the judicial system. The Forest Guards program is taking off and hundreds of them are being recruited, trained and deployed but are they paramilitary trained to be able to fight kidnappers in the bush?
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Just like when the Chibok girls went missing under President Goodluck’s watch the government is taking a lukewarm approach to the matter. What should be classified as a top priority has been pushed to the bottom of the list as all politicians rush to get their nomination forms in for the 2027 elections : the only thing that matters to them. If this was America Trump would have mobilized the Army, Navy, Airforce, C.I.A and whatever else he can think of to find ALL kidnapped victims. In Nigeria the only thing politicians are interested in , their top priority, is re-election.
Children’s Day has come and gone and so also has Democracy Day as we head towards Independence Day and somebody’s child, uncle, aunt, husband are still being held against their will with the security services running around like headless chickens clueless as to what to do next. What happened to their network of informers? Are their surveillance techniques so primitive they can’t locate a large gathering of people in the bush? Surely contact has been made with all kidnappers so they can list their demands and why haven’t these leads been tracked using basic cellular telephony technology? But if it’s an ex-minsters relative they know how to pull a rabbit out of a hat.
Until the government adopts a zero-tolerance policy towards kidnapping – and banditry – and sticks to it these unfortunate incidences will continue.
Perhaps it’s time to seek foreign assistance since we don’t know what to do: already Trump has stationed US troops, up North, to help us fight Boko Haram and ISIS. They already have the technology and personnel that can find a fly hiding behind a sand dune in the Sahara. An ordinary Airforce surveillance plane, or drone, equipped with heat seeking infra-red cameras over-flying the place at night can easily find anyone hiding out in the Old Oyo park within hours, not days. And please don’t involve the NAF who seem to bomb more innocent people than bad guys! Alternatively bring in Sheikh Gumi who seems to know most of the bandits. He might be able to help.
There is no easy fix to ending insecurity in Nigeria either than to bring in a brutal state of emergency that will grant security services carte blanche to deal with situations as they see fit. Again, this can lead to abuse of power as was the case of the disbanded SARS.
To truly eliminate all insecurity in the country the government needs to think long term and go back to the root cause of all these problems – hunger. A hungry man (- or woman) faced with unemployment and high cost of living, with nothing to lose, will be crazy enough to do any kind of crime to put food on the table and a roof above his head. Doubling the size of the security services and equipping them doesn’t solve the problem.
