My freedom can and should therefore not be taken away from me by anyone just because he is unemployed, greedy for great gain, aggrieved, poor, or just plain wants to marry me
This morning, I received this message on my phone and I am taking the liberty to reproduce it for you here. As usual, I have tinkered with the spellings and all to make it readable.
Please pay attention; something is happening in Abuja and Lagos now. People dressed like policemen stop cars and ask for particulars. Please on no condition should you let them in your car, they are kidnappers. Once they enter, they tell the driver that they are going to the police station. They end up taking the person elsewhere and ask the person to call someone to come and bail them with a ransom. It just happened to two people this morning. Also be cautious when taking cabs at night…
Just a few weeks ago, we wrote on this subject of kidnapping on this column and since then this dastardly trade has expanded. Obviously, very little has been done about it; this is why it is now operating like a fully established and registered company would – in the open. I am not giving up; I will continue to
write about this in the hope that others will join me to shout about it until the police wake up and do something, if only to clear their name from the stink.
Often, I muse to myself that each regime we have had in this democratic leg has left something distasteful for us to swallow in this nation. Pa Olusegun Obasanjo’s era left us the Okadacommercial motorcycle to strain at, and it has been a very hard swallow for us all since then. At that time, Obasanjo as the president really needed something to show he had the people in mind all the while.
The problem then was that the electricity situation was dismal indeed and people were watching each other dozing over their tools in their shops – carpentering, vulcanizing, pepper milling shops, etc., — and also cursing their situation. Unfortunately, rather than give us good train services, the then presido chose to liberalise transportation ‘so that many people would be employed’. I think I heard someone mutter something like it was cheaper for him. Anyway, that is how it came about that those Okada people have perpetually been getting between our feet, or err… tyres.
Then the era of ex-presidents Yar’Adua and Jonathan came. The Yar’Adua years were too brief for him to have left something for us to get stuck on but the President Jonathan era was too full of glitz and glamour not to have left something in our throats. In that era, electricity was still scarce; people were however no longer staying to doze in their shops. They had their Okada business to fill the roads with like termites.
With so much money flying around (dollars, pounds, and sometimes Naira) in the Jonathan years, it was too much to ask some of us not to think up ways of catching some of it. It came down to a choice between begging Jonathan to allow them join in the spraying circle and taking to kidnapping. With hindsight now, methinks it would have been cheaper to have begged, but I thought I heard someone mutter again that the circle was too small. Today, the unfortunate effect of the Jonathan glitz and glamour has metamorphosed intoKidnapping, PLC.
Kidnapping is now a business for many, complete with veterans. People don’t even think twice about just getting up and depriving others of their liberty, not minding that this is a highly criminal offence comparable to murder. All too often, the kidnapping leads to murder but the state is not making as if it cares. Many families are grieving over this issue but the state is too silent for my liking. I can bet you that right now, many families are running around looking for money to ransom a family member from kidnappers. AND THE STATE IS SILENT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Last week, my family (and my town, never mind where it is), was thrown into that anguished running around over the kidnapping of not one but three citizens of the town, including my family member and everyone felt so helpless. They had been travelling along a Nigerian route between Edo and Kogi States. What astonished and frightened me most was the information that the kidnappers could not turn up at first at the agreed point to collect the ransom they demanded because they were busy trailing the relatives of another victim they had just ‘taken’ and from whom they hoped to get more money. Can you just imagine this?!
What the deuce is going on? Is this a country or what? How is it that the mother or father (I cannot recall which one now) of a serving minister is kidnapped and the country cannot rise up against that crime to stamp it out once and for all? How can a former minister be kidnapped and the state get him released, then become somnambulant over the crime?!!! I don’t get it! It is definitely not enough for the police to suddenly swing into action in the case of a kidnapped known figure and leave the remaining families in this land of 170 million people to their own fate. This is not fair. Someone said Nigeria is now officially a failed state; that is why this kind of thing can go on. I find myself agreeing reluctantly.
Now, it has got that people are using kidnapping to solve their problems. To solve unemployment problems, turn to kidnapping; it requires no capital or bank loans. Can’t get a girl to marry? Kidnap one, a la the story of Ese. Bored? Kidnap a sex slave. Soon, everyone will be kidnapping everyone else in this country till you become either a kidnapper or a kidnapped. Indeed, before you know it, wives will be kidnapping husbands until those ones release sufficient housekeeping funds. I tell you, this is no laughing matter.
There’s a theory that says the police are heavily complacent over this matter because many of them are involved. Don’t ask me how, I don’t know. I don’t even know how sound that theory is. All I know is that the police have not done much to get to the root of this problem. They are not giving me sufficient confidence that when I go on the road, I will not be kidnapped along the way; and when I sit in my house, no one will enter and ask me to come and be kidnapped. Seriously!
My freedom is already guaranteed in the Nigerian Constitution, like many other constitutions. It tells me that it is my inalienable right as a citizen of this country. This means that it recognises that I am a human being not a goat or a chicken that has no will but only that of the person who pays for it or steals it. The constitution is thus acknowledging that I cannot be stolen away by some philistine for any reason. My freedom can and should therefore not be taken away from me by anyone just because he is unemployed, greedy for great gain, aggrieved, poor, or just plain wants to marry me.
Most importantly, we citizens should insist that the police, National Assembly and Presidency beam their search lights on some hot kidnapping spots. For instance, in many recent kidnappings, Okene and Lokoja in Kogi State seem to have featured prominently. A justice, a trade unionist, and now, Mrs. Christiana Agbulu, a university lecturer, have been kidnapped while travelling through and around these towns in recent times. Someone should give us some answers soon.
- This previously published article is repeated today in memory of Mrs. Christiana Agbulu, who was said to have died in the hands of her soulless kidnappers. May her soul rest in peace.
- Credit: http://thenationonlineng.net/
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