If you think strange things are not on the increase in Nigeria of today, wait until you look at this incident, critically.
The other weekend, a whole Assistant Commissioner of Police (ACP) Musa Rabo, who is area commander at the Suleja Area Command in Niger State, was kidnapped alongside his driver on their way to Jos. And we are not aware, or have not been told of those behind the kidnap, yet.
But in a statement via their official Twitter handle late Sunday evening of that week, police said they had rescued Rabo and that he was unhurt. According to the statement, the operation was carried out by a combined team of Police operatives from Kaduna, Niger and Zone 7 Command Headquarters, Abuja, backed-up by members of the elite Special Forces of the NPF.
The statement also noted that two suspects were arrested, while investigation into the incident is still ongoing. Nothing, however, was said on the fate of the driver, even as the kidnappers were said to have made contact with relatives of the area commander demanding a ransom of N50 million.
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Now, I don’t believe this incident is all that any Nigerian needs to realise that anyone can be kidnapped in present day Nigeria, although one can understand if some people are still wondering how and why a senior police officer became this vulnerable. For if someone who actually is expected to secure civilians in the midst of our security challenges is so easily kidnapped, then what is the fate of an ordinary citizen, many would ask.
And the police, it appears, have an explanation, which is that Mr. Rabo was “positionally unlucky,” whatever that means.
Their words: “The officer was travelling in his civil dress, with his private vehicle and without escort or any special security at the time of the incident,” adding, “He was not targeted as a cop. It was purely an opportunistic crime, indiscriminately and maliciously targeted at citizens using that particular road. He was, perhaps, positionally unlucky at the time of the incident!”
What a statement, indeed, and how’ positionally’ unlucky we must all be on our roads! If security agents know that “citizens using a particular road” are “indiscriminately and maliciously targeted” by some bandits, the question is: Why then abandon, or better still, contract that road to bandits? What exactly are the security forces doing to protect citizens plying the road?
It is indeed a sad commentary that a road they acknowledged to be prone to crime is clinically handed over, or left to be overrun by criminals, if the confession above by the police is anything to go by. What a country!
And so, Mr. Rabo joined the list of security officials who have had their share in the menace of insecurity in the country.
In August, for instance, a Divisional Police Officer identified as Mr. Okoro was kidnapped along the Benin-Asaba-Onitsha Expressway while on his way to Asaba, the Delta State capital, for an official assignment. He was later freed after N3 million ransom was reportedly paid.
In May, two officials of the Federal Road Safety Commission (FRSC) were kidnapped in Osun. They were released after the payment of N1 million ransom.
So many civilians have been victims of kidnapping, mostly by suspected Fulani herdsmen. Generally speaking, insecurity has seized the country and the fear of traveling on major highways is now the beginning of wisdom for many.
As a matter of fact, kidnapping is now said to be the country’s fastest-growing and most lucrative business. As reported recently, a government found that “bandits collected over N3 billion in ransom from 2011 to May 2019, widowed 4,983 women, orphaned 25,050 children and displaced 190,340 persons in Zamfara State alone.”
More so, and according to the police, 1,071 persons were killed in the first four months of 2019. Indeed, kidnapping, banditry and communal strife have driven away most farmers across the country from their farms, thereby causing food shortage, thus destroying the livelihoods of many as a result.
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And as much as we love to play politics with the truth, the Global Terrorism Index estimates that Fulani militants killed about 1,700 persons from January to September 2018, six times more than the number killed by the deadly and bloodthirsty Boko Haram Islamist sect throughout that year.
As Thomas Hobbes, the English Philosopher and author of the influential work, Leviathan is popularly known to have said, life in Nigeria has indeed gotten so nasty, brutish and short with most people basically selfish and driven majorly by the hope of personal gains.
Born in 1588, Hobbes had in 1651 in the Leviathan expressed his views about the nature of human beings and why it is necessary for people in authority to put in place certain laws and rules that will check the excesses and evil intents of humans, as well as the right to inflict severe punishment on anyone who steps out of line.
But laws, obviously, are of no good if there isn’t someone or something strong enough to make everyone follow them. This is why many are of the view that the kid gloves with which some criminal elements are treated even when others are meant to pay dearly for lesser offences in present day Nigeria, is majorly responsible for the high rate of insecurity in the land, often perpetrated with impunity and braggadocio since such ‘privileged’ offenders are hardly apprehended.
