Gboyega Alaka takes a look at the wave of violent crimes of kidnapping, rape, ritual killing, armed robbery, insurgency and its attendant suicide bombing currently sweeping across the land, wondering how a nation once described as home to the happiest people on earth found itself in the deep trench.
LAST week, news broke of the gruesome murder of brother-in-law to former Guardian correspondent and activist, Richard Akinnola at the hands of armed robbers who also doubled as kidnappers. According to Akinnola, his late in-law, Pastor John Ayuk, had come over from Owerri to spend the weekend with him in Lagos and left on Monday November 24, via an ABC Transport night bus. Reports gathered later revealed that the bus broke down at a place called J5 and some of the passengers, including his brother-in-law and his friend, a lady were robbed. In the process, he struggled with them and got macheted on the neck and then shot. His lady companion was then dragged into the forest and a call placed for a N5m ransom, with the gang vowing not to release her until the ransom was paid. Somehow, she managed to loosen herself from where she was tied in the forest and escape after the gang had gone on their usual night operations. She wandered about in the bush and eventually found a place to lay her head before a hunter stumbled on her and took her to the highway, where a Good Samaritan paid her fare to Lagos.
The Nation’s Abia State correspondent, Ugochukwu Ugorji-Eke, whose daylight kidnap made headlines late November, recalls how he was kidnapped by a group of gun-wielding men, as he made to call his wife to open his gate. He was thereafter taken to a coded place, from where they told him to call his wife and inform her that he had been kidnapped. He recalls how they told his wife matter-of-factly over the phone that “Madam open your gate and take your car and your child’s materials in the car, we have gone with your husband”. Thereafter, they started demanding a ransom of N20m, while the boys with him were demanding N5m. All his plea that there was no way his family could raise that kind of money, fell on deaf ears.
By far, the most despicable in the recent weeks would probably be the kidnap of the 95-yearl old Pastor Moses Aibangbee in Benin. If not for his very old age, one would at least have expected the kidnappers to have shown some respect for his position as senior apostle general of a church.
Michael Anyiam-Osiwe killed by robbers
Another horrible news that graced the headlines last week and which sent many hearts a-sorrowing was the report of the death of businessman Michael Anyiam Osigwe, killed by armed robbers along Benin-Ore Road, near Okada Junction. The news further lends credence to the guage of violence in the nation. Anyiam-Osigwe was until his death, the co-coordinator-General of the Osigwe Anyiam-Osigwe Foundation. The foundation which has become renowned internationally was instituted in honour of their late philosopher, philanthropist and businessman father, Chief Emmanuel Osigwe Anyiam-Osigwe.
Chilling headlines all the way
Everywhere you look, the headlines are gory, chilling, horrific!: ’95-year old cleric abducted in Benin, ‘How I was kidnapped and raped for one whole week,’ ‘Ritualists cut of girl’s breast while alive (in Ado Ekiti),’ ‘Men cut off baby’s penis, as mum sleeps with fathers friend (Lagos),’ ‘Man arrested for selling wife to ritual killers,’ ‘ I was offered N30,000 for human skull, ‘Married man ends up in jail after acid attack on lover’ ’14-year old bride kills husband, three others’, ‘HIV Positive kidnap suspect confesses to raping female victims,’ ‘Fulani herdsmen kill 25 in Nassarawa.’, ‘Horror as Cleric is caught slaughtering woman. And the list goes on and on.
Whilst Nigeria has never really been the most peaceful place in the world, daring criminality has never been this bad. At most, the biggest malaise was armed-robbery, and of course rape, which were hard enough to manage.
The current wave of kidnap is also a respecter of nobody, as local government chairmen have been kidnapped (Kehinde Bamigbetan of Ejigbo LCDA, a case in point); frontline lawyers and former president of the Nigerian Bar Association (NBA) have been abducted (Mike Ozekhome and Okey wali, two cases in point). It will be recalled that former Anambra State governor, Chris Ngige almost went down as the first governor to be abducted. Journalists have also not been left out. The Nation’s Abia State correspondent, Ugochukwu Ugorji-Eke, was abducted for nearly a week and a ransom of N20 million placed on him.
The scourge is also not a respecter of age or religious position, as clerics have been seized and made to cough out huge sums. The news of a 95-year old cleric, Moses Aibangbee, a senior apostle general of a church in Benin, who was seized at gun-point, also comes to mind here. And of course we all still remember the experience of veteran actor Pete Edochie. Never mind his memoirs that he was treated with respect. Nigerians remember vividly how the kidnappers of Lawyer Mike Ozekhome wasted four policemen, as men of the Edo State Police Command attempted to foil the abduction – an indication that they would have had no problem terminating the prominent lawyer’s life, if he as much as tried any stunt with them.
