Kidnapping in Nigeria

THE LATENCY OF KIDNAPPING: THE NIGERIAN SCENARIO

Abstract:

This paper focuses on examining the issue of kidnapping from its earliest encounter, its nature, its effect on victims and the Nigerian society at large.

Introduction:

Kidnapping has become an alarming phenomenon of great concern in Nigeria that has qualified the entity Nigeria a failing of failed state. Appropriately enough, kidnapper seems to have originated among those who perpetrate crime. The word kidnapper is derived from kid and napper, the two parts of the compound, were slang of the sort that criminals used. Kid, which still has an informal air, was considered low slang when kidnapper was formed, and napper is obsolete slang for a thief, coming from the verb nap, “to steal.” Nap is possibly a variant of nab, which also still has a slangy ring. In 1678, the year in which the word is first recorded, kidnappers plied their trade to secure laborers for plantations in colonies such as the ones in North America. The term later took on the broader sense that it has today. The verb kidnap is recorded later (1682) than the noun and so is possibly a back-formation, that is, people may have assumed that a kidnapper kidnaps.

What is kidnapping?

In criminal law, kidnapping is the taking away or asportation of a person against the person's will, usually to hold the person in false imprisonment, a confinement without legal authority (). This is often done for ransom or in furtherance of another crime.

Kidnapping can also refer to the taking away of a person by force, threat, or deceit, with intent to cause him to be detained against his will.

TYPES OF KIDNAPPING

Bride kidnapping: is a term often applied more loosely, to include any bride physically abducted against the will of her parents, even if she is willing to marry the abductor. This practice is traditional amongst the people of central Asia, the Caucasus region, parts of Africa including Nigeria, and Southeast Asia and this act is considered as sex crime by many.

Child Abduction: refers to the kidnapping of a child by an older person for any of these reasons:

• A stranger removes a child for criminal or mischievous purposes. In the standard scenario, the child is detained, transported some distance, held for ransom or with intent to keep the child permanently.
• A stranger removes a child (usually a baby) to bring up as that person's own child. A very small number of abductions result from women who kidnap babies (or other young children) to bring up as their own. These women are often unable to have children of their own and seek to satisfy their unmet psychological need by abducting a child rather than by adopting. The crime is often premeditated, with the woman often simulating pregnancy to reduce suspicion when a baby suddenly appears in the household.
• A parent removes or retains a child from the other parent's care (often in the course of or after divorce proceedings).

Here the abductor is usually the parent. A parent may remove or retain the child from the other, seeking to gain an advantage in expected or pending child-custody proceedings, or because that parent fears losing the child in those child-custody proceedings; a parent may refuse to return a child at the end of an "access visit" or may flee with the child to prevent an access visit. Parental child abductions may be within the same city, within the state region or within the same country, or may be international. This may or may not constitute a criminal offence but it depends on the law of the state and country in which the parental abduction.

Kidnapping by Cults: Kidnapping can also take place in the case of deprogramming, a now rare practice to convince someone to give up his commitment to a new religious movement, called a cult or sect by critics, that the deprogrammer considers harmful.

Tiger Kidnapping: Tiger kidnapping is taking an innocent hostage to make a loved one or associate of the victim do something. For example, a child may be taken hostage to force a shopkeeper to open the safe. The term originates from the usually long preceding observation, like a tiger does on the prowl for prey.

Kidnapping In Nigeria

Kidnapping, the taking away of a person against the person's will, usually for ransom or in furtherance of another crime, is becoming everyone’s nightmare in Nigeria. Daily, we read nightmarish stories of people being abducted as they go about their daily business. A criminal act, which first attracted national attention on 26 February 2006 when Niger Delta militants kidnapped foreign oil workers to press home their demand, kidnapping has since become ubiquitous and commercialized. It has spread from the Niger Delta to virtually all nooks and crannies of the country, with some states of course being hotspots. Similarly victims have changed from being predominantly foreign oil workers to Nigerians, including parents, grand parents, and toddlers and about anyone who has a relative that could be blackmailed into coughing out a ransom. Those behind the recent wave of the despicable act have also changed from being exclusively Niger Delta militants to dodgy elements from different walks of life.

