Date Published: 02/19/10

KIDNAPPING: AN OPEN LETTER TO ACTING PRESIDENT Good luck Jonathan By Emmanuel Onwubiko 

Our dear acting president Dr. Good luck Ebele Jonathan, we the entire members of the Human Rights Writers’ Association of Nigeria, (HURIWA) hereby considers it extremely expedient at this turbulent period of our national life to write you and urgently request that the federal government takes immediate, comprehensive and result-oriented action to stem  the tide of the unprecedented rise in organized crime of kidnapping in Akwa Ibom, Abia, Imo, Edo, Anambra, Ekiti, Ondo,Kaduna and other flash points where this criminal tendency has assumed a frightening larger than life dimension. 

Our clarion call is necessitated by the need to remind the Federal administration under your watch that the essence of having a government in place is for the provision of the security of lives and property of the citizenry. 

In his 516-page book ‘politics and litigation in contemporary Nigeria’ the author Emmanuel Onwubiko cited the work of T.H. Green who according to him gave one of the best definitions of the concept of government. 

Green in his book ‘principles of political obligations’ gave a descriptive and comprehensive definition of government thus; “In those levels of society in which obedience is habitually rendered by the bulk of society to some determinate superior who is independent of any other superior, the obedience is so rendered because this determinate superior regarded as expressly or embodying what may properly be called the general will, and is virtually conditional upon the fact that the superior is so regarded. It is by no means an unlimited power of compulsion that the superior exercises, but dependant upon the sovereign conforming to certain convictions on the part of the subject as what is for the general interest. The sovereign is able to exercise the ultimate power of getting habitual obedience from the people in virtue of an assent on the part of the people. This assent is not reducible to the fear of the sovereign felt by each individual; rather it is a common desire to achieve certain purposes, towards which obedience to law contributes”. 

In the context of the Nigerian Constitution, the people are the true owners of sovereignty going by the provision of section 14(2) (b) that “sovereignty belongs to the people of Nigeria from whom government through this constitution derives all its powers and authority.” In other words, what T.H. Green and the Nigerian constitution have said above is that a government of men and women elected through a democratic process to preside over the political administration of the country is obliged to carry out only those functions and duties that serve the public interest. What then is the primary duty of government if we may ask? The 1999 constitution in section 14 (2) (b) answered the above question when it provides that; “the security and welfare of the people shall be the primary purpose of government”. 

One of the world’s best known political philosophers of all times Thomas Hobbes also answered the above question by stating that the fundamental purpose of government is the maintenance of basic security and public order. Hobbes was of the view that people in a community create and submit to government for the purpose of establishing for themselves, safety and public order. 

A notorious fact of life in Nigeria since the operation of the 1999 constitution which incidentally marked the return of civil rule is the unprecedented level of general insecurity of lives and property of citizens. One clear manifestation of the general break down of law and order in the last decade is the unacceptable rise in some criminal activities such as armed robbery and violent kidnapping for ransoms which has made some members of the international community to issue travel warning to their citizens not to travel to the areas where kidnapping has increased.  

According to Hank Eso, Kidnapping simply means ‘to seize and detain unlawfully, by force or fraud and to remove a person to an undisclosed location against his/her will usually for use as a hostage or to extract ransom’. 

On July 17 th 2009, the United States of America’s state Department warned US citizens of the risks of traveling to Nigeria and recommends avoiding all but essential travel to the Niger Delta States of Akwa Ibom, Bayelsa, Delta and Rivers. The United States government anchored the travel warning on what it called continued risks of kidnapping, robbery and other armed attacks in these areas. 

Hank Eso, a researcher and contributor to some online journals drew a frightening conclusion when he wrote in his article entitled; “incessant kidnapping and Beirutization of Nigeria” that; “Between 1991 and 2000, Nigeria ranked ninth behind nations like Columbia, Mexico, Russian Federation, Philippines and Venezuela in the number of annual kidnappings. Nigeria had 34 reported cases, compared to Columbia’s 5,181 and was a notch ahead of 10 th ranked South Africa”. The statistic for incidence of kidnapping has however jumped geometrically in the last two years. 

