Governor Willie Obiano of Anambra State is following in the footsteps of his predecessor, Peter Obi, who made efforts to stamp out all forms of criminality, particularly kidnapping. Posterity will remember this.
Part of the responsibility of government the world over is to protect lives and property of citizens, and the Constitution of Nigeria is clear on this simple but difficult obligation.
In all the nooks and crannies of Nigeria, crime is one daunting issue most leaders are getting fed up with or have run out of strategy to combat. We are ravaged daily by armed robbers, kidnappers, ritual killers, and recently, Boko Haram. We seem both helpless and hopeless.
The magnitude of crime has made nonsense of the huge amount of money the government at all levels pump into security. What is happening, therefore, leaves everyone guessing and the government confused.
A few years ago, criminals who saw kidnapping as a vocation and found solace in it buffeted the South East after devastating the South South. They abducted and killed wantonly and demanded ransom from victims’ families which at times ran into millions of naira. Some asked to be paid in foreign currency.
Before kidnapping got into our crime lexicon, Nigerians contended with the popular terminology – advance fee fraud, otherwise called ‘419’. When the government devoted time to fighting those behind obtaining by trick (OBT) under Section 419 of the criminal code, the actors changed to kidnapping which turned out to be more lucrative.
States in the South South – Delta, Edo, Rivers, Akwa Ibom, Bayelsa and Cross River – paid dearly for kidnapping in years past.
The menace moved to the South East where the perpetrators became more daring and ferocious, and took the “business” to a more devilish level by killing victims, raping females and forming ritual gangs.
One thing Nigerians did not focus attention on was that the brains behind the abductions could have been people known to them. They were simply the 419ners already known to them. In the same manner the masters of OBT went about their reckless and affluent lifestyle, the doyens of kidnapping were using blood money to acquire property and construct buildings in their villages in full public glare.
The people, regardless of social status, kept mute perhaps for fear of being crushed. But by so doing, they gave room for the crime to grow into one big monster hunting everyone.
This was the situation in Anambra two years ago when Obi got the state Assembly to make a law empowering the government to identify, confiscate and destroy any property traced to a kidnapper or their patrons.
Obi was propelled into action following the kidnap on March 19, 2012 and killing of former Deputy Governor, Chudi Nwike, after the abductors had collected N30 million in ransom.
The discovery at Ifite-Oraifite in 2012 that a suspected kidnapper, Olisagbo Ifidike, allegedly used his underground building to perpetrate the crime was astonishing. Among items found in the building, which was eventually pulled down, were 27 AK 47 riffles, machine guns, rocket launchers, pump action guns, dane guns, pistols, rocket grenades and assorted types of thousands of live ammunition.
Other suspects identified afterwards received the same treatment meted out to Ifedike.
Seeing officials of the Obiano administration continue the process, something tells me that we can get it right in the fight against illicit wealth as well as discourage crime.
‘Operation stamp out kidnappers’, called ‘operation mkpachapu’ in Igbo, is a project all governors in the South East, and by extension other governors whose states are threatened by kidnapping, should embrace.
I hear Obiano has demolished nine kidnappers’ buildings in Aguleri, Okija and Nnewi while discreet investigation is going on about many more structures.
Some of us grew up in localities where convicted armed robbers were brought to the market square or school premises, tied to the stakes and shot in the presence of community members. I grew up seeing entire families ex-communicated if a member of the family brought shame to a community.
Similar things took place elsewhere in this country where leaders seem not to know what to do to stem certain crimes that are stunting the progress of the country as a result of the negative impact they have on our children.
Why do we worship material things and bother little about how people acquire what they flaunt before us? What manner of individuals shield criminals knowing that they may pay the price in the long run?
What has happened to the old maxim of being our brother’s keeper for the right reasons? What manner of traditional or community leaders find it difficult to follow mores and norms without caring whose ox is gored?
I do not see any kidnapper who will return to the crime after witnessing how the law descended on the property he used that crime to acquire. Apart from that, the message the punishment meted out to the kidnapper sends to the younger ones cannot be quantified.
The feeling of community members who witnessed how the kidnappers’ houses were destroyed in Anambra says it all. Some said the demolition is the best way to restore the glory of their community. You see what I mean?
Ladies take over as bombers
The Beijing Conference in 1995 went down in history as one of those world meetings where the womenfolk pressed for certain rights with the menfolk in the spheres of life they feel marginalised.
Before that conference, the Commission on the Status of Women had organised and followed up the World Conference on Women in Mexico (1975), Copenhagen (1980) and Nairobi (1985).
Across the globe, the Beijing Conference is now a reference point for several issues, including those who throw it up when pursuing “irrelevant” matters. In Africa for instance, all manner of demands are made by women in the “spirit of Beijing”.
Two female suicide bombers died in Kano State last week. I doubt if asking women to also be suicide bombers was part of the 12 areas of concern in the 1995 Beijing Platform for Action, which was reviewed 10 years after at its 49th session in March 2005.
Every right thinking person should be worried about the role of women in an activity like suicide bombing. We have a bigger challenge on our hands in this era of terrorism, which is how to stop ladies in this new found love, given the passion with which women go about things.
It is more dangerous to have women suicide bombers. We need another world conference urgently to guide them on the dangers of this vocation.