ON Friday, January 13, a teenage girl rose to see the grim jewelry of harmattan ornament fallen leaf and bow of grass. Let’s call her Bisi (not real name). That fateful day, dawn broke with a familiar glow, bathing her skin and surroundings in the silver rays of early sun beams. The unfurling weekend could be special and the senior student of the Nigerian Tulip International College (NTIC), Isheri North, Ogun State, envisaged a promising start, savouring the chill of the icy morning.
Noon beckoned with dust and heat, drying the flower beds and the school’s manicured lawns of the silvery charms of the early dew. But dusk broke with savage humour; the wind whistled over the rafters and hurtled along the roof of Bisi’s dormitory, like a wolf in a fairy tale.
As the teenager and her mates prepared to sleep, militant gunmen broke into the school announcing their presence with sporadic gunshots. Yunus Emre Dogan, the school’s principal, revealed that everyone panicked and scurried to safety thus leaving the gunmen to dash into the female hostel and abduct five students, house mistress and a Turkish teacher that teaches mathematics in the school.
In the melee, Bisi heard her friend cry and dart into the dormitory with a hoodlum hot at her heels, gun-blazing. The latter grabbed at her friend, hushing her with promises of pain and a horrid death. From her crouch, Bisi let out a yelp and hysterically cried for her ‘mummy’ thus revealing her hiding place to the invader. The consequence of course, is better imagined. The assailant hustled her out to join her friend, in the line of captive students.
Eventually, they made away with Bisi, four other students, their house mistress and maths teacher.
The abductors dug a big hole through a side of the school’s perimeter fence; from there, they escaped through the forest and swamp bordering the school. Subsequently, the kidnappers requested for a N100 million ransom for their captives.
Ahmad Ajani, whose daughter, Hanatullah Aderinto, 22, was among the kidnapped students, said he got the information on Friday night that his daughter had been abducted. He described the incident as sad and unfortunate, stressing that his child was in the school to prepare for the forthcoming JAMB exams. Ajani disclosed that the incident left him traumatised.
“Somebody called in the midnight that something happened here and my daughter was involved, I had to come down and the Police Commissioner addressed us assuring that they would work on it and that everything would be alright very soon,” he said.
And the police kept its promise. After spending 11 days in the kidnappers’ den, detectives of the Nigerian Police Force (NPF) rescued the students and their teachers in a joint sting operation with the Nigerian Navy.
The captives have since retired into the loving embrace of their loved ones and cozy ambiance of their homes. In a successive operation, the culprits were apprehended.
Rebecca Odunsi, 15, wasn’t so lucky. Her captors were never found and her mother still lives in abject fear. They dread a recurrence of the gruesomeness that thrust mother and child in a deadly spiral for 29 days. Her wiry frame still bears the tell tale of the spots where her captors’ whip lashes left thick welts on her thin legs.
An ‘uncle’ she cannot name scarred her where no one could see. Fingering a shiny talisman on her left wrist, the 15-year-old – who was 13 at the time of her abduction – recalled 29 days in captivity of youths desperately seeking to teach her mother a ‘very good lesson.” You could virtually see her flesh creep and sprout goose pimples as she recollected the hideousness to which her teenage psyche and tiny frame were subjected, in the hands of her captors.
“They said they would rape me and cut me to pieces. They said they would send me to my mother in pieces if she failed to give them money…They beat me with belt and koboko (horse-whip) when I started to scream and call for my mother in fear,” said Rebecca.
Rebecca recalled with jarring desolateness, the sunny afternoon in August 2014 when she was lured into confinement and the vicious machinations of patrons of her mother’s canteen in Owode, Ogun State. The teenager said she was running an errand for her mother after she returned from school.
“I remember that two men on Okada (commercial motorcycle) parked beside me. That was the last thing I remembered until I woke up in captivity,” she said.
Recalling the sad incident, Abigael, Rebecca’s mother, said: “They (her daughter’s abductors) said I was rude to them on several occasions that they came to eat in my canteen. They said they had decided to teach me a very good lesson by kidnapping my daughter. So they requested for N15 million but I told them there was no way I could get such money. In annoyance, they cursed me and accused me of valuing my money more than my child’s life. They told me to sell my land in Papalanto. I do not know how they got to know that I had landed property in Papalanto. They sounded quite young and mean on the phone,” said Abigael.
