LET’S ASK IGP ONOVO WHAT HE WOULD DO IF HIS SON IS KIDNAPPED BY RITUALISTS
On the sidelines of Sunday school, a Christian brother drew my attention to two kidnapping incidents the previous week. One attempt was made at a place supposedly in the presence of God. Can you guess? In a church! At a popular parish of the Redeemed Christian Church of God (RCCG) in Abuja, a man was […]
On the sidelines of Sunday school, a Christian brother drew my attention to two kidnapping incidents the previous week. One attempt was made at a place supposedly in the presence of God. Can you guess? In a church! At a popular parish of the Redeemed Christian Church of God (RCCG) in Abuja, a man was said to have gone to the children church to kidnap a boy, saying the child’s father had asked him to bring the boy to the house. The kidnapper would have left the place singing, clapping and rejoicing to Satan, if one of the teachers had not realized that the young boy had a teenage brother in another section of the children church. When the kidnapper was asked to wait for the older brother of the young boy, he knew that the wind had been taken out of his sail and escaped at the speed of breeze.
The second incident occurred at popular nursery and primary school in Wuse II, Abuja. Here, the kidnappers successfully made away with a school child and climbed a high ground from where he negotiated with the child’s parents. The university-graduate-kidnapper asked for N1.7 million for the lad. A child’s worth is more than a billion naira. The boy’s parents agreed to make the payment, but the gods of kidnapping abandoned their human agent: At the cash point, he was grabbed and chained by the police.
Violent fear surged into my heart after listening to these two accounts. Why? I have children who attend the children church at my parish of the Redeemed Christian Church of God in Abuja. I have children who attend a private school in Abuja. I dread the thought of any of them being kidnapped. God forbid. But how do I provide security for them? In this season of kidnapping, this is one question that should engage the mind of parents.
Parents who attempt to respond to this question are cast into despair. In the last few years, security business has been a money-spinner as corporate organizations outsource security to private companies. Rich and influential Nigerians use policemen as security guards, while communities engage vigilantes to watch out for men of the underworld. If every Nigerian family has to provide its own security, it would get to a point where every Nigerian has to become a security guard.
It is the constitutional responsibility of the Nigeria Police to provide security for every Nigerian. This may sound like Greek, an ancient tongue, to thousands who have enrolled as members of the Nigeria Police Force. Over the years, the focus of police training has been how to provide security for top government functionaries, with the specific objective of ensuring that ordinary Nigerians do not pose as threats to the ambitions and objectives (no matter how corrupt) of politicians in power and their associated business executives. They are trained to mow down protesters, brutalise journalists, intimidate enemies of politicians in power, and provide cover for the rigging of elections on behalf of those in power. And this disposition runs from top to bottom. The Inspector General of Police does what the President and Commander-in-Chief commands him to do, even if the command is criminal in nature. Therefore, all other police men and officers look up to other government functionaries whose biddings they would do in order to attract favour. Under this circumstance, the Nigeria police have no measure of independence. They have no mind of their own. It is just a body without a mind to control it. In many parts of developed and even developing countries, the police can be independent to the point of investigating a sitting president. If Inspector General Ogbonna Onovo is in doubt, he should ask the Israeli Police.
The Nigerian policemen are imprisoned in the struggle for survival, such that they have lost the freedom to serve the Nigerian community. To survive in the police force, the policeman, on stop-and-search has to extort money from motorists and make returns to his bosses in the office. The typical policeman at any duty post is under pressure to raise the ‘return’ to the office, instead of looking out for criminals. In this way, he has allowed kidnappers, armed robbers, car thieves, ritualists and other criminals to have a thoroughfare after greasing his palms with insignificant cash. It is for this reason that the grand idea of community policing is not working. As a defence when criticized for not being vigilant, the police authorities would ask for information from ordinary Nigerians, such information that would provide a lead to the arrest of criminals. But examples of Nigerians who lost their lives after providing tips of criminal hideouts to police are abundant. Even when criminals are taken to the police, they are later released to return to their evil trade. This is the dilemma of the Nigerian.
At a time like this, we expect the IG of police to begin to train his men on how to identify and nab kidnappers. We have been told that the police were receiving training on how to counter terrorism. We have not seen the outcome of the training. Incessant kidnapping going on now is also an indication that community policing, an idea that has swallowed millions of Naira, is not yielding fruit. At the rate in which this has become rampant, the police have the task of finding a solution, not to throw up their arms with the excuse that kidnapping has become a phenomenon that Nigerians should live with. Losing one’s child to kidnappers is not like losing money, car, or any valuable to criminals. To know how serious this problem is, IGP Onovo should ask himself what he would do if his child is kidnapped by ritualists.
The last line: While we pray without ceasing for God’s protection, we should also shout this aloud: Wake up! Nigeria Police Force, wake up!