A couple of days to Ozekhome’s kidnap, female primary school teachers and three children were also abducted in the same Edo State, giving a clear indication that no one is on the safe side of the tarmac.
Even President Goodluck Jonathan’s relations have not been spared. A good number of his relations in Bayelsa State have been targeted and ambushed, and few would have missed the kidnap incident of his foster father, Chief Inebai Inegiete in February this year. Same for his high profile Finance Minister, Ngozi Okonjo Iweala, whose mother was brazenly seized and the privileged family made to cough out huge undisclosed sums.
One would also recall how, a few years ago, a whole state, talking about Abia was almost crippled and turned into ghost state by activities of daring kidnappers, who abducted anybody they suspect to be worth any reasonable amount of money, whether in cash, property or goodwill. It got to a level when no indigene of that state worth anything dared step on its soil or consider going back home for whatever reason. It will also be recalled that the situation in Anambra State got so bad that it took desperate legislation of demolishing all property of any suspect confirmed to have profited from the illicit trade of kidnapping, to stem it a bit in that state under Governor Peter Obi. Thankfully, the new governor, Willy Obiano is carrying on with the policy.
Rape in the den of kidnappers
We all read with sheer indignation, as an HIV Positive kidnap suspect confessed to raping his female victims in May this year. So in addition to the horror of kidnap and the misfortune of sweeping clean a victim’s bank account; a victim also stands the grave danger of having her whole life plan messed up by HIV infection via rape. Without any gainsaying, one of the greatest fear of women when it comes to the issue of being kidnap, is rape. The fact that the public have been regaled with few of such stories by kidnapped female victims, could very much be as a result of the people’s hush-hush attitude towards rape, as against it not happening to them.
The suspect, Holy Ighorador, who was paraded in May 2014 by the Delta State State Security Service confessed to having forceful unprotected sex with female victims kidnapped by his seven member gang, despite being fully aware of his HIV status. Although he eventually begged for forgiveness and revealed that he never knew the illness is incurable, the fact remains that the deeds had been done.
There was also the story of a young lady then told to a major glossy lifestyle magazine, of how she was kidnapped by men of the underworld about five Christmas ago and subjected to the indignity of multiple rape by her four male kidnappers for a whole week, all for the paltry ransom of N250, 000, that the widowed mother couldn’t raise on time.
Thankfully the lady in question tested negative to HIV, although subsequent tests confirmed she had been inflicted with an abominable pregnancy, which she was seriously considering terminating.
Nollywood actress, Nkiru Sylvanus, who was abducted two years ago revealed how the kidnappers threatened to rape her, if her family did not quickly come forward with the N8million ransom. Although the police berated the family for going ahead to pay the ransom despite strict instruction not to, the truth is no one could really tell if indeed the kidnappers were willing to make good their threat.
Even Boko Haram!
A report published recently by Human Rights Watch titled “Those Terrible Weeks in their Camp: Boko Haram Violence against Women and Girls in North-East Nigeria, tells how a 15-year-old girl , who was held in the insurgent group’s camp for four weeks in 2013 was forced to marry a militant more than twice her age.
Her words: “After we were declared married, I was ordered to live in his cave but I always managed to avoid him. He soon began to threaten me with a knife to have sex with him, and when I still refused, he brought out his gun, warning that he would kill me if I shouted. He then began to rape me every night.”
Another, a 19-year-old married woman said she could not tell the story of her dehumanisation to anyone, not even her husband, as she feels so ashamed and cheated.
Another, who was also raped, vowed not to speak of her humiliation to anyone, “as she believes that the news of her rape would foreclose her chances of marriage.
Painfully, these pockets of stories lend credence to the fear of many Nigerians, who have expressed concern that the abducted Chibok girls and pockets of married women who have been kidnapped on different occasions by the group may be undergoing forceful rape or marriage. The other major fear, which many would not like to confirm, is that the abducted girls may be the ones who have been indoctrinated and unleashed on society as female suicide bombers.
Gruesome ritualists on the prowl
Television viewers would not forget in a hurry the image of a 60-something year old woman, who declared with childlike innocence that “I only helped them shave four heads o. I am not involved in the killing o.” The woman was one of the gang of ritual killers paraded to the media by the Nigeria Police earlier in the year, and her response showed how badly the country has slided into the murky marshes of cold-bloodedness. Any thing; whatever it is, that brings money qualifies as a job. It doesn’t matter how despicable.
Two months ago in September, Plateau State police command paraded 31 armed robbery suspects, amongst whom was a man who once sold his wife for a ‘princely’ sum of N800,000 to ritual killers. The man, Maimako Shephang of Kwalla village in Shendaam local government area of the state confessed to luring his wife, Agnes to the bush and handing her over to two masked men in August this year. Luckily, Agnes lived to tell the story, as her kidnappers later told her that their target was a virgin.
