How Nigeria is building a University of kidnapping and banditry

 

While growing up in the 80’s, the term ‘gbomό-gbomό’ literarily ‘child-kidnapper’ was the only form of kidnapping we knew. The men who perpetrated this evil were thought to be surreal or spiritual. We were instructed not to pass through certain routes and forbidden from talking to strangers because we may well just disappear if we do so. Gbomό-gbomό of those days had no guns, but lure you with candy and other attractive goodies like money carefully planted on your way. They can also talk you into coming with them. Adults were rarely kidnapped and the victims were random persons.

Times have changed and today's kidnappers have no patience to ensnare their victims. They profile, target, waylay, and whisk them away at gunpoint. The victims’ families and acquaintances then begin the race of gathering funds to free the victim from the kidnappers. This effort is on somewhere in the country right now as I write. The effort of the kidnapper is repaid in days or weeks and sometimes both camps will smile, sometimes bloodshed ensues. Everyone and anyone can be kidnapped the next minute. Students especially are like the industry’s gold. Kidnappers have become untraceable within a state that keeps asking us for more for tax for better governance while amassing more debts, a state seeking more personal identity of individual and monitoring their finances with nothing to show for it. Criminals have evolved, policing should evolve even better. A police force modeled like ours will certainly fail with the chain of command as presently constituted. It is obviously time to decentralise for effectiveness but some benefactors of this system are saying it’s good.

In yet another evolution, a new breed of kidnappers has now emerged. Rather than call them kidnappers, someone chose a less harsh description by referring to them as ‘bandits’ and we also agreed to that appellation. We don’t want to hang these criminals by labeling them ‘kidnappers’ or ‘criminals’ because the political class appears to have an interest in them. If today an advert for a ‘bandit’ job is posted, the number of applicants will be in their hundreds. We have chosen to enthrone a system that repays criminality handsomely, so how do we deter future crimes?

We are calm and mute while the fragility of the nation undergoes further violation by the overfed political class.  Not a day passes by without some of us thinking of October 20, 2020 when the voices of men and women asking for a better country were drowned in a pool of their blood. Some while clutching the flag of their country in a show of nationalism. That single act is the final strike of the hammer driving a nail into the coffin taking away our voices. We will have a discussion about this incident one day when those who perpetrated this act will certainly be troubled and haunted. Sadly, not a whimper has been heard from the Governor who sought the help of the shooters since then. The President under whose nose this atrocity was perpetrated is still enjoying taxpayer’s money. The ‘man’ in some of us has no choice than to sleep till 2023 or risk the bullet, let them say the man died. Whether we will have a nation to wake up into by then is another cause of concern. While some Nigerians abroad wish to come back home because this is their home, some of those at home are scheming to have an alternative for where they call home.

Someone should tell the truth to the powerful politicians holding us to ransom. The corruption-destruction mantra of this government seems to be an irony for corruption-enabling. How else do we justify the continuous Boko Haram war ongoing for decades, now under the leadership of a war General? How do we justify the NASS spending billions of naira on itself while the people it represents are living in penury? How do we find it convenient to continue cattle migration with the destruction of farmlands that comes with it? Everyone knows that President Buhari is the best person to put a stop to cattle migration as a means of feeding cattle and that the National Assembly is unapologetically a branch of the executive.

The kidnap of schoolchildren is a norm now and we have forgotten that it was an aberration some years ago. Yes, news travels faster these days with social media, but criminality has also reached new heights. Unknown to us, our insanity is been daily upgraded. Abnormal is the new norm with our psyche getting emblazoned with new lows repeatedly. We are stoic, lest suicide would have been a daily occurrence. But without basic amenities, our mental limit will snap soon, and something must give way.

The October 2020 protest was a response to certain events and something will trigger us to react to this aberration when the time comes. At a time when education is evolving globally, the Nigerian government is stealthily building a specialised University of criminality informally by neglecting the future especially in the North of Nigeria. These people are being trained informally in criminality every day. It starts with being a pickpocket, to breaking bottles, and gun-wielding. They won’t turn on each other but turn on the hapless citizen who sweat it out daily to earn a living and the rich.

It is obvious that we are not paying attention to the future. The leaders of tomorrow 30 years ago are now living in a country of a-thousand-vices with some of them being the device for the vices, and some of them being the victims of their mates. Only time will tell how much more we can go at this rate before imploding.