Kidnapping Nigeria Ltd?

ABUJA, the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), is under siege and nothing illustrates this sad state than the kidnappings taking place there in broad daylight and in utter defiance of the powers of the Nigerian State. Amid the rising wave of insecurity in Abuja, Abdullahi Sabo, a resident, was abducted last week.  Sabo was heading home with his wife when gunmen intercepted his vehicle at Sabon-Lugbe, Airport Road. Four out of the 10 persons recently kidnapped in the Kubwa/Dutse area of the territory were found killed and dumped at Ida, near Ushafa in Bwari Area Council. Among the stories that have thrown the nation into deep mourning is that of a secondary school student and daughter of the Ekiti State-born Chief Legal Officer of the National Universities Commission (NUC), Folorunsho Ariyo, and a 400-level student of the Ahmadu Bello University (ABU), Zaria, Nabeeeha Al-Kadriyar. Miss Ariyo was abducted along with her mother and three siblings while Nabeeeha Al-Kadriyar was seized with her father and five of her female siblings in the same axis of the FCT. Both were gruesomely murdered by their abductors who accused their families of delaying the payment of ransom.

Appalled by the spate of kidnappings, residents of Sagwari Layout, Abuja, staged a massive protest, calling on the government to rescue their loved ones. Elsewhere, thousands of Nigerians have the same tales of anguish to tell. In another chilling incident, 45 passengers in three fully loaded 15-seater commercial buses were abducted by terrorists in Orokam along the Otukpo-Enugu Road in Ogbadigbo Local Government Area of Benue State. The outlaws, armed to the teeth, reportedly sprang from the nearby forests in Orokam and forced the drivers to pull over. This week, in yet another horrendous incident, terrorists dressed in military camouflage kidnapped 31 villagers in Tashar Ngule village of Batsari Local Government Area of Katsina State.

Indeed, the situation is so bad across the country that the point is not about where kidnappers are operating but about where they are not. According to the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project (ACLED), a data bureau collecting data on political violence across the globe, at least 380 Nigerians, including farmers, children and students,  were kidnapped between December 1, 2023, and January 3, 2024 in Anambra, Benue, Cross River, Delta, Enugu, FCT, Kaduna, Kastina, Kogi, Lagos, Nassarawa, Ogun, Rivers, Sokoto, Taraba and Zamfara states. The story is the same in virtually all the states of the country where travelling on the roads has literally become dangerous as terrorists, particularly nomadic herdsmen, dish out sorrow and death to travellers. From prospective members of the National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) abducted on their way to the orientation camp to civil servants whose cars are riddled with bullets on their way to work, to farmers viciously beaten and abducted from their farms, when not raped and killed, the stories of kidnappings are infinitely brutal, speaking to the slide in governance and the virtual surrender of the Nigerian State to outlaws.

One of the reasons citizens pay tax is to guarantee their protection by the government? How sad, then, that kidnapping and all forms of criminality and violence have become the order of the day in Nigeria today, with the government completely nonplussed and leaving the people at the mercy of all kinds of criminals!  Kidnapping is a capital offence and kidnappers are not even entitled to bail, yet the crime continues to fester by the day. The impunity with which these criminal acts are carried out speaks to the fact that nobody – not the criminals anyway – sets great store by the capability and capacity of the government and its agencies to provide security and overcome the machinations of criminals. Nigerians are perplexed and devastated. Innocent blood is being shed everyday, making it clear that nobody can talk of any viable governance or order within Nigerian territory. It should be clear that the country is now at the nadir of existence and will require a reinvention for life to again become meaningful in its confines. Or how are we to understand bandits and criminals openly telling residents when they are going to be attacked and what payments to be made to offset any planned attack?

This situation glaringly signals the collapse of government and governance. Those in charge of affairs must decide whether they really want to go beyond holding perfunctory offices to investing the offices with the required poignant actions that prove that the government is in charge of real security and order in the country. The government ought to declare a state of emergency on kidnapping, but maybe Nigerians need to declare a state of emergency on governance first. The question whether those in government will hear the plaintive cries of Nigerians and decisively change the situation is hanging in the air, as nothing so far has given any cause for optimism.  That is a terrible state of affairs.