Damned if you pay, damned if you don’t

Of all the recent political brouhaha in Nigeria, the one that I feel most obliged to write on is the senate passing a bill that criminalises the payment and receipt of ransom for the released of kidnapped persons. The bill stipulates that the payer and the receiver face 15 years imprisonment each. Put differently, the […]

Of all the recent political brouhaha in Nigeria, the one that I feel most obliged to write on is the senate passing a bill that criminalises the payment and receipt of ransom for the released of kidnapped persons. The bill stipulates that the payer and the receiver face 15 years imprisonment each. Put differently, the victim (in this case the payer) and the criminal (the receiver) are given equal punishment. The two principal rationales of the bill as averred by its sponsors are the rising cases of kidnapping, putting everyone at risk and the ineffectiveness and risks involved in paying the ransom. These are certainly indisputable facts that we all agree on.

My motive for this write up lies in the very fact that the senate has the audacity to entertain a motion of this nature. I believe this is shockingly daring and insulting to all Nigerians; to say the least. The reason being that the relationship between state and citizens is a contractual agreement, more commonly known by experts as social contract.

In a simple terms, individuals give their consent to a recognised authority and surrender their freedom in exchange for the protection of their remaining rights. It is based on this contractual agreement that the state derives its legitimacy of performing functions such as maintenance of social order, monopoly on violence, provision of basic public goods and so on.

So, what if government fails to discharge its fundamental duties?

When government fails or is too weak to uphold its end of the bargain by satisfying the best interest of its citizens and suppressing civil unrest and preventing groups and individuals from the use of violence against others, it is incumbent upon the citizens to either withdraw their obligation to obey or dissolve the government and regain the right to establish a new form of government.

A critical look at the bill tells you all that you need to know about; whether its intention is to protect the unarmed masses against the criminal individuals and groups or it is simply a reflection of the hopeless state of Nigeria’s governance and leadership and its lack of political will to confront the menace of insecurity that poses existential threats to the country and its people. A casual observation tells me that the latter is the case.

My reason is simple, suppose the government succeeds in making a law that stops victims of kidnapping from paying ransom to their abductors, does that magically bring an end to kidnapping since the victims or their relatives are obliged by the law not pay the quoted ransom? Of course, the answer is no, given that the reasons for kidnapping in Nigeria abound. While many kidnapping offences are perpetrated for the sake of the ransom, there are also many others that are carried out in the name of politics, religion and what have you.

It is not at all that difficult to see why kidnapping and related crimes continue to flourish in Nigeria. While the list of reasons can be overwhelming, the starting point should be the self-serving and rent-seeking elite that continue ad infinitum to plunder the country at the expense of its increasingly, though unsurprisingly, pauperised masses. Any genuine law or policy to end kidnapping and related crimes by the senate or other arms of government must involve those holding political office having a long look at themselves in the mirror. There lies the solution to not only kidnapping but various other social ills that bedevil Nigeria.

If Nigerian lawmakers are sincere about fighting kidnapping and the insecurity in the country, their energy should be directed towards regaining government’s lost monopoly over the use of violence as stipulated by the Weberian tradition. The state should be the only one that has the legitimate and exclusive right to use, threaten or authorise the use of physical force.

The attempt, therefore, to make a punitive law against the same people it fails to protect is tantamount to declaring its failure to discharge one of its fundamental duties thereby questioning the legitimacy of its very existence.

 

 Abubakar A Usman (PhD), Institute of Malaysian & International Studies