A serving minister of the Federal Republic of Nigeria responsible for police Affairs Dr. Yakubu Lame was widely reported in the media last year July to have raised the alarm that 512 kidnappings had been reported in the first half of that year (2009) compared with 353 for the whole of 2008. Incidentally, a United States- based security consultancy group Clayton consultants was quoted in the international media to have stated that Nigeria is the eight world’s top kidnapping hot spots, alongside war zones and failed states such as Afghanistan, Iraq, and Somalia. This is unfortunate even as some security scholars attributed the unprecedented rise in insecurity in Nigeria and the inability of the operatives in the security community in Nigeria to tackle the ugly trend for the recent classification of Nigeria in the terrorism watch list by the United States of America. 

In the widely acclaimed book ‘Democratic Governance and international law;’ edited by Gregory Fox and Brad Roth the authors reminded us that “the fact that a state has enlightened citizens and liberal institutions, however, is not sufficient for it to belong to the liberal peace if its peer states do not believe it is liberal, they will not treat it as such….”                            

Nigerian government needs to put in motion mechanisms to effective curb the growing trend of kidnappings and other manifestations of criminality in Akwa Ibom and a few other states spread across the federating units of Nigeria. If government fails to stamp out once and for all the unfortunate cases of kidnappings in parts of Nigeria, then the perception in the international community that that the twin social evils of impunity and lawlessness have become acceptable practices will become entrenched. This perception will surely undermine the international importance of Nigeria as a respectable member of the civilized global community. 

The federal government is therefore called upon to confront the serious challenge posed by kidnappings to the continuous existence of Nigeria as a political entity. 

One area the Federal government through an unbiased high power security team could tackle the increasing cases of kidnappings in Akwa Ibom and other places is to investigate whether some of these kidnappings have political undertones and government must arrest, and prosecute alleged sponsors so as to restore the confidence of Nigerians in the project Nigeria. 

Tell magazine of February 22 nd 2010 conducted an investigation into what it called “Akwa Ibom under siege” and drew the conclusion that most of the cases of kidnappings are linked with politics. Akwa Ibom state politics is divided sharply into the factions of the ruling peoples democratic party controlled by the former Governor Obong Victor Attah and the incumbent Governor Godswill Akpabio and insinuations are rife that most cases of violent kidnappings against political opponents of the serving Governor are politically- motivated. We believe that a thorough investigation will unravel the truth. The case of the kidnapping of erstwhile Director General of the National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) General Edet Akpan (rtd) was very pathetic because over four persons were killed in the bid by the kidnappers to bundle him away. 

Dear acting president, the situation of unprecedented rate of violent kidnappings across Nigeria is such that demands that the nation’s police be reformed and made to be proactive in preventing and tackling the menace of kidnappings.  

We feel that everything possible should be done to sufficiently equip and train the police operatives to prepare them for the arduous task of tackling the security challenge posed by kidnapping. Security operatives should be closely monitored and motivated with incentives to keep them away from conspiring with kidnappers to perpetuate the ugly crime because of the perceived high profits. 

The proposed registration of Sim cards of all subscribers of the service providers in the telecommunication industry in Nigeria must be effectively carried out by the Nigerian communications commission so that crime investigators can speedily through rights-based approach, determine the owners and locations of the Mobile phones used in making demands for ransoms by kidnappers. 

Importantly, the federal government must ensure that sufficient enlightenment campaigns are carried out to discourage family members of victims of kidnappings from paying ransoms. Hank Eso traced the growth of kidnapping as a thriving business in Nigeria to the earlier concessions and payment of ransoms to kidnappers made by oil companies operating in the volatile oil producing Niger Delta region where kidnappings on larger scale started around 2006. 

Eso asked the question; Why is kidnapping becoming an industry in Nigeria? He answered; “First, because kidnapping pays. For its perpetrators, it obviously, yields far more illegitimate money, with minimal risk, than armed robbery. There is, also, a near certainty that families of the victims will pay up. Second, kidnapping is big business, because, bad governance, lax legislation and weak law enforcement make such heinous crimes possible….” 

“In addition, the kidnapping problems persist, because the Nigerian government and the foreign oil companies continue to work at cross-purposes. Whereas paying ransom is as illegal as taking hostage, foreign oil firms that rake in billions from their oil exploration in Nigeria, consider several million dollars a paltry and fair sum to pay to keep their production facilities ongoing. They worry less about the damage of their actions on Nigeria….”  
 

* Onwubiko heads Human Rights Writers’ Association of Nigeria.