On death sentence for kidnappers

The Senate recently adopted the report of its Joint Committee on Police Affairs, National Security and Intelligence which recommended death sentence for kidnappers. The report which was titled “The unfortunate recurrence of kidnapping and hostage taking in Nigeria: National wakeup call”, was presented on the Senate floor by the Joint Committee’s Chairman Senator Abu Ibrahim […]

The Senate recently adopted the report of its Joint Committee on Police Affairs, National Security and Intelligence which recommended death sentence for kidnappers. The report which was titled “The unfortunate recurrence of kidnapping and hostage taking in Nigeria: National wakeup call”, was presented on the Senate floor by the Joint Committee’s Chairman Senator Abu Ibrahim of Katsina, who is also the Chairman, Senate Committee on Police. Senator Ibrahim said during the report’s presentation that it was produced after the Joint Committee had interactive sessions with relevant heads of the security agencies.
Senator Ibrahim commended the security agencies for seriously tackling the kidnapping and hostage taking crises in various parts of the country and recalled that the problem started in the Niger Delta, where foreign oil workers were the initial targets and victims. He then decried the tendency for relations of victims to pay ransom money to criminals. Paying ransom, he said, only encourages the kidnappers to seize more hostages.
While the position of the Senate is in good faith, its take on capital punishment presents a paradox given the wider issues surrounding the penalty in contemporary circumstances. Evidence from several countries and settings reveals that capital punishment hardly reduces the incidence of heinous crimes, but rather emboldens the criminals who see the penalty as justification for killing their victims even without cause.
And as is often the case, death penalty is not easily administered as most of the time convicts on death row remain waiting for the final resolution of their sentences for years on end. A typical example is the situation whereby throughout Nigeria’s Second Republic from 1979 to 1983, no state governor in the country confirmed the death penalty for any convict on death row. This situation has been blamed for the resort of the Police to engage in extra judicial killings, when the officers believe that criminals that deserve to die may escape justice and perpetrate more crimes if offered the opportunity to live after apprehension and conviction.
At the global level many countries are moving away from the death penalty for the same reasons of its doubtful deterrence value and efficacy in reducing crime, difficulty in administration and of course the absence of restitution in the case of erroneous conviction, as the dead cannot be recalled to life. As was observed by the Deputy President of the Senate Ike Ekweremadu during the presentation of the report, most of the kidnappers are normal humans who are basically looking for money to feed themselves and are afraid of the security agencies, hence adopt kidnapping as a surreptitious way to extort booty from their victims. Hence it is believed in many quarters that many of the kidnappers and hostage takers are regular armed robbers who have resorted to the new crime as it seems to be relatively safer and often yields more dividends to them.
In the light of the foregoing, a more effective approach remains the elimination or reduction of the root causes of crime in the society through providing opportunities for gainful employment. This is just as arrested kidnappers and hostage takers should be passed through the due legal process for the weight of the society’s misgivings on the crimes to bear on them and their partners in crime.
However in consonance with the growing frequency and gravity of the offences of kidnapping and hostage taking, the penalty needs to be correspondingly extraordinary, in which case a sentence of 25 years or life jail is preferable. The death penalty can be justifiably applied in the case of death of a victim of kidnap or hostage taking and the perpetrators can be charged additionally for murder. When all is said and done, the best deterrence for the heinous crime of kidnapping is not to a stiffer penalty into the statute books but to improve police detective work and deploy technological tools in order to ensure that most, if not all kidnappers are ultimately caught and brought to book.