Abigael pleaded with them to accept N500, 000 from her but they refused. “Afterwards, I simply invited my prayer group to pray with me. After several days of marathon prayer and dry fasting, my daughter walked into my house with her two legs,” claimed Abigael.
However, Matthew, her estranged husband and commercial park urchin in Ifo, Ogun State, revealed that contrary to her claims, his wife did pay the ransom money. “Though she did not pay the N15 million they requested for, she ended up paying the kidnappers N2.8 million. But failed to pay on time. She let them rape my daughter. Her miserliness cost my poor daughter her innocence,” he said.
But in a swift reaction, Abigael maintained that she did not pay N2.8million to her daughter’s abductors. ” I don’t know where he got his information from. Everything he told you is a lie,” she said. Although Abigael claimed Rebecca was neither raped nor molested by her abductors, the girl’s taciturnity and pained glances revealed sorrowful stories she would not tell.
Unlike Abigael, who does a good job of cloaking her grief under a stoic veil of measured calm, Atinuke Odejare’s emotion was on display when she recalled the abduction of her son, Kayode. Sitting in her cluttered one-room apartment in Akera, Lagos, surrounded by articles knocked over by her three-year-old son, she was by turn, furious and miserable. Atinuke’s three-year old-son, then two, was kidnapped from her roadside stall in Sango Ota. The alcohol seller had engaged in a scuffle with two neighbourhood urchins over their reluctance to pay up a debt of N380 they racked up guzzling her drinks on credit.
“I know it was those hoodlums that masterminded the abduction of my child. They had been avoiding me all along because of the money they owed me. All of a sudden, they showed up around my stall. I confronted them and asked for my money. I had two customers in my stall when I accosted them and I told them to help me look after my son…I was however, surprised when I got back to meet an empty stall. My customers were missing, so was my child. Besides the fact that they didn’t pay me for the drinks they took, they also took my son with them,” she said.
When Atinuke finally received the ransom call, the voice at the other end was ugly and menacing, the messages cruel: “I’ve cut out Kayode’s tongue.” Sometimes, the kidnappers threatened to sell him off her toddler to politicians or fetish priests who would eagerly use him for ‘money rituals.’
Luck however, smiled at her two weeks later. “They requested for N1 million from me but I pleaded with them to take N450, 000 from me. It was only after I raised the money that they dropped my child for me in an uncompleted building in Iyana Iyesi (in Ogun State),” she said.
As a prolific writer once intoned, abduction is indeed, a bizarre and grotesque transaction. In a single instant, the social equation changes between two people to one of captor and prisoner, holder and hostage. One holds absolute power and the other holds none. Worse, the abductor knew the moment was coming—sometimes for a long time. The captive always has no inkling.
The prevalence of paranoia
Following several cases of abduction and horrid encounters with abductors, families and schools across the Lagos metropolis have evolved several methods of self-preservation. For instance, Memunat Ogunsola, a banker, revealed that she and her husband have stopped contracting the services of commercial tricycle operators to convey their two children to and fro their school. The couple thus evolved a system whereby they wake up very early to take their wards to school before setting out for office.
Franklin Okonwa, a civil engineer, revealed that in the wake of frequent reports of househelps conspiring with kidnappers to abduct their employers’ wards for ransom, he ordered his wife to sack their househelp.
“I also told her to make sure she takes our kids to school by herself and bring her home by herself. We also agreed that she resign her job at the passport office. We live in Agege and she worked on Victoria Island which prevented her from taking our kids from school and spending time with them. All that is history now. I am paying her the worth of her former salary until I set her up in a business. Our children’s safety is paramount to us,” he stressed.
On the other hand, schools around the neighbourhood have evolved peculiar strategies and culture of protecting their pupils from abduction by kidnappers. Many schools on Lagos mainland and outskirts, for instance, have employed plain clothes armed vigilante as teaching assistants, school bus drivers, conductors, security officers, among other security measures.