The phenomenon of kidnapping has taken an alarming dimension in Nigeria, such that it has become a big business. Kidnapping, hitherto known only in the Niger Delta, is now a daily occurrence in Lagos, Ondo, Ekiti, Oyo and many other States in the country. Kidnapping of expatriates in the Niger Delta is one of the major weapons employed by the various ethnic militias operating in the area. Its extension to children of prominent citizens in the area has however cost the militants the sympathy of Nigerians as it is now obvious that the Niger Delta struggle has been bastardized by opportunists. Thus, ransom kidnapping and hostage taking are no longer restricted to the Niger Delta area, or Southern Nigeria. With reported cases in Lagos, Abuja, Owerri, and now Kaduna and Kano, this brand of terrorism has become a nationwide phenomenon; the entire country is now a kidnappers' den.

The spread of kidnapping to other parts of the country is believed to be fallout of the military confrontation between the militants and the Federal Government. The militants, who were dislodged from their Niger Delta bases like Gbaramatu kingdom, etc, were forced to relocate to other areas where they have continued their trade of kidnapping as a means of survival. The other probable groups of kidnappers are those who, though not militants, believe that kidnapping pays with minimum risk of being caught.

This second group follows the general trend of Nigerians who like to go into any business that they consider lucrative at the moment, not minding if such would endure or not. When the ‘pure water’ business debuted in Nigeria, many Nigerians became pure water manufacturers with some going to the ridiculous extent of bagging dirty stream water as ‘pure’ water. When finance house business was the ‘in-thing’ in the early 1990s, many Nigerians had also owned finance houses; the rest is history today. The same goes for kidnapping which many of our idle youths believe is lucrative and have embraced. For sometimes now people have fell victims of kidnapping. The signs are ominous, as we are approaching a situation where wives who would want to fleece their husbands of their hard-earned money could organize their own kidnapping and share the loot with the kidnappers. Husbands may also do this if their wives are rich. Wayward children could also do this to their rich dads. Employees may do it to get money from their companies. Politicians may also do it to raise money. The reason for this is simply that the chances of apprehending kidnappers by the law enforcement officers are very remote, so it encourages the trade. It is still part of the symptoms of a failed State.

There is no doubt that Nigeria is today one of the major kidnapping capitals of the world. This has obvious implications for investments, the country’s development trajectory and even the quality of governance.

 The common tendency is to blame the pervasive wave of kidnapping outside the Niger Delta exclusively on the unacceptable rate of unemployment in the country, an inefficient and corrupt police force that is ill-equipped to fight crime, and collusion between kidnappers and politicians. These factors however appear to be mere symptoms of a larger malaise, namely that pervasive kidnapping, is one of the major symptoms of both ‘failed’ and ‘failing’ states. Most of the countries where kidnapping have been pervasive have been either failed or failing states – Baghdad after the 2003 invasion of Iraq, Columbia from the 1970s until about 2001, and Mexico between 2003 and 2007.

A ‘failed state’ is often used to designate a state, which has become incapable of fulfilling the basic functions of a sovereign government. These functions include physical control of its territory, provision of security of life and property for its citizens, the monopoly of the use of legitimate physical force and ability to provide reasonable public services or to interact with other states as a full member of the international community.    

A “failing state” on the other hand denotes a state in transition to a failed state. Here while the state remains nominally a sovereign and fulfils a modicum of the functions of a sovereign government, the central government has become so weak and ineffective that it has little practical control over much of its territory, leading to an upsurge in pervasive insecurity such as kidnapping, organized assassinations and robberies. A failing state is also characterized by a weakened ability to provide basic public services and widespread corruption as people think of themselves first, following the failure of the state to perform its traditional functions. Most of the countries in the developing world involved in civil wars or protracted internal conflicts could qualify as ‘failing states’. 