What might however go down as the biggest ritual killing discovery of the decade unfolded in March, this year, when the police discovered a horrific den of ritual killers in Soka forest, in Ibadan. The vast compound tucked away in a secluded part of town, revealed a gruesome picture of ritual killing and trading in human parts that may have been going on for years, if not decades. No fewer than 20 decomposing bodies were discovered in the forest, while 23 other human beings were rescued alive, though in various stages of physical and psychological degeneration. Skulls and bones also littered the abominable sight.
Barely a week after, another horror played out in the same city as a man described as an Islamic cleric, Isa Salaudeen was allegedly caught slaughtering a woman identified as Chiwendu Nkwocha in his room in Ori Eru, in Idikan area of the city. The suspect’s scream was said to have attacted passers-by and neighbours who came to her rescue. The woman was thus rushed to the University Teaching Hospital, Ibadan, where she was treated for the big cut on her throat.
Before our very eyes
It started pretty much like a joke. Brazen Niger-Delta militants kidnapping white-skinned expatriates for ransom to register their grouse, and claim what they gleefully declared was their dues from their ‘God-given oil resources, which they claimed the Nigeria nation was not availing them. Soon it graduated to bombings, and the October 1st 2010 Golden Jubilee celebration of Nigeria’s independence in Abuja easily comes to mind, with about 15 Nigerians, who had gone to celebrate at the Eagle Square being bombed into oblivion.
Somehow the country languished in denial with even the president hastily denying it could be a handiwork of the Movement for the Emancipation of Niger-Delta (MEND) the chief suspect of that dastardly act. Before then it had been the young Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, who in his failed attempt to bomb the American North-West Airlines Flight 253, heading to Detroit, Michigan from Amsterdam airport with 290 people aboard, gave the world a glimpse of what Nigerians are capable of, as recently as December 25, 2009.
Of course one could not have forgotten how Nigeria’s government officials cried foul, as the American government promptly put Nigeria on the terrorist watch list: ‘We are not a terrorist nation!’ We all screamed, citing the boy’s link with Al-Qaeda terrorist group in the Middle-East, as against being a home-bred. Others pointed accusing fingers at Great Britain, an ally of the US, where the young man had gone to school and had been recruited and indoctrinated; while some out-rightly blamed the US government’s security apparatus for its inefficiency, citing the fact that the boy’s father had alerted the US government of the young man’s radical and strange tendencies, and wondering why the ‘can-do-no-wrong’ America failed to cancel his visa.
Well, America bowed to pressure and delisted Nigeria from that stigmatising list, but 5 years down the line, Nigeria seems to have sunk deeper into the abyss of terrorism, that no Nigerian would convincingly raise any objection if America decides today to put Nigeria back on that list and even asterisk it for special treatment.
A day hardly goes by without news flashes or reports of a suicide bombing attack somewhere in the country, especially in the North, and particularly the North-East. At other times, it is gun-men shooting and killing indiscriminately. Interestingly, while such shootings still make global headlines when they occur in countries like Kenya, it doesn’t seems to, when it is Nigeria, which is a sorry indication of our situation. Nigeria has thus moved from the state of ‘not in our character’ in the last half a decade, to ‘how did we get here?’
Insurgency, powered by the pariah Islamic sect, Boko Haram has literally shot Nigeria to the top of terrorists nations list. On June 16, 2011, roughly a year and half after Abdulmutallab’s unsuccessful attempt, Nigeria recorded its first suicide bombing attack, with 35-year-old Mohammad Manga attempting to blow up the then Inspector-General of Police, Hafiz Ringim, along with his convoy, as he negotiated his way into the police headquarters in Abuja..Five people were blown to pieces in that attack, with several vehicles going up in wild flames..
Curiously, an unsuspecting media chronicled that attack in a manner that could best be described as celebrative; as if it was a feat the nation earnestly needed to attain. Titles like ‘Meet Mohammed Manga, Nigeria’s first suicide bomber, Behold, the face of Nigeria’s first ever suicide bomber, graced the headlines.
What however started like a one-off act has grown into a pervading menace, such that Nigerian’s in the North East part of the country suddenly can no longer walk or gather in groups, without the possibility of being blown into pieces the next second crossing their minds.
Before our very eyes, churches have been bombed, mosques and its worshipers have been blown to pieces, hapless Nigerians have been ripped to death by bullets from Boko Haram’s blazing machine guns, scores of students have been woken up from their dormitory and slaughtered or shot; and military barracks and police stations have been attacked in commando-like fashion by gun-wielding men while the inhabitants run for cover. Luxurious buses, loaded to the hilt with people have also been blown to pieces, as they attempt to travel back to their home towns for Christmas celebrations. Likewise, buses loaded with fellow Nigerians bound for their workplaces in the nation’s capital, Abuja.
