As kidnapping persists…

There is nothing more alarming now than the worrying issue of kidnap cases that appears to have defied strategic efforts by the security agencies to stamp out. Today, kidnapping occurs virtually in every nook and cranny of the country, leaving in its trail agony and palpable insecurity in most homes.

This threatening development has created a feeling of suspicion in the psyche of most Nigerians, to the extent that they no longer feel secure whenever they move out of their domains.

The kidnapping trend has even taken an amazing twist: people even kidnap themselves with a view to asking for ransom from parents and/or relatives, and sometimes from the government. Isn’t that incredible?

Some months ago, a young lady of 22  was caught with her boyfriend after hatching a clandestine plan to kidnap herself in order to obtain ransom from her parents.

Beside the foregoing, there are lots of unimaginable cases of kidnapping in virtually every part of our nation that have resulted in gruesome deaths of prominent Nigerians, including expatriates in the oil-rich Niger-Delta who paid supreme price on the altar of militant agitation for resource control.

The recent case of a kidnapping kingpin, Evans, is still fresh in our memories, even though Nigerians have been kept in the dark about what has become of him regarding his whereabouts.

I hope his case will not go the way of similar criminal cases that have been swept under the carpet by the power that be.

And as if we have not had enough of such harrowing experiences, the Badoo boys have again joined the train of inordinate Nigerians plying the “fast lane” in the quest for materialism, annihilating whole families in the bid to make money.

Eight months ago, gunmen kidnapped the wife of a commissioner in the northern part of the country right in her home, ostensibly for ransom, while some secondary school students kidnapped in Lagos have just been let off the hook without blemish. Thank God that they are alive to tell the story of their abduction!

There are lots of mind-boggling kidnapping cases that make the headlines of our dailies. They slipped through the apparatus of our security agencies. We’re neither safe indoors nor outdoors; day or night, we live in a perpetual state of fear and uncertainty.

But I am of the firm belief that the Federal Government can contain this monster before it wreaks further havoc on our national economy, if only it can muster the political will to enact a punitive legislation that will make kidnapping unattractive.

A death penalty will scare anyone with such criminal tendencies to have a rethink.

Onyinye Nwadike

Anambra State University,

Anambra State.