Some have evolved arrangements with the police to have plain clothes detectives patrol their schools and hostels on rotation 24 hours of the day, seven days of the week.
A school director in Jankara, Ijaiye, Lagos, revealed that her school has taken more far reaching security measures than she was willing to let on, claiming it was in the best interest of the school.
A rising pandemic…
According to the UN Office on Drugs and Crime 2013 survey on global crime trends, the Nigerian police recorded the following number of kidnappings at the national level between 2007-2012: 277 in 2007, 309 in 2008, 703 in 2009, 738 in 2010 and 600 in 2012. Freedom House reports that Nigeria recorded one of the highest rates of kidnapping in the world in 2013, while NYA International, a crisis management and response consultancy that assists clients with abduction and kidnapping cases stated that Nigeria currently ranks as the number one country for “kidnap for ransom” incidents, based on open source news reports from the first half of 2014.
The US Department of State’s Country Reports on Human Rights Practices for 2013 indicate that kidnapping and related violence were “serious” problems in Nigeria. In correspondence with the Research Directorate, the CLEEN Foundation, a Nigeria-based NGO that conducts an annual National Crime and Safety Survey in Nigeria, indicated that kidnapping for ransom has become “rampant” in the last decade. The CLEEN Foundation’s 2013 National Crime and Safety Survey sampled 11,518 Nigerians who were interviewed, and found that nationally, three percent of respondents had been victims of kidnapping or attempted kidnapping. According to the survey, the south-west region and Lagos had the highest incidence (five percent), followed by the south-east and south-south (four percent).
In the last few months, the traditional press and social media pulsated with random reports about child abductions in the country. Majority of these abductions were perpetrated in Lagos and northeastern parts of the country which groaned under the vicious yoke of terrorism inflicted on the region by terrorist sect, Boko Haram.
On the night of April 14/15, 2014, 276 female students were kidnapped from the Government Secondary School in Chibok, Borno State. Responsibility for the kidnappings was claimed by Boko Haram. On October 17, 2014, after some of the girls escaped captivity, hopes were raised that the 219 or thereabouts, remaining girls might soon be released after the Nigerian army announced a truce between Boko Haram and government forces. The announcement coincided with the six-month anniversary of the girls’ capture but it turned out to be a farce. It is over a year since the girls were abducted from their school and international and local civil society groups are worried over the government’s inability to rescue them. The #BringBackOurGirls (BBOG) group for instance, has expressed worry over what it called ‘eerie silence’ on the whereabouts of the abducted Chibok schoolgirls.
While the nation grapples with the horror inflicted on its psyche by the abduction of the Chibok girls, cases of abduction of minors have escalated from sporadic onslaughts to attain a consistency of sort in randomness and the scale of its execution.
The case of Orekoya family rankles a jarring and ominous note in this respect. The abduction of the family’s three children aged six, four and 11 months last month, April 2015, raised a red flag in the annals of the crime of kidnapping in the country. In the same month that the Orekoya boys were abducted and recovered following payment of an undisclosed ransom to the kidnapper, at least four other children have been kidnapped in the state, with some released or discovered in neighbouring states.
The business of kidnapping
It was widely reported in Nigerian media that on April 23, police in Lagos shot a member of a kidnapping gang while he was collecting a ransom from the hostage’s brother. The man was wounded in the shootout after he realised that police were surveilling the exchange and attempted to flee, but led the police to where the hostage was being held before dying of his wounds. The ransom to be paid to the kidnappers was reported to be NGN3 million reduced from an initial demand of NGN50 million.
The detailed accounts of this incident reinforce the notion of kidnap gangs who target middle class Nigerian nationals, demand a high ransom from their families, and accept a much lower sum to enable a swift conclusion. They can then move on to the next target. The risk to gangs who operate in this way is moderate, and their costs are low. Reports from victim and police accounts, following both rescues and cases where a ransom was paid for the victims safe release, indicate that hostages are frequently held in unpopulated areas of bush. This environment is very close to kidnappers’ urban operating areas, and has allowed their escape from security forces on numerous occasions.
