As kidnapping becomes big business… -By Niran Adedokun

Niran Adedokun

The morning I heard about the abduction of Toyin Nwosu, wife of Steve, Deputy Managing Director of The Sun newspapers, remains one of the most petrifying for me. Toyin and her husband, both of whom I have been friends with for about 15 years, are easily one of the most lovable couples the world would ever know and I could not imagine why anyone would contemplate anything injurious to this wonderful family.

For the first hour of being privy to this worrisome piece of news, I was numb in one position. Strains of worry gripped me and I could not find the will to do anything, not even stand! I picked up my phone but I could not call any of our mutual friends, I so abhorred the chance that anyone might confirm the story.

I eventually summoned the courage to call two hours after I learnt of the incident and the low tone with which he spoke told me the whole story. I hung up, looked up to God and said a simple prayer of faith that God should kindly seek out this precious lady and bring her back unhurt. What else could be done at that point?

In all, this event brought the reality of the dangers that we are in closer home than anything I can readily recall. As Yoruba people say, the death that kills your closest associate serves you notice of your own mortality. If a journalist’s wife could be kidnapped and a ransom of N100m put on her, no one is immune from the madness called kidnapping. Fortunately, Toyin was returned to her family four days after her abduction.

But five days after Mrs. Nwosu was released, news of the abduction of Chief Olu Falae on the day he turned 77 broke. Falae’s kidnap was another testimony to the fact these kidnappers are no respecter of persons. Having served the country in various capacities in the past, they could indeed assume that his family might be able to afford whatever ransom was placed on him, but whither the respect with which this society treated elders.

Kidnappers of the former Finance Minister who he has identified as Fulani herdsmen further denigrated their captive’s advanced age by allegedly slashing him with a cutlass and dragging him in the bush for several hours. That was in addition to the endless threat to his life in the four days that he spent in their net.

Yet, the country moves on. Beyond the worn out issuance of official statements condemning the dastardly act and promising to fish out the perpetrators, we do not see any concerted effort on the part of government at all levels to check the rising cases of kidnapping and other violent crimes in the country.

Currently, efforts to tackle insecurity appear to be concentrated on the Boko Haram insurgency in the northeastern part of the country but even this insurgency started on a miniscule scale and only got escalated because there was no attempt to nip it in the bud.

Having started in one state in the North-East zone in 2002, our leaders looked on without concern until it crept into other states within the zone ultimately becoming a national and cross-border problem which the whole world now has to cope with. It is the same way in which kidnapping has festered like a sore, becoming a crime that is swiftly taking a life of its own.

Starting with the activities of members of the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta who mainly abducted expatriates in their attempt to sabotage oil installations, to the cruelty of Boko Haram members capped with the kidnap of close to 300 girls taken from their school in Chibok, Borno State in April 2014, kidnapping has gradually become a franchise on a national scale, sometimes perpetrated by savvy graduates who almost win the sympathy of their victims. Ask Chief Mike Ozekhome among other.

Before our very eyes, kidnapping has defied all possible characterisation. We have seen very elderly people like a one-time Minister of Mines and Power, Dr. Shettima Ali Monguno, who was 92 when he was kidnapped in 2003 and Prof. Kamene Okonjo, mother of the immediate past Minister of Finance, Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala in Ogwashi-Uku kidnapped. Okonjo was 82 when she was kidnapped in 2012. We have seen children abducted as in the case of the Chibok girls. We have seen clergy like Anglican Bishop of Gwagwalada Diocese, Rev. Moses Tabuwaye and Sheikh Adam Idoko, the Deputy Secretary-General of the Nigerian Supreme Council for Islamic Affairs, nabbed while journalists like Donu Kogbara have not been spared.

A recent report published by Daily Trust suggested that Nigeria has recorded nothing less than 110 kidnap incidents in the past six months with ransom demand in the N1bn range. Curiously, none of the six zones of the country is spared of these nefarious activities.

Government at all levels in Nigeria can therefore not continue to look the other way while another form of insecurity takes over our land. My take is that the Buhari administration should give as much attention as it gives the fight against insurgency to the fight against kidnapping.This is the only way in which it would not develop into monstrous dimensions and become a new face of terror after the fading insurgency.

However, in the same measure in which it considers the reinforcement of the country’s security apparatus, government must also take the urgent steps to jumpstart the economy. The level of criminality which we currently see in Nigeria reflects the dangers that are inherent in youth unemployment, inhibited cultist practices and the derogation of our national values and ethos.

A country which is believed to have a youth unemployment rate of close to 50 per cent, where about two million additional youths join the labour market annually, where hundreds of thousands of children and young adults fail to get into higher schools annually without any alternative provisions for them, where more than 10 million children of school age are roaming the streets, should expect nothing other than harvesting the whirlwind of the careless wind that it continues to sow. This indeed is a mere glint of the evil that is ahead.

Unless our leaders, political, community and faith- based, rise to the occasion and quickly come to an agreement on how to put an end to this disrespect for the humanity in all of us, these occurrences merely forebode greater catastrophe of our failure as a people to appropriately respond to signs of the times.

No amount of political sermons without a shift of economic paradigm that moves the people out of poverty and deprivation will cure these defects. A nation that places no premium on the future of its young people is ill-prepared for a competitive and respectable future; it indeed is mortgaging its chance for any future at all.

• Follow me on twitter @niranadedokun