Kidnapping: While We're Waiting For God To Answer Our Prayers

Some part of this article was erroneously excluded in our last Tuesday’s edition. This has prompted a repeat of that piece. We are sorry for the mix-up.

The day was Thursday, February 26, 2009. Paramount rulers, clan heads, and village heads had converged on the expansive Ibom Hall in Uyo, Akwa Ibom State, filling it to the brim. Abandoning their traditional engagements, the royal fathers, drawn from their different domains were converging to attend to an issue that has become one of the state's number one headaches-kidnapping.

The royal fathers were responding to an urgent call by Governor Godswill Akpabio as stakeholders in governance, to come and deliberate on how to keep kidnappers at bay in the state.
Despite the assembling of a crack Joint Task Force and code-naming it Aduma (meaning thunder), it appeared that more and more criminal gangs were increasingly attracted to Akwa Ibom by the day. There was palpable fear in the land and the intended high pitched voicing of that popular slogan “Akwa Ibom Ado Ok” seemed to be rendered in a tone that was hushed, suppressed and unsure.

Addressing the royal fathers at that meeting, Governor Akpabio expressed displeasure over the way youths in the state had allowed themselves to be misled into crime. He said government was “disturbed that some of our children are misled by events happening in states around us to think that they can make a living out of kidnapping”.

In a dramatic fashion, the traditional fathers rose in unison and rained curses on kidnappers and would-be kidnappers seeking to terrorize citizens and visitors. If you can recall, the monarchs led by the Chairman, State Council of Chiefs, Edidem Ime Dickson Umoette, cursed: “They would die. God would kill them… let them die in Jesus name!” The chant of “Amen” rented the air.

Recalling a Bible portion, the royal fathers told us that God also kills; hence He should deal with kidnappers.

Exactly a year on, that curse seems to have deterred no one as kidnapping has now even assumed a frightening dimension in the state and the bravado of these evil gangs in recent times is indeed worrisome.
For the past three weeks or so, the story has been troubling. There have been pathetic stories of citizens of the state who have been whisked away to unknown destinations only to return when huge ransoms have been paid.

Alarmed and desperate again, the government assembled Akwa Ibom women who all dressed in black, at the same Ibom Hall on Saturday to fire more curses on kidnappers, as well as their sponsors in the state; praying God to fortify the people and cleanse the land. This marked the end of a three-day fasting and prayer declared by the state government in honour of some women killed in the church (Qua Iboe Church) by kidnappers two weeks ago, when they kidnapped General Edet Akpan, the former Director General of National Youth Service Corps.

But while we wait on Almighty God to answer our prayers it would be wise to take a hard look at ourselves and apply the age-long wisdom of helping ourselves while He makes up his mind whether to rescue us from this growing monster or allow us wallow in self-pity.

We need to ask ourselves why Akwa Ibom has suddenly become the breeding ground for kidnappers. This is one question that has bugged the minds of many. Could it be the rising cases of unemployment or the proliferation of arms as a result of political patronage of miscreants who are dumped after elections or is it the result of moral decadence and the quest to get rich quick?

There's a strong urge to link the spate of kidnapping to the rising army of the unemployed and the prevailing poverty in the state. The widely acknowledged saying that an idle mind is a devil's workshop cannot be different when it is related to the present chronic unemployment level in Nigeria. There are uncountable able bodied men and women in Nigeria roaming the streets in search of jobs which do not exist. Out of frustration, coupled with mounting responsibilities to contend with, many have ventured into the dark and dirty world of criminality. Psychologists reason that a graduate who is unable to lay hands on something is psychologically bereft of any concept or ideas for survival.

The tendency to develop a negative attitude towards society and attribute his failure to society and to manifest his/her indignation towards society is very likely.

I stick to the school of thought that strongly believe that the proliferation of arms as a result of political patronage of miscreants who are dumped after elections is enhancing kidnapping. This likens the rot today to the scourge of armed robbery in the country in the early eighties. Then, Nigeria's journey into national and highly sophisticated criminal activities that was perpetrated could be traced to events following the end of the 30 month civil war. Many young able-bodied men who fought the war were discharged and sent home with nothing.

The schools they left behind were destroyed and there were no jobs to engage them and keep them busy. Consequently, many of the demobilized youths took to armed robbery on a somewhat lesser scale. They were armed with weapons, having acquired the skill and guns during the war. However, the coming of the oil boom in the seventies increased the level and scale of armed robbery so dramatically and massively threatened the country's security.

Today, the story is almost the same. This is the political off-season in Akwa Ibom. Therefore, the political thugs who have been abandoned by their employers after winning elections are now keeping themselves “gainfully employed” by snatching innocent people and relatives of those seen, rightly or wrongly, to be wealthy. And just as the coming of the oil boom in the seventies increased the scale of armed robbery dramatically, the stupendous empowerment of political office holders and their cronies have led many who are far away from these juicy government contracts to turn to kidnapping-to have their hands on the pie.

The flipside of the theory holds that these politicians and government contract beneficiaries flaunt so much wealth to the envy of those whose minds are always at work to do evil as a result of greed.

For those who are staunch in the believe that our kidnapping wahala is born out of tribal disharmony and a subsequent ethnic cleansing taking place systematically, I may be talking trash. But while we wait on Papa God to help put these suspected ethnic dividers to shame, we have to help ourselves and leave the rest to Him.

Since the declaration of death penalty as a way of curbing the crime by the House of Assembly which passed into law a bill termed “Prohibition of Hostage Taking and Related Offences Law”, with death penalty as punishment for offenders has not changed anything, we need to do more. In fact, things have worsened since the declaration of this sentence, instead of improving.

Could the problem be that we legalized death penalty, which the rest of the world have proscribed?

Reacting to Nigerian States making kidnapping a capital crime last year, Amnesty International had expressed displeasure. The world-famous human rights group insisted that extending the scope of death penalty to include kidnapping is a retrogressive step that does nothing to protect victims. The organization stated that the retention of capital punishment has failed to reduce armed robbery or murder in Nigeria despite the execution of more then 2,600 culprits since 1970.

Amnesty International had told our leaders that from their experience, the threat of death penalty is not an effective answer to violent crimes like kidnapping. They said the right and effective way to curb this menace was to strengthen the police ability to detect potential crime before they occur and prevent them. But nobody listened.

Although they continue to look helpless and hopeless against this sophisticated and brutal minority, the Nigeria police seemed to have hit the right button last year in the fight against this scourge when the Inspector General of Police, Mike Okiro, proposed a draft bill, seeking the enactment of a law to order GSM companies in Nigeria to register the names and addresses of all GSM subscribes to help track callers who call and ask for ransom after kidnapping.

When queried why his men seem so helpless in this situation, Okiro had always maintained that GSM companies refuse police access to information of certain numbers on the ground that it would violate privacy law, and the companies might take the police to court. Entitled “A bill for an act to make it mandatory for all GSM companies to register their subscribers,” the bill which sought to make it a punishable offence for a GSM company to fail to comply, proposed closure of the company, or N1million fine if it fails to comply. The impending law will also punish a subscriber who fails to register his or her numbers within a given period.

Sadly, and in typical Nigerian fashion, no genuine effort has been made to make this feasible-bringing to the fore the ability and sincerity of government to eliminate this menace.