The kidnapping business

Death is probably the surest thing that would happen to every human being, but when it snatches someone in the family or within a close circle of friends, one feels the sting even more. Same with other bad occurrences even where they can’t be described as inevitable. When someone you know is under the slammer […]

Death is probably the surest thing that would happen to every human being, but when it snatches someone in the family or within a close circle of friends, one feels the sting even more. Same with other bad occurrences even where they can’t be described as inevitable. When someone you know is under the slammer of armed kidnappers, it suddenly occurs to you that we are all potential victims.
The kidnapping last Friday of Mike Ozekhome (SAN) brought the mat-ter home quite rudely. Accor-ding to reports, the lawyer was travelling between Benin and Auchi when kid-nappers mounted a road block and separated him from freedom. I do hope and pray that his ordeal will soon come to an end and that the scourge of kidnapping ravaging our country will eventually abate.
About two years ago when I attended the funeral of a friend in Delta State, I was jarred into perpetual alertness when a friend jokingly said; “Do you know that you have high kidnap value?”
I’m not a squeamish person by any standard, nor am I intolerant of ‘gallows humour’; but this one hit me in a raw place. “I don’t consider that funny”,
I said. “How can you be saying that kind of thing ….?”
I should have saved myself the stress of rep-lying. Other mourners soon joined the discussion, warning me to be careful; to “look left, look right, look left again and cast a glance backwards” to see who was watching me.
They regaled me with stories of innocent doubters who learnt the hard way. The most memorable of their stories was that of a man who came home from Europe and was kid-napped bet-ween Lagos and Benin. After robbing him of all the foreign currency he intended to apply to the building project he had embarked on at home, the kidnappers still demanded 20 million naira from his family if they ever wanted to see him alive again. The family managed to gather five million naira which the criminal gang eventually accepted. By the time the man was released he had suffered food poisoning and had to be hospitalised for several weeks before his relatives contributed money for his return fare to Europe. He lived to tell the tale; others have not been that lucky. That story and several others like it made me to become a recluse in the hotel, taking precautions as if I was in a local ‘gbomogbomo’ movie, except that this was real life. Every gaze was suspect until proven otherwise. What a life!
Some people go through that every day. It is the price we have to pay for running a country of highly placed thieves where unearned wealth is never questioned, where the quickest route to instant wealth is politics and its accompanying gangsterism. I make no excuses for kidnappers just as I wouldn’t make any for armed robbers. Poverty is no excuse for crime. But if we must get rid of these dreadful developments we have to address the root causes. Simply put, too many people are suffering while too few control access to the good things of life. We have become a country of 160 dollar billionaires and 160 million beggars.
A few well-connected thieves have so far ensured that Nigeria cannot refine its oil at home. The country must continue to suffer while they enjoy. There are pirates operating in the Niger-Delta and the rules of engagement in those dreaded creeks belong in the fabled world of fiction. Bribe-takers are advertised as role models and ex-convicts straddle the political landscape daring the law-abiding to jump down a cliff. Every day the newspapers are awash with the latest scandal. No one is planning for the younger generation. Young graduates roam the streets in abject hopelessness and we expect that there will be law and order? Can the well fed sleep when the hungry are awake?
Many of those who have taken to crime could otherwise have been productively engaged if the system allowed them. We have read stories of busted gang members confessing that it was the dire straits they found themselves in that forced them to take to crime. We cannot wish away kidnappers and other criminals. We have to reinvent our society in such a way that ordinary people would have the opportunity of attaining their highest potentials in a level playing field.
The major security problem in pre-Boko Haram Nigeria was violent robbery. But the robbers have since realised that their choice of crime was fraught with too many dangers and there was no guarantee that the loot would be as heavy as envisaged. So, they resorted to kidnapping which ensures that they are in a position to name their price. Now it is clear that those of us who haven’t yet suffered in the hands of kidnappers are just on parole. Although we pray that the day of our being canned by criminal gangs will never come, we know we are powerless in the face of such daunting odds.
The kidnap gangs don’t discriminate between the leeches responsible for the economic adversity of Nigeria and the rest of us who live by the sweat of our brow. Didn’t they kidnap a Catholic priest the other day? Now we are all running scared. It is even dangerous to publicly contribute to worthy projects now. Do you know who is watching you?
I am told by those who have studied this phenomenon that there is a pattern to the kidnapping madness. First there is reconnaissance – once the kidnappers identify you as having ‘kidnap value’ they monitor your movements. It could take one week or six months. Once they decide on D-Day and location, only God or good old Mother Luck can save you.
Enjoy your parole while it lasts!