In the years 1991 through 2000, Nigeria was in the ninth position in the ranking of kidnapping countries, behind Columbia, Mexico, the Russian Federation, the Philippines, and Venezuela, among others. However, starting from the latter part of 2000, when the advance fee fraud (419) market declined dramatically, the kidnap business picked up dramatically. Records show that from January 2008 to June 2009, Nigeria had a total of 512 kidnappings, with the deaths of 30 victims.
According to state-by-state police reports released in July 2009, the records are as follows: (1) Abia State with a total of 110 kidnap incidents, 353 court cases, and three deaths; (2) Imo State recorded 58 kidnaps, 109 arrests, 41 prosecutions, and 1 death; (3) Delta State had 44 kidnappings, 43 released, 27 arrests, 31 prosecutions, and 1 death; (4) Akwa Ibom State recorded 40 kidnappings, 40 released, 18 arrests, and 11 prosecutions.
In August 2012, a statement by the civil society group Campaign for Democracy (CD) claimed that some 938 people in the South East of the country have been kidnapped between January 2008 and August 2012 with a total estimated ransom of NGN 1.2bn (USD $7,585,335). Police authorities however, disputed these figures. The high incident areas included Anambra State (273 kidnap victims), Imo State (265) and Abia (215) with ransoms ranging from NGN 5million (USD $31,605) to NGN 30million (USD $189,633) at the period.
Inside the mind of an abducted child
Clearly, something breaks the mind and the will of anyone so stripped of autonomy. The impact is usually more severe on the child victim of abduction particularly when he or she is sexually abused or raped. For the little victim, the experience is traumatic and the damage from it all is hard to measure.
“People who are rapidly sexually traumatised sort of leave their bodies, and their mind is somewhere else to deal with it,” says Dr. Tina J. Walch, director of ambulatory services at Zucker Hillside Hospital in New Hyde Park, New York. That kind of escapist strategy is a good one in the moment, but over time, it can do terrible harm. “They may be suffering depression and anxiety or some Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) and dissociative disorder depending on if there was severe sexual trauma.”
Then there’s the disorientation of vanishing from a familiar world of comfort and safety when you are a child and remerging into an entirely vicious and cold one characterised by the child’s experience in confinement. In such extreme circumstances, a lot will change within and around the kidnapped child, that is, if he or she makes it out of captivity alive, said Debo Osonuga, 47, a clinical psychiatrist.
For this reason, it’s clear what most child victims of kidnap need first, starting with distance from the media. The TV interviews and magazine profiles may be inevitable, but it will be a whole different kind of grotesquerie if the cameras and reporters don’t stay away for a good long while.
Expert psychological opinion suggests that one of the most important things is for the victim and family to have time to recover on their own and re-establish relationships. That recovery is not helped much if the victim is so young at the time of abduction. Although children’s emotional resiliency presumably matches their physical resiliency, which means they heal faster than adults, there is a terrible toll on children who experience a state of captivity; confinement stunts them at the very moment in their lives that they are supposed to be maturing emotionally and intellectually, said experts.
The first step in easing that passage will likely be working with counsellors who can help the victims regain some sense of safety and autonomy. They must be allowed to talk and talk and talk through the trauma, and to reintegrate into the outside world at whatever pace they choose.
Sometimes, the abducted child falls prey to the “Stockholm Syndrome,” the phenomenon of captives eventually identifying with their captors. Such situation presumably manifested in the case of the Orekoya kids who later established bonds of friendship with the children of their abductor.
But it’s nonetheless a big part of things. Medical and psychiatric experts speak of a “learned helplessness” that quickly follows a kidnapping. At first there is indeed the scratching and fighting and hollering that follows. But slowly, victims surrender to powerlessness, something that is accelerated if the kidnapper shows a willingness to inflict pain, but also to withhold it.
Instead of being tortured, the victim receives kindness. He is given a drop of water, and the beating stops. Then the abducted child begins to develop feelings of gratitude.
Over time it wears on even the strongest person. The human need for affiliation asserts itself too. Being in the physical company of someone—anyone—is better than being utterly alone.
Why kidnap?
According to Dr. Ottuh Peter Oritsemuwa of the Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies, Samuel Adegboyega University, “The political importance of kidnapping activity has had a spill-over influence on the jobless youths and criminals who take it as a new substitute or complement to robbery and pocket- picking. Such a group of kidnappers target not only prominent and well-off individuals but also ordinary citizens who possess little wealth. The common target includes every perceived person with prospects of high and lucrative ransom including teenagers, children and adults alike.”
