One sign of a failed or failing society is paralysis of law and order; a complete breakdown of the conventional and enthronement of the bizarre. The Nigerian socio-economic ecosystem has witnessed such anarchical order in recent years. It is the elevation of a special variant of crime to one huge industry. It is called abduction; kidnapping,  the cruel act of turning captives to cash. In local parlance, they call it ‘obtaining’. And damn, we have looked helpless in the face of this new trade.
Just as the nation got stewed in the juice of cheap money from crude oil and abandoned her legendary illustriousness in agriculture, mining, forestry, latex and cotton production, cocoa, groundnuts and cashew nuts, palm produce, among others and slid into the lazy mode; Nigerians are beginning to see huge potentials in kidnapping as the new oil. Being able to form a ring of abductors is akin to owning an oil well or even flaunting a lucrative oil bloc licence.
We can no longer pretend about this; it does not make sense to keep quiet either. Kidnappers are the new big boys in town. And it seems a profitable venture. In the beginning we were afraid of robbers who broke into homes in ungodly hours of night and robbed their victims; we were afraid of robbers on the highway; of pickpockets in brimming Molue buses; we dreaded in-traffic crooks who point a gun at you, dispossess you of your belongings in nanoseconds and bolt. Not anymore! These days, our new dread, our collective torment is the kidnapper. They are taking away our fathers, mothers, uncles, aunts, and worst of it all, children, to dingy places in surreal forests and shanties and asking us to pay money in millions in lieu of their lives. And we’ve been paying. The more we pay, the more they abduct. It’s frightening how we got here. They have kidnapped all manner of persons: the poor, the not-so-poor and the rich and the not-so-rich. They kidnapped lawmakers, wife of Central Bank Governor (that’s a big fish); over 200 schools in one fell swoop, ex-ministers, bankers, politicians, businessmen et al.
In its formative days, kidnappers were mainly a bunch of misguided militants in the creeks of the Niger Delta. They targeted expatriate oil workers popularly called ‘oyibo’. It was their own way of venting their rage against oil majors whom they accused of living in obscene prosperity at the expense of their environment and people. Kidnapping was at that time limited only to the creeks where the oil wells and facilities were located. While all this happened, the nation, as always, pretended that the problem would wear away, that the fad would soon fade into oblivion like the tropical Sun at dusk. It never did. Rather, it grew diametrically to the East, North and West.
Now, the kidnappers are everywhere; stalking the byways and highways with swashbuckling hubris; unchallenged, unfazed. Worse yet, the kidnapper is not just the ammunition-wired militant in the creeks; the Fulani gunmen, the yesteryears robbers and their growing army of recruits from Abia, Imo, Anambra to Lagos and Ondo State have formed a deadly alliance with their peers up north to complete the deadly ensemble of new millionaires in the booming kidnap trade. To add to the basket of fright, the latest crown in our jewel of criminality, the terrorists, have joined the prosperous trade of abduction. The manner they abducted Chibok school girls and countless other men and women in the North East and used same to negotiate deals with the Nigerian government gives a deeper insight into the mind of the average kidnapper: Money is the lure of the trade. Recent statistics on the frequency of abductions and volume of ransom paid out by Nigerians to their abductors shows that Nigeria may have surpassed the combined revenue raked in by abductors in Yemen, North Africa and Somali put together.
Kidnapping has become so commonplace that people are kidnapped for as low as N10,000 or recharge card as ransom. Children even arrange their own kidnap to extort money from parents. A pastor was once reported to have ‘faked’ a kidnap and claimed he used the money raised by the church for a capital project as ransom. Smart one!
It seems that easy these days to organise a kidnap. If not, why are the kidnappers making so much harvest in Lagos, especially in the Ikorodu, Epe corridor of the state. Lagos is the last place you would expect organised crime like kidnapping of school children and invading of estates to happen with so much frequency; certainly not with the lavish show of goodwill by Governor Akinwunmi Ambode towards the police and security agencies in the state.
One of the highpoints of his administration was when the  Governor handed over 100 four-door Salon Cars, 55 Ford Ranger Pick-Up vans, 10 Toyota Land Cruiser Pick-Ups, 15 BMW Power Bikes, 100 Power Bikes, Isuzu Trucks, three Helicopters, two Gun Boats, 15 Armoured Personnel Carriers, Revolving Lights, Siren and Public Address Systems, Vehicular Radio Communicators, security gadgets including bullet proof vests, helmets, handcuffs, etc, uniforms, kits and Improved Insurance and Death Benefit Schemes for officers in the state. The cost of acquiring the equipment was placed at N4.765bn. Yet, in the midst of this gesture, schools in the state have become easy targets for kidnappers. Why?
In some cases, we have unwittingly given the kidnappers incentives to increase their productivity. The recent abduction of a member of the House of Representatives, Garba Durbunde, from Kano, and the urgency with which the House leadership paid out ransom is an invitation to the abductors to target more high profile Nigerians. Beyond that, it gave the impression that kidnapping is a quick turnover business and a lucrative one at that.
But it is a shame that kidnappers appear ahead of the nation’s security apparatchik. The police and the DSS particularly need to improve on their intelligence gathering mechanism. As kidnapping is gaining ascendancy, operatives of the nation’s security network must deliberately and consciously infiltrate the ranks of the abductors. Covert operations and surveillance should be intensified. Kidnappers are not ghosts and their crime is purely organised crime which takes days, even weeks and months, to plan. Most of these acts ought to be nipped before they were hatched.
One factor that has sustained kidnapping is the secrecy with which the police have treated those arrested and even victims of the crimes. Victims are advised by the police not to disclose how much ransom they paid to buy their freedom. They are even told not to admit that they ever paid ransom. Plus, the fact that all the arrests made in the past including the recent arrest of three suspects who police say had confessed to kidnapping the Igbonla model school children, Turkish school students, the Oniba of Iba and the Isheri North estate landlord all in Lagos often do not get convicted with the same urgency they demanded and collected ransom. This is where the judiciary should be alert and responsive. Cases of kidnap deserve accelerated hearing as deterrence to the perpetrators. How much of intelligence have the police gleaned from previous arrests? The fact that most of the Lagos kidnaps share the same methodology, the captors came through the creeks, suggests that intelligence gathering and surveillance in the waterways and creeks should be beefed up with strong collaboration with the Navy. The challenge is to make kidnapping less attractive and lucrative than it now appears, otherwise it has become the new oil.

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