Yet, we are almost always bombarded with budgets here and there purportedly meant for the fight against insurgency and other criminal activities.
Notwithstanding, Nigerians are being terrorized daily by these groups of people from hell, who freely abduct, kidnap, rape, kill, maim, burn down communities, chase away surviving victims from their ancestral homes with nothing and sometimes nowhere to run to. Sadly in most cases, no one is apprehended.
So, how much is the life of a Nigerian worth? If, indeed, the life of Nigerians matters, these acts of terror, banditry and kidnappings all over the place would have ceased by now, with the president showing more empathy to national crisis than his penchant for international trips, which sometimes happen at moments of national tragedies, the kind that see leaders of more advanced countries abandoning any foreign trip and rushing back home, where in addition, they will physically show up at the scene of the incidents to commensurate with victims.
Like the Punch Newspapers pointed out in a recent editorial, President Buhai’s recent trip to Russia, sadly, “coincided with the persistent ghastly reports of killings, robbery, banditry, kidnapping, disasters and economic depression at home, including debilitating petrol fire incidents in Onitsha, Anambra State, the other week, a tendency aptly described to provocatively give the impression of an uncaring President.
And rightly as pointed, without opening up the economy and ensuring sound rule of law at home, foreign travels to attract investment is a complete waste of public fund.
It is just so sad that things happen in Nigeria with no target results. Everything is about political correctness, leading to introduction of policies that more or less tend to sniff the life out of the ordinary Nigerian. Or rather, have no bearing on the future of the country.
How, for instance can the country in one breath be talking of increase in salaries of workers and the next thing is to increase Value Added Tax (VAT)? This, in another word, is clear extortion, which renders the increase useless in a country, where cost of running the government is so outlandish.
Our legislators are said to be the highest paid in the world, earning even more than presidents of most advanced countries. The executive arm of government on its part, sits on our commonwealth, sharing our resources to themselves as they wish while majority of the populace wallow in abject poverty, hunger and diseases compounded by lack of basic infrastructure. What they get instead is increase in taxes that add to their woes, with no commensurate infrastructural development to fall back on.
The Federal Executive Council, early September, it would be recalled, approved 7.2 per cent as new Value Added Tax rate for the country, up from the current five per cent, another painful policy the Minister of Finance, Budget and National Planning, Mrs. Zainab Ahmed, said consultations were ongoing over when the new rate would apply.
According to her, stakeholders, including the National Assembly and the states, would have to agree on the date, stressing that the VAT Act would also have to be amended by the National Assembly before take-off date of the new rate, which she said could be sometime in 2020.
To her understanding and that of the government she represents, the increase is important and necessary because the federal government only retains 15 per cent of the VAT, while 85 per cent actually goes to the states and local governments. Her argument is that the states need additional revenue to be able to meet the obligations of the minimum wage, and the only way, if I might add, is to further impoverish the masses.
So while workers may be celebrating a pay rise given to them with the right hand, government at the same time is taking back the said increase with the left hand in the most insincere and insensitive manner.
Any wonder why government at all levels in Nigeria, beside over-taxing the masses, mostly lacks the initiative to create more jobs; generate more wealth for all; build roads; improve on electricity supply and other basic necessities?
And that is why, the economy, as widely reported, is still distorted and sluggish, recording 1.9 per cent growth year-on-year last quarter, a development that is lower than the initial World Bank projection of 2.2 per cent. Youth unemployment, also, is put at 55.4 per cent and despite the huge number of countries visited, the Punch Newspapers editorial graphically captured that the Buhari’s tourism has also failed to reverse the decline in foreign direct investment.
What instead is the case, according to the Nigerian Stock Exchange report, is that foreign portfolio investors pulled out N1.87 trillion assets in Buhari’s first term.
Against this backdrop, government officials should be told in simple term that foreign investment only comes to those who invest in their human capital and infrastructure and not to those running around the world, laundering looted funds and claiming to be chasing after foreign investors
And so, for as long as we continue to deceive ourselves, these crimes and criminalities are not likely to abet, such that one may wake up one morning to hear that the IGP may have been kidnapped.
Tufiakwa! God forbid bad thing!!