Second, greed for money is another factor. Most people are willing to violate the rules of decency and morality when enough money is involved. Some who appear amiable and kind under normal circumstances seem to undergo a personality change when money is at stake, transforming into obnoxious and hostile characters. Besides, so much money can be obtained without much stress compared to bank or high way robberies and other crimes, he said.
Why kidnapping thrives
With a current staff strength of about 370, 000, the Nigerian Police Force (NPF) is wholly incapable of policing over 170 million Nigerians. According to a 2013 estimate by the World Bank, Nigerians are secured by about 370,000 policemen at a ratio of one policeman to 467 Nigerians. This indicates that the country is under-policed and the police is under-staffed.
The police on their part blame the state for failing to provide the necessary resources and logistics to enhance its performance. The Nation findings revealed that the police has to contend with the challenges posed by inadequate resources, acute shortage of personnel, barracks and office accommodation, inadequate logistics including office stationeries, operation vehicles, communication equipments, weapons, boats. There is also the problem of inability to keep pace with modern policing due to substandard training.
Franca Attoh, PhD, Department of Sociology, University of Lagos (UNILAG), argued that one of the problems of policing is that the government’s perception of crime and its control has been narrow, legalistic, and synonymous with and limited to the crime and the criminal. “Rather than focus on the criminal justice system as a whole government policies are usually geared towards a subset which is policing and how to sanction the offender. This legalistic approach is in tandem with the idea that those who break the law represent a unique subgroup with some distinguishing features. The animosity between the public and the police has resulted in casualties on both sides and this is one of the reasons why the police find it difficult to get information from the public,” she said.
In the wake of Attoh’s analysis, there is need to conduct an objective appraisal of the nature of operationalisation of the Nigerian police. To understand and appreciate the fact that the force is under-staffed, some statistical calculations are necessary, noted Dr. Chuks Osuji, a lecturer and political scientist. Going by 2012 estimates, Osuji stated that the cumulative total of police officers and rank and file in Nigeria was 310,177. Osuji highlighted gross misapplication of the police’s strength as major bane to the force’s ability to discharge its duties efficiently.
For example, about 150 policemen are attached to the Presidency to help guard the President, the First Lady, Vice President and the wife of the Vice President. The legislative arm of the government consumes a sizeable number of policemen assigned to the legislators as viz: Speaker about 50; Deputy Speaker 25; Majority Leader 20; Deputy Majority Leader 15; Chief Whip 12, Deputy Chief Whip 10, Minority Leader 10; Deputy Minority Leader 8, Minority Chief Whip 5 and then there is a number attached permanently to the Legislature, about 100 to guard the entire Three Arm Zone.
“Now to the Senate, the Senate President 50; Deputy Senate President 30; Senate Leader 20; Deputy Senate Leader 14; Senate Minority Leader 10; Deputy Minority Leader 5, Chairmen of House and Senate standing committees have about 45 for each. This means two police men to each chairman. What is more, almost every senator has a policeman attached to him or her, which is a total of 109 policemen. On their part, most of the members of the House of Representatives make arrangements to secure the services of at least one police man attached to him or her. This approximates to 365.
Further, at the federal level, there are ministers including ministers of state. Obviously, each minister must have at least one policeman attached to him or her as an orderly and another to guard the residence of a minister. In some cases, some high profile ministers often make additional arrangements for additional deployment of police men. Thus, at the federal level, both the Executive and the Legislature may take as many as 800 (of course this may be grossly under-estimated) policemen.
On its side, the Judiciary takes its own chunk of policemen probably as follows: Chief Justice of the Federation may be assigned 10 police officers; President of Court of Appeal may get five; all the members of the Supreme Court may get at least two police officers each; other Appeal Court judges may get two each. Other Federal High Court Judges may get two police officers each as well.
