AYODELE OKUNFOLAMI
Governor Aminu Bello Masari connected Katsina to the growing league of states that have made kidnapping a capital punishment when he signed into law an amended Penal Code Law prescribing death sentence for cattle rustling and kidnapping on Friday, May 24, 2019. The governor assented to this bill following the latest spate of attacks that have been bedeviling Dutsin-Ma, Batsari, Faskari, Dan Musa and many other parts of the North Western state.In fact, about three weeks before Masari signed the bill, one of the traditional rulers of Buhari’s country home of Daura was abducted by gunmen.
Good to know that the Katsina State governor and the state legislature have chosen not to fold their hands on this irritating scourge that is embarrassing the nation. However, before shouting Eureka on this development, one should ask if another ceremonial bill assent is the solution to abduction.
Prevention of crime should be the way to go and not punishment of crime. We are always quick to react as a people to recommendthe “China model” of death penalty instead of proactively fixing our system, society and personnel. Is there anything wrong adopting the Netherlands model where we hear their prisons have been closed? More strikingly, it isusually after arresting some tens of criminals that hundreds more join the vices.
We are used to seeing pen happy governors signing various bills into law in the past but when it came to implementation, they dragged their feet. At the moment, there are several prisoners on death row littered in Nigerian prisons but governors have neither done the needful of ratifying their sentences nor granting pardons to the criminals. What this lily-livered tradition has led to is that at the end of the day, people convicted of capital offences end up not going to the stakes or gallows and continue to congest our peniten-
tiaries. So, if history is anything to go by, the kidnappers would if condemned not face death and may return to the society with jailbreaks happening now and again.
Before the kidnappers even get to the death row, it is expected that they had got a fair hearing in our courts as they are presumed innocent until proved otherwise. This is where the judiciary and the security agencies come in. Judiciary first. Beyond the photo ops of signing a bill, is the Bench ready to prosecute the cases in quick enough time and not render it lost in the haystack of unresolved cases? What are governors, through the ministry of justice in their respective states, doing to ensure cases are tried with the speed of light? Will more courts and court rooms be built so that abduction cases won’t be contesting for time, space and slot in our regular courts? Or would a special tribunal be set up for trial of the suspects?
While these questions are being pondered upon, our security agencies need to up their game if this fight against kidnapping, banditry and cattle rustling is to be won. Crime fighting in the 21st century is not about purchasing expen- sive helicopters, developing policing apps or deploying mean-looking poorly trained uniformed men to supposed trouble spots, it is about intelli- gence gathering. Negotiations are made between families of victims and captors via phone calls and ransoms paid in many cases yet the kidnap- pers are not traced by their registered GSM lines nor Bank Verification Numbers. Why the stress going through all these costly personal capture exercises if they would not be used to prevent future kidnaps?
Even if we wrongly claim we are not technologically advanced to fight crimes forensically, except our present unitary policing system is unbundled for the more realistic and more efficient community policing, we will continue to move in circles. It has proved unworkable posting underpaid security officers who are unfamiliar with their duty terrains to fight crime effectively.
Agreed, it is not every investigative move that will be made public however, it will be helpful to bring to the knowledge of Governor Masari and his colleagues that kidnapping is now an industry. There are informants, drivers, armed men, caterers, doctors, negotiators/middlemen and what have you and so displaying some semiliterate riffraff as suspects connected to kidnapping is only cosmetic. By the way, it is only the high profile cases that make the headlines, those of the commoners at “cheap” ransoms continue to be daily occurrences.
A more lasting approach to end kidnapping and cattle rustling especially in Northern Nigeria is education. A region that boasts over ten million out-of- school children today is only breeding cattle rustlers tomorrow. The over four hundred Almajirisin Katsina alone are ready recruits for the kidnapping industry when they become unemployable adults. Rural infrastructural development helps to prevents criminal activities by a huge percentage because it opens up dark areas that would have been used as nefarious dens for kidnapping. Employment of its infinite potential into its vast land mass for commercial agriculture will make them more productive and not tools for banditry.
Suicide was foreign to Nigeria about 10 years ago, today suicide is part of us. So what makes us think death penalty would deter kidnappers or cattle rustlers? If punishment deters crime, our prisons should be empty by now. Life as a Nigerian is itself a death sentence so being kept on death row, accommodated and fed on government expense before death, that may not come any time soon, is even favourable to the criminal. Meanwhile, the rest of the world is fast doing away with this medieval death penalty, Nigeria should instead set the pace in leading more civil and productive forms of punishment instead of turning back the hands of time. When one even considers that one may be wrongly convicted of the crime, it would be most unfair he gets an irreparable sentence.
Okunfolami writes from Lagos