Kidnappings, banditry: Legal practitioner calls for total reconfiguration of nation’s internal security

With growing instances of kidnapping and banditry across the country, a legal practitioner, Jiti Ogunye has called for an immediate reconfiguration of the nation’s internal security system.

This, Ogunye said, should take the form of establishment of people’s police for states, local government areas, cities, designated institutions to coexist with the unitary police.

Contained in a Facebook post he made on his wall, Ogunye held that such reconfiguration was imperative to stem the threat to lives posed by the activities of marauding armed bandits, kidnappers.

He likened the state of insecurity in the country to the return of the slave trade era evidenced by instances where armed bandits intermittently waylay, terrorize, kidnap, defile and kill Nigerians.

In particular, Ogunye decried that the growing records of kidnappings in Lagos and on highways in the South West at large pointed to the fact that all Nigerians faced a threat to their existence.

His post read, in parts, “There is an urgent need for a total reconfiguration of the internal security system in Nigeria. Peoples Police (police establishments for states, local government areas, cities, and qualified designated institutions) must be formed to co-exist with the unitary (not Federal) Nigeria Police Force. We delay at our own peril.

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“Now, a new variant of the slave trade era is here. Banditry and kidnapping. An era in which both the living and the dead can be kidnapped for ransom, as it was the case recently in Rivers State where a corpse was seized to force ransom payments.

“Humans beings are not being captured to be shipped to plantations in America, but human beings are being captured and traded like animals, and stolen and exchanged for money like articles of trade.

“Armed bandits, including foreigners, are in the Yoruba forests, where they have apparently set up temporary camps. From these camps, they intermittently storm the highways and kidnap travellers, who they hold and only release in exchange for ransoms. They terrorize defile and sometimes kill their victims.

“In the Trans-Atlantic slave trade era, slave raiders, called “ ipata” used to harvest people on footpaths and on farms in the Yoruba heartland. Their preference were strapping young men and women and children. Successful, they moved their captives to the coastal settlements of Lagos and Badagry to be traded and shipped to the Americas.

“Sadly, such a time has, again, arrived.

This has been happening in other parts of Nigeria. Now, that this phenomenon is moving closer and closer to the erstwhile slaves’ depot of Lagos, we must realize that we all face an existential threat.”