Therefore, on the total, the Presidency, Legislature and Judiciary take approximately 950 from the police population. Of course, this is a conservative approximation. At the state level, Office of the Governor is likely to get approximately 30 policemen including those that follow him on a convoy, protect his office and house and of course at least two policemen in his country home to guard that. At the state level also, speakers and other principal officers may get approximately 306 policemen. Chief judges in the country and other judges will be assigned not less than 550 policemen. Stretching the matter statistically more, all the top traditional rulers in the country, will be assigned a platoon of police officers who may total about 464 deployed to them and their palaces throughout the service.
“What is more painful and disgraceful is that apart from former governors and some deputy governors, those who contested presidential and governorship election still have at least one policeman each attached to them, totaling about 377. Therefore, conservatively, about 5,600 policemen are attached to high profile political office holders, senators, House of Representatives members, governors, House of Assembly principal officers etc with a shortfall of 64,823 added to 5,600. This brings the total shortfall of police to approximately 70,600,” he said.
Deterring child kidnappers
Police Public Relations Officer, DCP Don N. Awunah, “The Inspector General of Police, IGP Ibrahim K. Idris NMP, is committed in ensuring that all forms of crime, fear of crime and particularly kidnap for ransom and other violent crimes are brought to the lowest ebb throughout the country.”
“The Nigeria Police Force will continue to limit the capacity of kidnappers and other criminals to disrupt the quality of life of Nigerians by the deployment of adequate manpower and resources in crime reduction, detection and effective prosecution of offenders in courts of competent jurisdiction,” he said.
While confirming that a ransom was paid for the release of Margaret, wife of Godwin Emefiele, the CBN governor, he said it is a tool that is sometimes used as a bait or bargaining chip to save the lives of the victims of crime.
“It is also absolutely important to mention that the Police do not and will not encourage payment of ransom,” he said, advising relatives of victims of kidnapping to exercise “considerable caution” in such circumstances. “It is inherently counterproductive…At all times of kidnap scenario, it is pertinent the Police are involved and trusted,” he said.
According to Attoh, the bane of the Nigerian police is its inability to adopt modern intelligence gathering in all its operations and the deployment of information technology (IT). In a world that has shrunk time and space due to globalisation, the police needs to be proactive and dynamic to meet the complexity of the society, she said.
Attoh suggested that NPF personnel should be trained in the science of intelligence gathering, the use of technology to enhance the operational efficiency of the police. She also recommended that Nigeria establishes a national data base which should be continuously updated by starting with the information processed by INEC and the National Identity Card Management
Commission. Anything short of this is akin to groping in the dark. There is an urgent need to move away from the present command structure by ensuring that community policing comes into being, she stressed.
Elias Ojo, a security expert, supports harsher punitive measures against kidnappers, like the death penalty. And Noel Otu, Associate Professor at the University of Texas, Brownsville, United States of America (USA), suggested that the government should rank kidnapping at the same level as treason.
Otu stressed that telephone companies should develop a system of tracking calls and pinpointing call locations effectively and efficiently, and give full cooperation to law enforcement officials when needed. “The financial institutions should also be required to report suspicious banking activities to the appropriate authorities. Money Laundering Act of 2011 should be fully and effectively enforced,” he said.
But do these measures speak to the pain and interminable misery that becomes the lot of several child victims of abduction for ransom? The answer lies in the post-traumatic experiences of abducted and ‘sexually abused children’ like Rebecca. Even as her mother creates a convincing scene that all is well after her child returned from 29 days in captivity, Rebecca cuts a piteous portrait of a teenager seeking her way through lattices of terror and internalised anguish; makes you think there is more to the story of her captivity and release.
Perhaps there is a story that she really must tell but the tenor of Rebecca’s grief is desperately hidden in stoic acceptance and deference to her mother’s version of the truth. “My child is perfectly okay. She does not need to be tested for anything. God has taken control. People should leave us alone. We have been through too much already. We should be allowed to live in peace,” said Abigael, stressing that her daughter has no need for psychiatric help.
Notwithstanding her claims, a cursory glance at Rebecca reveals depths of sorrow and bottled-up grief. The teenager wears her bruises like a cloak of sullied innocence. A silent cry for help resonates through the tangles of fear clogging her psyche, leaving her dry and translucent, like the shed membrane of a garter snake.