 Following from the above, while Nigeria is not yet a ‘failed state’, it could arguably qualify as a ‘failing state’. This in essence means that while addressing the problems of unemployment and inefficient and corrupt police force could be good palliative measures in combating kidnapping, any lasting solution to the menace will inevitably have to address the key question of the nature of the Nigerian state, including why it has transited from a weak state to a ‘failing state’ and rapidly gravitating towards being a failed state.

Our security agents are not doing enough in this regard and this is symptomatic of our systemic failure as a nation. One then wonders how those who were kidnapped were smuggled away, passing through the numerous checkpoints. Our policemen by training and by mere looking at faces in a vehicle should be able to detect someone who had been kidnapped. The eye contact is there, and fear is always written on the faces of such victims. But the problem is that our policemen at checkpoints are more interested in how much the driver of a vehicle can drop. Take for instance, a vehicle conveying five stern-looking guys (four kidnappers and one victim) approaches a check point and offers the policemen say N500, and exchange banters like, ‘Officers I beg make una take this one buy pure water.’ The kidnappers are likely to have easy passage. The policemen are more likely to lose concentration and may not be interested in looking and reading meaning in the faces of the occupants of the car.

Conclusively, the only antidote to kidnapping is for the culprits to be apprehended either at the point of abducting the victim or at the point of collecting their ransom, as is done in advanced countries. Our security agents, especially policemen at checkpoints, must be more vigilant by observing the faces of the occupants of a car especially when there is an alert of a kidnap in their area. The National Assembly must take the lead in passing a bill concerning punishment for kidnappers. State Houses of Assembly must follow the example of Delta State by enacting a law that would make kidnapping punishable by death, if only to discourage kidnappers. They are worse than armed robbers!

 The Way Forward

 First and foremost, there is need to restructure the Nigerian state to enthrone true federalism, including true fiscal federalism. Classically, federalism is regarded as a system of government in which the centre and the federating units are each, within a sphere, co-ordinate and equal. A true federalism cannot work in Nigeria under the present condition where the federating units are atomized into 36 unviable states, (with the possible exception of two or three states), which are dependent on the centre for their survival. Instituting true federalism will require merging the present unwieldy number of states into about six to make them manageable and cost efficient. The federating units should be allowed to run their own police force and to take measures they deem fit, within the law, to protect the citizens within their territory. Each federating unit ought to have a database of people living in its territory, including what such people do.

Secondly, the cost and efficiency gains from the consolidation of the present 39 state-structure could be channeled towards improved provision of public services and better quality of governance. A computerized national identity card scheme has become an imperative.

 Thirdly, states should invest in smart security, especially preventative security, which could involve phone tapping, extensive use of moles, and possible use of private armies and private military companies in protracted conflict areas. There is need for the inclusion of capital punishment for the perpetrators of kidnapping.

 Fourthly, in the social contract theory that created the notion of sovereign (monarch or constituted national authority), a key argument is that prior to the creation of the sovereign, there was what the English political philosopher, Thomas Hobbes, called the ‘state of nature’. This ‘state of nature’, he argued, was characterized by the ‘war of all against all’. People agreed to the creation of this sovereign, and willingly gave up their right to self-help because they were very eager to escape the conditions in this ‘state of nature’ where life was ‘short, nasty and brutish’. This is the underlying philosophy of the social contract between the government and the governed.  It could therefore be argued that pervasive insecurity is a key manifestation of the breach of this social contract by the government. This raises an interesting question of whether citizens should continue to be bound by this social contract when one of the parties – the state- is increasingly failing to keep its own side of the bargain.  A state becomes a failed state when citizens and groups conclude that they too should no longer be bound by the terms of the social contract. In this scenario, the Hobbesian state of nature reigns. Is Nigeria moving in this direction?