As the revelry in President Muhammadu Buhari’s inauguration for a second tenure subsides, Nigerians cannot but sigh, considering a plethora of socio-economic and political problems that have stalked the land. Buhari, the new president, no doubt realises that he had been on the block as Nigeria’s apex leader for complete four years and that, his return on re-election is intended for improvement on his past performance.
Again, the newly inaugurated state governors and the national and state Assembly members must also come to terms with the fact that, governing over Nigeria in whatever capacity is not a tea party, but a call to duty; hence the need for all in the rung-run of leadership to have sober reflections and get down to work.
Away from the pangs of hunger arising from high inflation and unemployment rates, is the embarrassing blight of social insecurity, clothed in insurgencies, armed robberies, kidnappings and other forms of banditry.
However, the greatest challenge that Buhari and his team must do all within their powers to suppress, is the increasing rate of kidnap cases that has presented Nigeria before the global community as a potential landmine, a country where no one’s security is guaranteed.
Nigeria’s inglorious profile in the escalation of kidnap cases is akin to the medical tale of degeneracy ascribed to the cancer disease. The cancer is first noticed as a negligible lump that looks as one to soon peter out, only to overtime develop in growth to a big boil until it becomes malignant. At such a stage, death knocks on the door.
Same way, the incidence of kidnapping in Nigeria took its roots from the activities of militants in the Niger Delta region, during which protests heightened against environmental degradation, owing to the operations of foreign oil companies.
Some South-south region’s ‘idle youths’ who started the kidnapping thing were not only appalled about the despoliation of their fishing career-as effluents polluted the creeks and singed their fishes, they were more annoyed that in spite of the injustice, there had been no form of rehabilitation and compensation to enable them and their future generation to survive on their land.
Hence, they began to kidnap the foreign expatriates who would later be released once mouth-watering money had been paid as ransom. Overtime, however, the President Umaru Yar’Adua administration of between 2007 to May 10, 2009 initiated a palliative in the form of amnesty and youth empowerment programme. The policy was to be consolidated by President Goodluck Jonathan, who incidentally is from that region, following the death of
Yar’Adua.
But while kidnapping in the Niger-Delta Region raged, it was soon to be cloned by other criminally inclined youths in other parts of the country, which saw sense in turning it to a worthwhile trade. The imbibing was first prevalent in the Southeastern part before it streamed to other parts of Nigeria, where hooded hoodlums target well-to-do people and members of their families, for kidnap.
Left uncurbed, kidnapping in its ‘malignancy’, flexed in muscles. While the ‘Big Boys’ go after the wealthy and the mighty, the minions concentrate on anyone, so long as it can fetch some money. Indeed, they are so organised that their modus operandi have left the security agencies, especially the police, in a quandary, thus leaving both the rich and the poor at the mercy of kidnappers.
Under this reign of absurdity, road transportation, considered as the virtual transit belt for the poor man, becomes greatly imperiled by the activities of kidnappers. It has gone so bad that the ever busy Abuja-Kaduna road is now a shadow of its old self, as kidnappers, armed with sophisticated weapons, easily intercept vehicles along the road. Survivors of such specters of horror have often come to recall how abducted people were herded into the dark alleys of bushes and deserts, as would captives in the trans-Saharan slave trade era.
Ludicrously too, the South-West region, noted for relative peace, has now been violated by the activities of kidnappers. It seems hogwash though, facing the reality that the same virulent group of Fulani herdsmen, reputed to have killed many innocent people in the North-Central and southern parts of the country, are now believed to be behind the several cases of kidnapping on the highways, in the South-West.
Sadly, travelling on the Ife-Ilesha road is now considered a big risk, as some herdsmen are said to be lurking in adjourning bushes, waiting for opportune time to kidnap unsuspecting road users.
But getting down to brass-tacks, it is instructive to let the Federal Government realise that in kidnapping people, the horror ends at ransom payment, failing which the captive is killed.
Therefore, nipping the kidnap cases in the bud will require the government to fend for the army of the jobless in the country, many of who take to criminal activities to survive. That means, the second coming of Buhari should focus on aggressive industrialisation, to keep the idle youths busy. It should particularly prop up activities in the agro-allied industries, which holds the potential of mass employment and food
security.
However, in the immediate term, we believe the FG has no hiding place in the strident calls for a state police, which, from all indications, can easily curtail the escalation of criminal activities, among which is this seemingly intractable kidnapping drift. It is high time Buhari and his team rose to the occasion.
