Dele Adeoluwa
THE bestial instincts that drive kidnappers and other criminal elements are hard to imagine. Once they revel in their debauchery and are sated with all kinds of addictive substances, they become terribly mean. They launch into the vilest of savagery that tends towards dementia. In their woozy state, human life to them does not amount to more than that of a cockroach.
Ask a kidnap victim who lived to tell the story. Once you are in the kidnappers’ den, it is a breath away from death; unless Providence smiles on you. They are given to so much unpredictability and bohemian traits that they can ‘waste’ their victims within a fit of anger, such as when a particular victim’s family is not playing ball.
The Makus will not forget their experience with kidnappers in a hurry. Life was exhilarating at the home of Usman Maku, elder brother of the former Minister of Information, Labaran Maku, until penultimate Tuesday when a gang of kidnappers, numbering over 10, invaded the house at about 8pm in Gudi, Akwanga Local Government Area of Nasarawa State, and hometown of the state governor, Abdullahi Sule, shooting sporadically.
By the time they left, they had torn the tendon of peace in the family and replaced it with pains and sorrow. On breaking into the house, a stone’s throw from that of the governor, they gunned down the senior Maku’s daughter, Sahadatu, a promising lady who graduated from Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria, and his son, Salisu. They abducted his wife, Asamawu.
The fog of sorrow was still thick in the atmosphere when the wicked gunmen placed a call to the family, demanding N20million as ransom for the release of Asamawu, who remains in their custody. The matter has left the family in a quandary. With two members of the family already killed, can the kidnappers be trusted to free Asamawu, even if they are able to muster to pay whatever amount is eventually negotiated as ransom?
When a five-man kidnap gang abducted Erena Gospel Dinaberi, a Rivers State entrepreneur last week, the family was hopeful that their breadwinner would come out of it alive. How mistaken they were! His abductors took him to a thick forest at Alesa Eleme in Eleme Local Government Area of Rivers State. They established contact with Dinaberi’s family, negotiated ransom with them and they eventually collected N1million. Now that ransom had been paid, Dinaberi’s family were confident that their man would be released.
However, instead of releasing him, his abductors tied him to a tree in the forest, abandoned him there and fled. They did not give his family any clue as to how to locate him; neither did they unfasten the knot for their victim to wriggle himself free. It was the anti-kidnapping unit of the state’s Police Command who later trailed two of the suspects to Okrika and arrested them while they were trying to change the colour of Dinaberi’s car. The suspects led the police to where Dinaberi was tied to a tree in the forest. The scene was simply unsightly. It was his body that had decomposed to the bones that confronted them.
The fate of a former Taraba senator, Zik Ambonu Sunday, now hangs in the balance as his abductors are threatening to kill him if the N50million ransom they are demanding is not paid within two days. The ex-senator from 2003 to 2007 was kidnapped in his village, Bachama, Karim Lamido council of Taraba State, where he retired to after leaving the senate to engage in large-scale farming.
The family have been running around to raise the ransom, but they are lamenting that the amount is just too much for them to bear. At the time of writing this piece, it was not clear if the kidnappers had reduced the ransom or released the embattled ex-senator.
Kidnapping, which began in Niger Delta in the hey days of resource control agitation when now repentant militants were blowing up oil installations and kidnapping expatriates to force the authorities to address their grievances, has become something else today. It was armed robbers who first hijacked it and began to kidnap people for ransom. Some suspects in police net once confessed that they abandoned robbery for kidnapping because it is a faster way of making ‘big money’ and it is less risky.
At a point, unscrupulous herdsmen too began to employ kidnapping as a virulent tool of oppression and satiating their whimsical pleasures. They would kidnap for ransom, kill at will and rape most of their female victims, turning many communities across the country into enclaves of terror.
Right now, kidnapping has become virtually a business venture. It has become a noxious tool to even scores and obtain obscene cash. Domestic aides – house helps, drivers, security guards, apprentices – now kidnap their bosses’ children for money. Siblings now arrange their own kidnap to force their (usually stingy) parents to part with money. There have been reports of even pastors arranging their own abduction to fleece their congregations!
The business of kidnapping for ransom has been carried to a ridiculous but frightening level that something just has to be done to curb the obscenity. That is why the amendment by the Senate penultimate Tuesday of the Criminal Code Act, which recommended life imprisonment as punishment for kidnapping instead of the current provision of 10 years penalty, is a cheering piece of news.
The resolution followed the third reading and passage of “A Bill for an Act to Amend the Criminal Code Act Cap C.38, Laws of the Federal Republic of Nigeria 2004.” It was sponsored by Senator Oluremi Tinubu (Lagos Central). The bill seeks to delete the statute of limitation on defilement in Sections 218 and 221 of the Criminal Code Act and amend the definition of rape in Section 357 as well as provide more stringent punishment for the offence of kidnapping in Section 364 of the Act.
In the new amendment of Section 364(2), the principal Act is amended as anyone convicted for kidnapping “is guilty of a felony and is liable to imprisonment for life” as against the existing words, “is guilty of a felony and is liable to imprisonment for 10 years.”
Presenting his report on the bill, the Chairman of the Senate Committee on Judiciary, Human and Legal Matters, Senator Michael Opeyemi Bamidele (Ekiti Central), said the amendments became compelling because the existing provisions were inherently defective.
“The aim of criminal law and criminal justice system, he explained, “is not only for punishment but also for deterrence, retribution, restoration and rehabilitation of offenders. And when a law fails to achieve any of these objectives, it becomes inherently defective, hence the need for the amendment/review of such laws to bring them to conformity with best practices.”
Making the punishment for kidnapping more stringent this way is a right step in the right direction. The activities of kidnappers have become so obnoxious that offenders actually deserve to be slammed the extreme penalty – capital punishment. However, life imprisonment offers a much higher level of retribution, next to death sentence, and a glint of opportunity for penitence, if an offender so convicted and sentenced is ever lucky to get a pardon at any stage of serving his life jail.
Source: thenationonlineng.net