Of course the audacious bombing of Kano mosque right inside the emir’s palace penultimate Friday remains fresh in our memory, with its scorecard of over 120 deaths and nearly double that number lying critically ill in hospitals; So also the daring attempt at over-running the government house in Yobe early last week. Like an under-rated opposing football team that is not quickly given the treatment, the Boko Haram insurgent group, has also continued to grow in confidence and had by late November (2014) over-ran and seized nearly two dozens towns in Borno, Yobe and Adamawa States, hoisting their flags and purportedly declaring an Islamic state. Already it is public joke, especially amongst the opposition, that the President Goodluck Jonathan’s administration may eventually be handing over a fragmented Nigeria come next May 29, should the electorate decide not to return him at next February’s elections.
How did we get here?
Fred Nzeako, a lawyer, economist and public commentator ascribed the whole wave of violence and crime to the insurgence currently sweeping across the land. In his words, crime begets crime and the insurgency in the North-Eastern part of the country has literally exposed the security lapses in the country, thereby giving other people with criminal tendencies the effrontery to take advantage of the situation.
He also cited the coming elections as one of the reason people are getting more daring. This of course may not be unconnected with the fact that they have seen that like some other people, they too could do despicable things and get away with them.
Liborous Oshoma, a Lagos lawyer and public commentator, on his part cited several factors as contributing to the rising spate of crime in the country. One of them, he said is the glaring injustice and inequality in the land, where government appointments are based on anything but qualification. He said crime will always be attractive in any society, where mediocrity is exhibited and upheld in government, as well as other public and private establishments.
He also said crime will thrive in any ‘democracy’, where selections are regarded as elections and the people are polarised along ethnic and religious divides.
He thus clamoured for strong application of the law, arguing that human beings will always hunger for short cuts, whilst strict application of the laws of the land will keep them in check. He argued that lawlessness and impunity will always prevail in “a situation where these set of rules and or regulations are not enforced by those that are supposed to execute such laws, and in cases where there enforcement is selective.”
He also cited the unemployment rate that keeps rising by the day along with cost of living, stating categoricallythat “the government is not living up to its responsibilities.
Somewhat agreeing with Oshoma, Barr, Nzeako said one of the major reasons for the rise in impunity is the fact that the people’s leaders are seceded not by election but by selection by a few. He said this is a major contributor to the insanity and impunity in the land. Moreover, he said selection of leadership as against the people’s popular choice will always lead to violence and crimes, as the people will seek other means to actualize their will.
Barr. Nzeako blaimed the unwholesome art of ritual killing and trading in body parts on moral decadence, which he said has engulfed the land. He also said its recent grabbing of the headlines may not be unconnected with the approaching Christmas celebration and the elections. According to him, “the urge for power and the elections could have driven some desperate politicians to spiritualists and ‘babalawos’ who might have told them to get certain human pars or whole for some kind of rituals.
Of course, the kidnap for money, he ascribed to greed and an urge for quick wealth.
Giving his submission on kidnapping, Oshoma said “When you grant amnesty to militants and kidnappers and negotiate with terrorist and those that bare arms against the state, the message you are sending to those that have the capacity to carry arms, but are not doing it, is that it is profitable to carry arms.”
He condemned a situation whereby criminality is compensated and those found culpable by the court are granted state pardon, simply because they are in the good books of the government of the day.
Oshoma also cited the weakness of the corrective institutions and lack of will to enforce the existing ones as major reasons for the geometric increase in crime rate in the land.
On the effort of the police in the whole situation, Nzeako Nigeria, a country of about 150 million people is not adequately policed with just over 100,000 policemen.
Oshoma however views it from a slightly different angle, saying “the police has never hidden the fact that they are an extension of the ruling party, right from independence. He cited how they have consistently aided the ruling parties in election manipulations, and their willingness to always be tools in the hands of the ruling party, to buttress his point.
Curiously, Richard Akinnola, whose brother-in-law was recently murdered and who up until the filing of this story, was still working with the police on the case, commended the police, especially members of the Lagos State Special Anti-Robbery Squad (SARS), led by Abba kyari, saying they have been exceptionally good and highly professional. He narrated how they immediately swung into action, expressing confidence that “they would surely get those bastards.”
In his words, “I’m so proud of those SARS guys. I think all they need is to be more empowered and encouraged. How I wish the Inspector General of Police could devote more time to fighting crimes than to politicking.” He regrets that the IGP is more of a politician than policeman, concentrating all his attention on 2015 elections, which he said “is a shame.”
