Most reported kidnap cases stage managed — Police

Police have disclosed that most reported kidnap cases across the country are either fake or stage managed.

The Force Public Relations Officer, ACP Muyiwa Adejobi made this known during the presentation of medals to the athletes that participated in the boxing and archery categories of the 14th edition of the Biennial Police Games tagged Oluyole 2024 at Olajire Hotel and Resorts Ibadan on Wednesday.

He submitted that the security situation in the country is not as bad as being presented on the social media.

Adejobi, therefore, enjoined the people to base their analysis on the security on facts and figures.

According to him, “most videos and news of insecurity happenings in Nigerians online are old news, saying hardly will any conventional media house publish or broadcast them the way they are on social media.

“If you want to analyse kidnapping, how many cases we have in Oyo? how many do we have as per geo political zone? So if you want to analyse security situations, you don’t do that with mere speculations or phsycological projections.

“We collate information and data of incidences, we are the one to tell you if security situations is worrisome, but with what we have on ground, security situations in Nigeria is not worrisome.

“Most kidnapping incidence are fake or stage kidnapping, when people shout that they are been kidnapped, it is not all these incidences are real, many people fake kidnapping to get money from their people, while some do that to collect ransomed from their families, let us demarcate between real kidnapping and stage kidnapping.

“So, from us, the situation is not as bad as people read it on media, we have the information, we have the data, though, we have isolated cases, we can’t rule out isolated cases, we arrest them on a regular basis, we have taken the fight to their camp, we neutralised many of them, we arrest them and charged them to court.”

He urged Nigerians to assist the police and other security agencies in tackling insecurity, adding that people should raise alarm so that Police can take action against insecurity.

“All security agencies in Nigeria are working together to tackle insecurity because the mandate of the President is for us to go and desimate activities of the criminals and we are out there to do that, we are not relenting on our efforts in making sure we give Nigerians perfect security situations we deserve in this country.”

On the ongoing Police Games, the Director of Sports, CP Patric Athairu said one of the essence of the game was to discovered new talents, adding that the game has discovered many new talents so far.

He said “We are collating numbers of talents discovered so far, so as to introduce them to the federations for them to have necessary support. We might need to bring some of them out of where they are serving to give them opportunity to focus more on discovering their talents, this will give us more talents in the police.

“We are meeting with the federations chairman because of the new talents discovered which are subject to verification, we are waiting for records from these federation, and we shall make it available as soon as possible.”

“As the medal stands, Zone two is leading at the medals table with about 52 medals, followed by the Force Headquaters with 49 medals